Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
STP Gas Booster 500 Advance (Martinsville Speedway)
Friday, April 5, 2013
BRAD KESELOWSKI PRESS CONFERENCE
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – “I think we’ve had OK speed since we’ve been here. I was hoping for a little bit more and I’m optimistic we can find it come Sunday. It’s been a solid year so far and I think everybody that follows the sport on a regular basis knows how I feel about all that stuff, so I’m just anxious to get a win early in the year and I feel like Martinsville is a good place to do that. We might not have the best stats here, but I feel like we’ve found some things over the off-season to really help our performance here and I’m really curious how they’ll apply when it counts most during the race.”
DO YOU THINK IT’S GOOD FOR THE SPORT THAT DALE IS THE POINTS LEADER RIGHT NOW? “It doesn’t hurt, yeah. I’d feel better if it was me. We’ve been spending a little time together lately. We’ve got this Madden League we’re playing in and I offered to trade him parking spots for the points lead and I think he was almost ready to take it, but it is good for him. I think his team shows every year that they really come out of the gate strong and this year is no exception. That’s not bad for anyone. I like to think of him as a friend of mine and I’m happy for him to be able to do that, but certainly I want to beat him. It’s been kind of interesting to see how our relationship has changed in some ways and stayed the same in others over the last few years. I’ve gone from driving for him to driving with him to driving against him and all those things, so I think it’s been really good for me personally and really rewarding for me personally to see him in a happy spot that he is. He’s got a lot of stuff going on and leading points and making potato chips and all that stuff, so he’s got a lot going on and he’s having success in all of it, so good for him.”
YOU’VE BEEN IN THE SITUATION JOEY IS SO WHEN YOU’RE IN MIDDLE OF IT DO YOU THINK IT’S AS GOOD FOR THE SPORT WHEN YOU’RE ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN, AND WHAT DID YOU PASS ON TO JOEY? “I think as far as good for the sport every situation is different. As long as it doesn’t turn bloodthirsty it’s great for the sport, and that’s difficult to define when it has and hasn’t done that. I think I probably had a little more experience with that than I’d like to have, but as far as Joey is concerned I think it’s typically old guard, new guard thing. Joey is trying to establish himself as an elite driver in this sport and trying to join that rank, whether that’s the top 12 that make the Chase or those that are capable of contending for race wins year-in and year-out. Certainly, there’s gonna be resistance to that and he’s gonna have to fight through that. I think it’s a real test of character for him and if he can get through this test with saying all the right things and doing all the right things – biting your tongue even though you know you’re right – if he can get through that test, I think he can graduate into an elite level. He’s being provided that chance by having competitive cars that can win races week-in and week-out because, let’s face it, if what happened at California happened with him running 10th, we probably wouldn’t be talking about it as much. The same thing at Bristol. I’m sure some people would be talking about it, but not as much. It has to do with how competitive you are. Rivalries are only good when it’s between guys that are in the front of the pack, so, in some ways, even though he might not see it now, I look back on it for me personally and think that the experiences I went through were really something to be proud of because you knew at that moment those people that are mad at you are mad at you because they’re fighting for their livelihood just like you are and you are now considered a serious threat to them and they know it. That’s why they get mad over those things. I think that’s the tipping point when you want to be mad at someone or thinking about being mad at someone over something because there’s always a moment in a race where a driver is gonna do something that you don’t quite agree with, but it’s those moments when you’re competing for the ultimate glory to win a race or have a great finish or a points lead, etc., it’s those moments when you feel like you have that opportunity and someone makes it hard on you that really stick out and kind of drive you over the edge and make you really angry. So, in some ways, he should be proud of the fact that he’s made a few people angry. It would be like if somebody came in and was a brand new sports writer and wrote some bad ass articles, you would probably be threatened too. That’s where Joey is at. He’s running some good races. He’s got a great team and he’s got a chance to really stand out. I don’t know if that’s necessarily been the case before this year.”
