Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Budweiser Duel #2 (Daytona International Speedway)
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Ford Finishing Order
10th – David Ragan
11th – Marcos Ambrose
13th – Aric Almirola
14th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
16th – Josh Wise
18th – Terry Labonte
19th – Michael McDowell
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Best Buy Ford Fusion – HOW WAS IT OUT THERE TODAY? “It was okay. I obviously made a mistake on pit road. I thought I hit the number right at the yellow line and obviously hit it a tick too early. That is the first time I have been caught speeding on pit road. We learned not to do that. As long as we don’t do that Sunday we will be okay. I think our Ford was fast enough to run up front. The balance could be an issue I feel like later on in the race but all in all I think it was all good.”
IS THIS WHAT WE WILL SEE ON SUNDAY? “I don’t know. It depends. I think with a 500 mile race everyone knows that it this race was 60 laps and you have to get to 55 and then go race. As race car drivers we get a little impatient if we do 30 laps of what we did today. We will see if it lasts for all 500 miles or not.”
MARCOS AMBROSE, No. 9 Stanley Ford Fusion –WHAT WAS THAT LIKE OUT THERE TODAY? “I am just really upset with myself. We didn’t know which tire was going down and I panicked. I called for four tires because I didn’t want to take the risk of ruining this car. We had speed in it and I am much happier with this car than I was with the shootout car so I feel a lot better going into Sunday than I did a couple of days ago, that is for sure.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – IS THE CAR BEING IN ONE PIECE A CONSOLATION PRIZE TODAY? “Yeah for sure. You never know what to expect when you come to Daytona. To leave here on Thursday night with your car in one piece is good but it wasn’t the showing we wanted. We wanted to be better than that but we made one mistake early in the race when I went to the bottom and that was pretty much it for us. It is like you have to be in line and riding around at the top. You cannot get stuck on the bottom, especially if you are the last car. That is tough but we learned some stuff there. I practiced coming on pit road and we gained quite a bit of time on pit road. All in all we will take some positives out of this and get ready for the Daytona 500.”
WHAT WILL WE SEE ON SUNDAY? “I think you will see some calm and some chaos. The cars drive okay but people are going to get antsy. It isn’t much fun riding around the top like that so people will get antsy and try to make moves and handling will come into play. We will just have to wait and see.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 34 Detail Doctor Ford Fusion – “It was pretty uneventful, which is a good thing. We would have liked to have had a shot for the win at the end, but the way the green-flag pit cycles worked out it just stretched the field out a lot and really didn’t have enough laps to get caught back up. But we learned little bit on what we’ve got to do on Sunday to have a good handling car, and we got to run through a fuel run and see how our tire wear was, so it was a solid race and we’ll learn from it. You always would have liked to have done better, but I’m happy for our Detail Doctor Front Row Motorsports team. We got all three cars into the 500 and there were no issues today, so that was good.”
ANY SURPRISES ON HOW THE CAR HANDLED TODAY IN THE DRAFT? “No, the cars handle pretty well, but it’s back to how the racing was in 2006 and 2007, in my opinion, before the first year of the COT in ’08. You’re just out there at everyone else’s mercy. You can’t do anything on your own. It was very hard to pass and you’ve just got to manage what line you’re in, who has the runs and who doesn’t. It’ll be a stretched out race, in my opinion, just because it’s easy to lose the draft. I think whoever has the best strategy and the best track position at the end is gonna be in good shape.”
JOSH WISE – No. 35 MDS Transport Ford Fusion – “It’s stressful going into it because you know anything can happen here at Daytona, so we just tried to keep ourselves in the position that we knew we needed to be in the whole race. We knew what we were racing against and what we needed to do, so the guys did a good job on pit road and Steven did a good job calling the race from the pit box and we got it done, so it’s just awesome. It’s really cool.”
YOU ENJOYED THE CHALLENGE OF QUALIFYING ON TIME LAST YEAR. HOW DID TODAY COMPARE TO THAT? “I didn’t like it going into that race because you feel like there’s a lot out of your control here. When you’re qualifying at tracks and it’s just you and the race track and your car, you feel like you’ve got a little bit of control what’s happening. Here, you’re relying on a lot of what happens around you. Luckily, everything went our way and we’re in the 500.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL – No. 98 K-LOVE Ford Fusion – “It’s kind of hard to really know what happened today. It was a single-file run for everybody. There wasn’t a lot of two-wide. Starting as far back as we did, it was easy to lose the draft. We weren’t even riding and we just lost the draft with four other cars, so I don’t know. It’s gonna be an interesting Daytona 500 when you get all the cars out there. There will be more turbulent air and you’re gonna have two-wide, and it should be easier to stay in the pack. When we did get one lap down and we got in the leader mix, we were right in the middle there, so you’ve got to have enough cars in front of you and enough behind you to stay going. The cars move around and they’re fun to drive, but, right there, it was a pretty calm race. Everybody just kind of stayed in line and not much happened.”
