MORENO VALLEY, Cal. – I had the opportunity to meet the 2016 drivers for good friends NASCAR Xfinity Series team JGL Racing, at Fontana two weekends ago.
Dakota Armstrong is their full time driver for the 2016 season while Matt Tifft will share the part time driver duties with Corey LaJoie. It’s always enjoyable for me to introduce the new young guns of this sport to our Catchfence readers. Matt Tifft was gracious with his time and certainly adds dedication, talent, excitement, and wisdom to this series and team. The following is the result of that interview.
Matt comes to the NASCAR Xfinity Series with impressive racing experience. He began racing Go Karts when he was 11 years old at the Barberton Speedway in Ohio. From there, he moved into national touring Go Karts. At the age of 13 he began racing Super Late Models. This included the ARCA Midwest Tour in the Upper Midwest region as well as some races down in Florida. In the ARCA Midwest Tour, he earned the Rookie of the Year title. After that, he moved up to the NASCAR K & N Pro Series, adding in some ARCA with Ken Schrader Racing for larger track experience. Last year, he competed in additional races with Kenny and then some truck races with Kyle Busch Motorsports. Rounding out 2015 was one race with Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) in the Xfinity Series at Kentucky resulting in a Top 10 finish for his first effort in the series.
In 2016, Matt began the year racing at Daytona with JGL Racing. “Daytona was a really good experience with the JGL guys. I had been there in a truck before, but we thought it would be really smart to try to get in a car at a restrictor plate track. We ran pretty well at the front of the pack in the first half of the race but we got shuffled out with some pit stop issues. The more you run the restrictor plate races, the more you learn and get used to that style of racing. I’m still pretty fresh at those types of tracks and it’s still a learning process, especially when you’re in the Xfinity Series and you have Cup guys in there. You learn how aggressive you have to be to be successful.”
“Looking forward at JGL, I am very excited about the partnerships we have with Toyota and Joe Gibbs Racing, and also we have a new Crew Chief, Wayne Setterington. JGL Competition Director Steven “Bones” Lane has a lot of really great ideas to make the JGL teams more competitive. We’ve got a lot of good people there in place and I’m excited to go to Texas and see how we can run”.
Right now the plan is for Matt to run 4 races in 2016 for JGL Racing. After Daytona, the other three will be Texas this coming weekend, Bristol and Talladega. “My goal is to be competitive and be where we need to be come race time”, Matt stated. “The races we have lined up with JGL are the races we thought would put me in a competitive car and get some good track experience in places I’ve never been before or where I have limited track experience. There are a lot of exciting things going on at JGL that are setting us up for a lot of success. I’m glad to be a part of it.”
Matt also commented on his thoughts about the future of NASCAR. “It’s going to be very interesting in the next 5 years or so with many new, young, talented drivers coming into NASCAR. I think that is very healthy for the sport. We’re seeing it already with Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Kyle Larson and Austin Dillon. There’s so much competition just to get into the Sprint Cup level rides and the class of drivers currently in the Xfinity Series will be trying to make their mark in that series and prove to the cup teams that week in and week out they can be consistent, run up in the front, make the right moves and compete for wins. It’s going to be interesting to watch these drivers and see how it all unfolds. My goal is to be one of those drivers!”
In summary, Matt is looking forward to a great 2016 season. “I want to thank all the fans for their support. This is going to be a really interesting year and hopefully between the JGL and JGR races, we will be able to get better and better as the year goes on and turn some heads. It should be a fun journey.”
This is a handsome young man, experienced, dedicated and has the fire and talent to make it big in this sport. I enjoyed speaking with him and hope to do it again. I was truly intrigued and impressed with Matt and plan to watch him closely. I wish great success and strongly suggest you do the same. I think we will all be pleasantly surprised!
You can learn more about Matt on Facebook at “Matt Tifft Racing” and on Twitter (@Matt_Tifft) and Instagram look for Matt_Tifft. They do a lot of updates throughout the race weekends.
