Charles Krall (ARCA Racing): Welcome to 10 Questions and we are going to talk to another driver in the ARCA Menards Series and this week the victim is the driver of the No. 46 for DGR-Crosley Racing, none other than Thad Moffitt. Thad, anyone who follows you on your social media channels or your family for that matter knows you get to take some very cool trips and that leads me into my first question. If you could go on any vacation anywhere in the world that you’ve never been, where would your next trip be?
Thad Moffitt (Driver, No. 46 DGR-Crosley Racing): First, I want to thank you for introducing me as Thad and not Brett.
CK: That’s never happened before, I’ve never done that! (Note: I have done that, embarrassingly, during driver introductions at Nashville. Not my proudest moment.)
TM: If I could go anywhere, we are not really island or beach people. We are more like mountain, rugged people. We like to ride four-wheelers or go somewhere we can snowboard or ski. We usually go to Jackson Hole but I have been trying to convince everybody to go to Aspen, Colorado to ski. If I can convince everyone in my family to go to Colorado for a weekend and we take all forty people I think it would be fun. We can have fun anywhere. We have lots of fun at the racetrack most of the time but we have just as much fun away from it. That’s the way Grandpa has groomed the family, it’s fun to get together and tell stories. You know Uncle Kyle, he’s a really good story teller. He can make anything interesting. It’s fun to sit around the table and talk.
CK: I have heard a few of his stories before and yeah, they are pretty good. The second question we have for you, and you talked about this before we hit the record button, what is your favorite thing to do away from the racetrack? Unfortunately we have had some down time, so what have you done to stay busy? What are your favorite things do?
TM: My mom has been going to the store and every time she comes home with a new puzzle. I haven’t done puzzles since I was three years old. I have been putting puzzles together with my mom, my sister and my brother. They’ve been two-thousand piece puzzles, one-thousand piece puzzles and it’s been a lot of fun. Other than that, I have been iRacing constantly from the time I wake up. Even though we can’t race physically right now I think it’s important we get some virtual practice. Iracing is somewhat realistic and it’s fun to run on there with some of my teammates and guys I run with every week. It’s fun to get some bragging rights until we run the next night. It’s fun and it’s a good tool for us to use as we are stuck in the house for these few weeks to keep us occupied.
RACING-REFERENCE: Thad Moffitt Career Statistics
CK: So I graduated high school in 1990, ten years before you were born. I know my favorite class was French class, which I didn’t put to any use whatsoever. I don’t remember any of it. There must have been some cute girls in that class or something. But it’s been 30 years since I’ve been in high school but it hasn’t been quite that long for you. What was your favorite class in high school and what was your least favorite class?
TM: I always liked gym class because I played a lot of sports in high school. I played football, basketball and baseball freshman year. Sophomore year is when I decided I was going full-time racing so I only played football that year. I was always close with the gym teachers because I played sports so I liked going to gym class because I never really had to do anything and I would always get a hundred in the class. My least favorite class was English because I am not a very good speller. I can tell you when a word is misspelled but I can’t spell it correctly. That’s why I struggled in English. My English teacher was pretty cut throat, she didn’t give anyone any breaks.
CK: You didn’t do the “hey, don’t you know who I am” thing there at Randleman High?
TM: No, that didn’t work at all.
CK: We just mentioned Randleman and you’re obviously a member of the Petty racing family. You don’t share the last name but your mother Rebecca is Richard Petty’s daughter and that makes you his grandson. And that leads me into the next question. You have actually gotten to do this with some cool people. The question is if you could share a pre-race meal with anyone, living or dead, who would you want it to be and where would you want to go. Being a member of the Petty family, you’ve gotten to do that. I can imagine there are a couple of members of the Petty family that you didn’t get an opportunity to do that with, particularly your great grandfather Lee and your cousin Adam who are no longer with us. We’re going to have you pick someone outside of the Petty family that you would like to chat with, and it could be a racing person or a non-racing person.
TM: Growing up, I was a big Brett Favre fan. I think a lot of him. If I had to choose one person I would pick Tim Tebow because he is strong in his faith and he has never backed away from that. That is something that my grandfather instilled in all of us at a young age and my mom and dad backed it up. We went to church if we weren’t racing and if we were they were at the track and we went to MRO so we got our share of church every Sunday. I think it would be cool to talk to him about some of the things he’s been through. It’s not easy to share stuff like that in the racing world or in the sports world in general and not be badgered for it. I think he’s a bright guy and a really good athlete for sure. I like St. Elmo’s so I would take him to St. Elmo’s and have a meal with Tim Tebow.
CK: You are still pretty early in your racing career. What kind of example would you like to set for those who come into racing after you do?
TM: I like the idea of sharing your personality with the fans. Be aggressive on the track but off the track is where a lot of the drivers struggle. All of us can drive by now, a handful have mastered it better than others. All of us are pretty good or we wouldn’t be where we are at. Most of it is off the track. Let people know who you are. Interacting with the fans. Grandpa has always said if the fans don’t show up or tune in on TV, then we don’t have a sport. Without the fans we have nothing so we need to give them something back that gets them to come back every week. That’s something that I have tried to grow my career off of other than the on-track stuff. Interact with the fans. Let them know who you are. Give them content, and give them a race they actually want to watch.
