If a driver came to you and asked one driver he should learn from and one he shouldn't, who would those two people be?
JG: Well, it would be hard not to learn from Jimmie Johnson right now he's been the most dominant guy in the sport. I think one of the things that makes Jimmie so good is his work ethic. Like, he wasn't always put in the best equipment, and I think one of the reasons why he didn't stand out to a lot of people before he got to the Cup Series is because he wasn't in the absolute best cars and with the best team.
He was, on average, finishing 10th and eighth and not winning a whole lot. And because of that, it made him work a lot harder. So when he got to the Cup Series, he had this tremendous work ethic to break down all the details of what the cars were doing, write down a lot of notes on each track. He just was constantly trying to figure out what he could do to be better and learn from others, and I think he's one of the best at that.
A lot of times, having the raw talent and being in the best equipment makes you really lazy. And I don't think you always put as much effort into what it takes to be No. 1 and stay there.
As far as who not to learn from? Well, there's different categories. When it comes to working with the media and interviews, Kyle Busch is an easy one. When it comes to driving the car, I think there's a lot of talent in this garage that you can look at the positives and the negatives of how those guys have gone about it with career choices. But to me, if you want to learn from somebody who should maybe change careers is Kevin Conway.
I mean, I just don't understand what the guy's motives are. I don't know what his real background was to get to this level, but it just seems to me that he's so far off the pace that it doesn't make sense as to what his goal is to continue. To me, the Cup Series is about the elite, best drivers that there absolutely are. You would like there to be a system of qualifications just to even be able to step into this garage. But that's not always the case.
I guess my purpose of mentioning him is, if you don't have those qualifications, you should ask yourself, 'Do I really belong there?' And if you think you belong there and you get there and you're just not even close to being on the pace or knowing the cars or knowing the tracks, then I think you've got to make a decision as to how long you're going to stay there and put yourself through that. Because that can't be fun. It's gotta be stressful.
