Q&A: What's Paul Menard been up to since he stepped away from NASCAR full time?

ELKHART LAKE – After 16 seasons in NASCAR, the final 13 of them in the premier Cup Series, Paul Menard stepped away at the end of the 2019 season.

Since then, the Eau Claire native — winner of the 2011 Brickyard 400 — has made only brief appearances around the racing scene.

Last year, that involved two Camping World Truck Series races, on the road courses at the Circuit of the Americas, where he finished 11th, and Watkins Glen, where he was eighth. This season, Menard has raced three times in Trans Am.

The most recent event, and probably his final one for 2022, came Saturday at Road America, where he finished second to Kaz Grala in the 100-mile Trans Am Series race that finished in the rain. Menard scored one of his three Xfinity Series races at the 4-mile track in 2015.

We caught up with him over the weekend.

You’re racing a partial Trans Am season? What’s the plan?

This is my third race with Showtime Motorsports. (Businessman/racer/car collector) Ken Thwaits owns the team. We did Sebring and we were really fast down there and had a mechanical issue. Then we went to Charlotte and won there. And here we are at Road America.

He wanted to put me in for another race (after Sebring and Charlotte). We talked about Lime Rock or somewhere like that. I’ve never been to Lime Rock. So then we were like, we’ve got to do Road America at least.

Have you been intentionally laying low as far as racing?

No. I’ve just tried to live my life. Got out of it. Made a decision. Got away from it.

The direction the sport was going, the way the rules were working, it wasn’t fun racing anymore. No sense being away from home 40 weeks a year with two little kids and not have fun driving the cars that they were. Now I get to race a few times a year, and these cars are blast to drive.

Is that, like, your perfect schedule? Three or four races a year?

I’m OK doing a few a year. I’d like to put a program together to do a full-time season next year. We may have some options there. Ken’s been real good to me with everything. Just trying to get the money and the people to do it right is what everybody’s trying to do. Everybody is fighting each other over that.

It’s a great series. I could run 11 races a year and be pretty happy, I think.

Have you done any ice racing? (That was where Menard got his start.)

I haven’t but I’ve been thinking a lot about it. You lay in bed at night on your phone or whenever you brainstorm and look at stuff, I’ve been looking at options to maybe build my own ice racer and run that a couple of times a year. Man, that’s a lot of fun, too.

Would you like to do any more NASCAR racing … like here?

I would run another NASCAR race here for sure. It’s one of the best tracks in the world. I love road racing.

To run a stock car at Kansas again with limited horsepower and all the aero … no. But coming to some of these tracks … I’d love to run Bristol again, one of the tracks that have character, where you have to drive the car. It’s a lot of fun. And Road America, these road races, are that.

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When you do this, just race a couple of races in a year, is there rust you have to knock off?

It’s been pretty good. I get in the car … we did two tests and this is our third race weekend. Every time I get in the car, it comes back pretty quick.

There’s some things that you take for granted. When you’re racing all the time, the way your body builds up muscle … especially ovals, you’re so offset to the left. Here it’s building up a little bit of core strength in these cars.

I always try to stay fit, so it’s good. But I notice it in my neck or my core strength, some of the things you miss out on not doing it all the time.

Is there anything you miss at all about the NASCAR schedule and everything that goes with it?

You kind of knew what your year looked like. Now the kids are out of school. What do we want to do? Go camping?

You have to make decisions a lot quicker, it seems like, where before it was planned out what your entire year looked like. You had one week here where you could go on vacation. You knew you had a Wednesday. Wednesdays are pretty open in that world. Mondays are meetings. Tuesdays are (used to) recover, Wednesdays are pretty open, like a day to go do something. Then Thursday’s a travel day.

Now it’s a brave new world out there. Now we have a new routine. So, like, when I leave if I go camping, or if I do a four-day whitetail deer hunt over the winter, it’s hard to be away for four days from my wife and kids. That’s changed. Before it used to be so routine. They’re used to you leaving. Now when you’re gone, it’s actually tough to do.

Both kids are in school?

Yeah. Now it’s summer break, so we drove up here from North Carolina and had a little road trip. I love a road trip. The kids behaved and we had a good time.

So you’re still in North Carolina. How involved are you in the business? (His father, John, founded the Menards home improvement chain.)

I’m involved. It’s tough with having kids in school and figuring out when’s the right time to move up here if we move up here. If everything’s right up here for us to do that. There’s a lot of variables.

So the family’s all good?

Life’s good. It is what you make of it.

Is this the last time you’re going to get out racing this year?

Last one planned. We might do another one. We’ve talked about it. We’re always talking to see if we can put something else together. Right now this is the last one.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Paul Menard discusses NASCAR, Trans Am after Cup Series retirement