IS IT POSSIBLE TO DRIVE DEFENSIVELY THE LAST FEW LAPS OF THIS RACE? “You can always drive defensively almost everywhere you go. It’s harder the larger the pace discrepancy is and Martinsville with the new tires vs. old tires that I think we saw last spring, that discrepancy is so big that it’s extremely difficult. You don’t have the advantage of clean air. You’re trying to overcome pure mechanical grip vs. mechanical grip and this tire has so much fall-off that that’s very hard to do, which I personally like that, but I think, to answer your question, it’s a tough track to drive defensively if there is one, yes. It’s probably the toughest. Maybe Sonoma would be right there with it – Atlanta – but I think that’s not a bad thing. It makes it certainly more compelling to watch when you have speed discrepancies through the field. I think you saw a lot of that two weeks ago at California and that’s part of why the race was so compelling.”
WHY HAVE YOU GOTTEN OUT OF THE GATE SO STRONG THIS YEAR? “If you’re asking about motivation, I think you’re asking two questions there – one about motivation and what specifically stands out this year. Motivation for us, we certainly don’t want to be a one and done team. I think you look at the great teams, and I’m reminded of this quote by Mark Martin when he talked about winning his first race which was at Rockingham. He talked about one is great, but you haven’t really made it until you’ve won two. That was race wins, but I feel very similar about that as it pertains to championships, and I think a lot of people on my team feel that way and that’s our motivation. Not to say that we would want to win two and then call it quits, but I think you have different things that motivate you throughout your career and I think that’s our team’s motivation is to be able to become an elite team and somewhat of a dynasty I guess would be the proper word for it, and in order to have a chance to do that, you have to win more than one. That’s not to take anything away from winning one because that’s a very special accomplishment, but it sure would feel irresponsible to give up on it and not have that drive. I think, if anything, winning a championship makes us more dangerous because it gives us that much more confidence and an ability to self-motivate like I just talked about, so you have the benefit of wisdom with some of the ideals of youth. I think that makes us a really strong team, but as far as our cars and why I think our performance is a little higher this year than where it was at the same time last year beyond the actual experience we have as a team, we just have more speed. I think our team is one of the best in the garage at executing a race, whether it be strategy or – knock on wood – equipment failures and so forth. My guys do a great job with that and then from there it’s just a matter of having speed and me not screwing it up. We’ve had a little bit more speed at this time than we’ve ever had and that’s very encouraging and I think if we can find a little bit more, we could go on a tear and win a bunch of races. I know that’s what we’re committed to doing. Everything in this sport is based around speed. That’s your basic building block and from there you have to execute and do all those other things right. We’ve had great execution as a team for the last 16-18 months. Give us some speed and look out.”
DO YOU FEEL JOEY IS TRYING TO PROVE HIMSELF AND THAT’S WHY HE’S RACING THE WAY HE HAS? HAVE YOU GIVEN HIM ANY ADVICE? “The biggest thing I’ve seen, I don’t see him racing any different I just see him racing closer to the front. That’s honestly the only thing I see. He, no different than any other race car driver, has had run-ins, but they haven’t been as notable because they weren’t as close to the front. The closer you get to the front, the more the microscope is and people start to remember your run-ins, so I don’t personally feel like I’ve seen a difference there.”
IS IT DIFFERENT RACING IN THE TOP FIVE AS OPPOSED TO BACK IN THE PACK? “Yeah, absolutely. The closer you get to the front the style definitely changes. I feel like it’s almost like an unwritten rule, you’re like when you get towards the front everybody is like, ‘Look, we’ve all got good cars. Don’t screw this up. Don’t screw up my day and I won’t screw up your day,’ at least for the majority of the race. As far as that unwritten rule, I personally feel like that changes when it comes to the final segment of the race and then it becomes time to get down and dirty. I support more than anything else. I tell him to just keep digging and keep going and don’t let it get to you. I don’t know if that’s necessarily advice. I think the best thing I can do is give him support. If it’s meant to be for him, it’s meant to be and he’ll figure it out, but the biggest thing I feel like I can do is support him.”
ARE THERE TIMES WHEN YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE A FACE-TO-FACE TALK WITH ANOTHER DRIVER AFTER AN INCIDENT OR IS IT BETTER TO DO THAT AND GET IT OVER WITH? “Every situation is different. If there was an issue between Joey and Tony, Tony obviously didn’t give him much of a chance to settle it by himself, so I’m not sure how to answer that one (laughing). I think every situation is different. It’s easy to bench race it and say how I would have handled it, but everybody is different and has their own style. It would be terrible if we were all the same, wouldn’t it? So to imply that every driver should handle the situation this way, that really sounds kind of asinine to me because that would be boring as hell to watch, it would be boring as hell to do. There are going to be different styles and different approaches. For them (guys like Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Burton) that’s the way they like to handle those things and I don’t disagree with it, it’s just theirs and let it be theirs and let Joey be him.”