CK: That leads me into question number six. What was the first car you ever had, and was it a gift or was it something you picked out on your own?
TM: I told my parents when I was turning sixteen I wanted a black sports car. I didn’t care what it was I just wanted a black sports car to drive to school and be that kid. Be cool. So I was thinking in my head I am getting a V-8 manual. So they get me this Camaro only it’s a V-6 and it’s an automatic.
CK: You needed to be a little more specific with that!
TM: There was a wide range of emotions that I went through. I was like “oh man, I got a Camaro this is sweet. A 2012 Camaro.” It was 2016 so it was a few years old, so I get it and it’s a V-6 and an automatic. All disappointed. So I take it to school and it looks cool until everyone hears it start up and it’s a V-6.
CK: Still a Camaro.
TM: I had a lot of fun in that car. When I started racing in 16 and 17, I started working in the shop and I couldn’t ever fit anything in the trunk of the Camaro. I would try to take something home or bring something home from Level Cross. Now I drive a full-size truck but it was fun driving that Camaro for a few years in high school.
CK: You did change race teams in the off season. You are now part of the DGR-Crosley family and the Ford Performance family. What is the biggest contribution you think you give to those two organizations?
TM: At DGR we all have different driving styles. Me, Tanner, Hailie, Taylor and Todd, we can work together really well because we all bring something different to the table. Hailie has the off-road truck background. Tanner has been faster than all of us in a drag car. He has the speed thing mastered. But I have run more ARCA races than both of them. I have been to certain tracks. It was funny, I had been to Daytona before but they both seemed to qualify better and run a little better. But they both had been to Phoenix before but I was faster in practice and qualified better than they did. Whatever they told me at Phoenix must have worked pretty good and whatever I told them at Daytona worked for them. I think we all bring a lot to the table because we can lean on each other for different aspects. I know if I am struggling with a little handling off the corner, Hailie is good with car control so I can talk to her about that. Maybe I am struggling with the speed element of it, which I would go to Tanner and talk to him about something like that. And Todd has more experience than all of us combined so far so we go to him to talk to him since he’s run the Truck Series and a handful of years in the (ARCA Menards Series East and West). And for Ford, as a group, I think we bring a good audience to them. We bring three different demographics. I bring the Level Cross crowd, Hailie brings the West Coast crowd, and Tanner brings the drag racers over into NASCAR. For Ford it’s been a really good partnership and they’ve brought a lot to the table and helped us a lot. I think we have fed back into them. I want to thank them for all they’ve been doing to fight this coronavirus. They’ve already made over a million face shields and they are on track to make more than 50,000 respirators by July fourth.
CK: When get ready to climb in the racecar and go to battle, do you have any pre-race rituals that you absolutely have to do before you rock and roll?
TM: There is something that I have to do, but it’s something I don’t do and that’s eat. I will eat a big breakfast the day of a race but I won’t eat after breakfast. Grandpa told me a story about how they were at Daytona testing and somebody had eaten and they hit the wall and when they hit they didn’t hit that hard but the food came back up and choked him. He tells me not to eat because of that and I don’t do it because he said it was just a little hit and everyone was waiting for him to come back to the pits and he never did because he choked on what he ate.
CK: We don’t want that to happen. So we talked about your teammates, Hailie Deegan, Tanner Gray and his younger brother Taylor who will be kicking off his career once we go back racing because he’s finally 15 and can come play with us now. That leads me to my final question then we’ll have one for you from Chandler Smith. So it’s two laps to go, you are running in second place. Hailie is right in front of you and you are on back bumper. What is the outcome of that final lap?
TM: If it’s two laps to go, I will try clean but on the last lap I will bump her enough to get her out of the way. At that point if she saves it, it’s a good race to the finish. I talked with Uncle Kyle about this after the whole Denny Hamlin/Chase Elliott thing at Martinsville. We both agreed it’s bullcrap to hit somebody getting into the corner because you take everything away from them. If I was going to bump and run I would do it center-off, probably in one and two so I could try to get away before she could get me back.
CK: Hailie has proven she is not afraid to use that bumper so if you are going to do it to her, you better give yourself some room because it will come back to you.
TM: Exactly. Hopefully that will be the outcome. I would be standing covered in Gatorade but I guess we will have to get down and see. I am sure we will have a few races when we are running up front once we get back going.
CK: The final question is Chandler Smith wants to know what you think of Panda Express.
TM: I love Panda Express. I think it’s a great place. I wonder why Chandler wanted to ask me that?
CK: Because he’s seventeen and he loves it!
I think Panda Express is awesome. If I am at the airport I make sure to eat that so everyone on the airplane loves me the whole time.
CK: Do you have a question for Hailie?
TM: I don’t know how Hailie ever went to school? Did she ever go to school?
CK: We’ll find out. She’s been a very busy young lady over the course of her brief time on this planet. We will ask her that one.
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