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[/media-credit]FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES
Royal Purple 300
March 24, 2012 California Speedway
Ford Finishing Order:
2nd – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
11th – Michael Annett
14th – Trevor Bayne
23rd – Joey Gase
36th – Tim Andrews
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing 25th Anniversary Ford Mustang – “It was a great day. It was a fun day. The race track was really racy. It’s just a bummer that we ended up two spots short, but I’ve got to thank all the guys for working hard on this. All of the fans for coming out, we really appreciate that. I hope we put on a good show and look forward to coming back next year.”
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 60 Ford EcoBoost Ford Mustang – “We took our tires early trying to gain some track position because we were like a 10th-place car all day. I thought we had a shot at an easy top-three there if it would have stayed green, but when the 41 spun out and brought out the caution we just didn’t have any tires left, so we had to put on two right sides that were scuffs. At that point, we had our bed kind of made already and it cost us a lot of spots there at the end. I hate it because I really think we had a good shot there at the end to at least be a top-three finisher after a long day with that four-tire stop early. It was a good gamble, but it just didn’t pay off this time.”
MICHAEL ANNETT – No. 43 Pilot/Flying J Ford Mustang – “It’s just really hard to pass here. Even if your car works really well on the bottom, the guy on the top is gonna have the momentum and you just drag race every lap and flip-flop going in the corner. Before that final restart we were right around 10th and I thought, if anything, we were gonna go forward from there and we weren’t gonna go backwards. Then the caution came out and all day we didn’t take off like we needed to on restarts, so I knew we would probably lose two or three on the restart and then get those back. We got them back pretty quick, but trying to run down the 33 for a top-10 I used up the tires early in the run. He was running the top and momentum prevailed, but, all in all, it’s a good day. We’ve got another car without a scratch on it, so we’ve got two weeks and a stable of cars that we’ve run already that we can work on and make better. We put this program together so quick that we haven’t had a chance to really sit back and do things exactly like we want. We’re close, but not exactly how we want, so we’ve got two weeks to get everything right and be a better team at Texas.”
YOU’VE BEEN A TOP 15 CAR SO FAR THIS YEAR. “Exactly. The first race, besides Daytona was a top 10 and then we had a 13th and two 11th’s, so we’re right there. This series is so tough though that ‘right there’ is not much. It doesn’t take much to go back two spots, so it’s tough to gain that little bit but we have the resources and everything at our finger tips to get the job done.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. PRESS CONFERENCE – “It was a lot of fun. The first run we were too tight and then got it too loose there for the rest of the race, but it was interesting. It was a lot of fun, a lot of three- and four-wide racing. The restarts were pretty fun, especially that last one with a couple guys up there with no tires, so, hopefully, we put on a good show for the fans and hopefully they’ll start coming out a little more.”
IS THIS A TYPICAL NNS RACE HERE? “I think so. This race last year was really exciting also with four of us battling for the lead last year. We ended up fourth and I know the Cup race proved to be a really good one last year, so I feel like this is an exciting race track for the fans to watch.”
