Press Pass – Ontario’s DJ Kennington Races Into the Daytona 500 February 24, 2017 NASCAR Following is the transcript from Daytona International Speedway’s Media Centre Thursday night after the Can-Am Duel when Ontario’s DJ Kennington raced his way into a spot on the starting grid for Sunday’s Daytona 500, becoming only the eighth Canadian to do so in the history of the race. Kennington will start 28th and was understandably emotional with his accomplishment… Q. DJ, I was wondering if you could talk about how long it took to put this program together. Can you talk about Robby Benetton’s involvement with the team. DJ KENNINGTON: Absolutely. Robby and Marty have teamed up to put together a team that want to run all four restrictor plate races and possibly a couple road courses maybe. It was weird how it all started. I drove for Premium Motorsports in Phoenix last year. Got talking with Marty about an opportunity to run the 500 with Premium. I was actually talking to Triad about getting some engines to run Daytona. It all kind of ended up falling together with Marty and myself making a deal to drive his own car. Lordco and Castrol came onboard, my sponsors from Canada, to help out. We put it together I would say within the last month. A lot of my guys from my race team up in the Pinty’s Series came down. We’ve been working 18, 20 hours a day at Robby Benton’s shop to put this car together ourselves. They actually flew back on Sunday. Four of them worked 24 hours to have the backup car here in case we needed. Just been a group effort. Robby Benton has helped Marty out with the shop. Amazing equipment to work with, pull-downs, everything. A lot of work in a short period of time. It probably all came together in the last four weeks. Q. Is Robby serving as crew chief? DJ KENNINGTON: Actually, no. Robby is spotting. He came on the radio on the back straightaway. He says, You got to get in front of the 7. Do what you got to do. I knew what I had to do. I didn’t know how to get there. Really lucky off of four. I picked the right line. I didn’t think the middle would work. The only spot I had to go was the middle. We shot up the middle. I think we got ahead of Elliott by half a car length. That’s huge for this race team. Marty has put a lot into it with TRD, done a lot of hard work. I’m proud to be able to drive this thing. Heck, to be in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, that’s a dream for me. From St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. There’s only been eight of us Canadians that have made the 500, so that’s huge for us. Q. We had it figured differently apparently. We thought when Timmy Hill went out, it put you and Elliott in the show no matter what. Brendan didn’t need the fast qualifier clause. DJ KENNINGTON: 83 made it in from the first race. Brendan was locked in. If we didn’t beat the 7 car, Reed Sorenson would have been in on time. The last chance we had was to beat the 7 car. We knew exactly what we had to do. I just didn’t know how to get there. Thankfully we got there. Q. Castrol has been on your car forever. Can you explain how important it is to have that kind of a relationship to take you from Elko Speedway to the Daytona International Speedway. DJ KENNINGTON: I don’t know how many people in motorsport right now can say they’ve had the same sponsor for 25 years. Very fortunate. They’re like family to me. This deal all came together when I was trying to put some money together to come to Daytona. Quick story. I went to the Castrol Christmas party. I wasn’t even going to go because I wasn’t feeling the best. My wife actually told me, Here are a couple Advil. Get your butt to the party. Go see your friends. I went to the party, started talking to people there. They were really excited about how we did at Phoenix, racing with Premium Motorsports. Congratulated me. I said, Hey, I’m working on the next chapter now. I am trying to get to the Daytona 500. The owner of Wakefield, which is Castrol in Canada, he stuck his hand out right there and said, I got your back for that. Make it happen. I never even asked him for it. Just tells you what kind of sponsor they are for me. Unbelievable what they’ve done for me my whole racing career. Without what they’ve done for me, I wouldn’t even be here today. I can’t explain to you how important they are to me. THE MODERATOR: DJ, congratulations on making the Daytona 500. Good luck on Sunday. DJ KENNINGTON: Thanks. We appreciate it. The hard part is done, now we can have some fun.