HAVE YOU TRIED TALKING TO DRIVERS THAT WAY? “I’ve tried to. I’m not gonna get specific about different people, but I’ve tried to and usually I don’t have much luck with that. If I do, I don’t know I’m having luck with it. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory as a driver. When you know what’s going on, if you’ve seen something happen, you know when it was an accident and when it wasn’t. Even if you’re the guy who gets taken out or on the bad end of it, if it’s not a take-out. You know what’s true and what’s not, what’s intentional and what’s not, so at least in my heart it’s self-policing in that way, but if it makes people feel better to get a pat on the back and a shallow ‘I’m sorry,’ then more power to them. I don’t believe in saying sorry. I don’t believe in really saying thank you that much other than certain situations. I believe in doing sorry and I believe in doing thank you, which is completely different. Doing thank you is whether it’s paying it forward or however you want to look at it. That’s doing a thank you, or doing sorry is making it right somewhere down the road. I guess I’ve seen a lot, more than I’d like to see in this sport, of people that just say ‘sorry’ or what-not just to check the box. I don’t really think that means anything. It doesn’t to me.”
DO YOU FEEL JOEY FINDS HIMSELF IN A SIMILAR SITUATION AS YOU EARLY IN YOUR CAREER WHEN YOU SAID YOU WEREN’T GOING TO CHANGE YOUR DRIVING STYLE? “Yeah, I don’t want to overstate my position and tell him he’s exactly where he was, that young kid, but I think there are a lot of parallels. I’m glad to not be in those shoes, I can tell you that. They’re a set of shoes that most every driver has to go through to break through and not all of them do. If you allow someone to change you in that process, you’re not gonna make it because everyone is just gonna keep trying to change you until you become who they want, and who they want is someone that they can easily beat. That’s who they want. You ask any race car driver questions of that sort and they’re always gonna speak of how they want drivers, and they name all the characteristics, whether it’s cars, whatever it might be, they want things that make them the most competitive, so if you allow them to label who you are, they’re gonna make you not competitive. That’s just basic psychology of a race car driver, so you have to be true to what you think is the best and certainly that’s what Joey has done and that’s a reflection of the things he’s become.”
WHAT SLOWED YOU DOWN IN INSPECTION? “I’m not exactly what slowed us down in the inspection line. I went right from there to here, so I didn’t get into too many questions. I was actually trying to avoid asking that question from my team so I could just focus on the task at hand, which was qualifying the car. You could see the looks on people’s faces and get a pretty good judge as to how close you are on those things, and I didn’t feel that great about it (as far as the five-minute clock). I think NASCAR realizes there are some new tech procedures and since the start of the season there has been a little more tolerance than what we’ve seen maybe when we had cars with long development cycles – whether it was the COT car or whatever car was before that – 4, 5, 3, 2 – I don’t know which car was before it. But I think if you look at those processes when a new car comes out, there is maybe a little more tolerance for those things and thankfully there was for us today. The onus is on us to make sure as we move forward that we don’t continue to push our luck on that, and I think that’s what NASCAR is hoping for as well and asking for, and that’s a reasonable request.”
WILL YOU BE WATCHING MICHIGAN TOMORROW NIGHT IN THE FINAL FOUR? “Yes, I will. I’ll be wearing my maize and blue sweatshirt and pretending like I know something about basketball, which I don’t.”
ANY IDEA WHY IT HAS BEEN 11 YEARS SINCE FORD HAS WON A CUP RACE AT MARTINSVILLE? IS IT BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T HAVE YOU? “ (Laughing) I like that because now I don’t come off as cocky. I get that all the time, ‘Boy, you sure are cocky,’ and I’m like, ‘What does that mean?’ That’s a good question. I don’t know. I think the Ford package, for whatever reason, has migrated to being strong on the mile-and-a-halfs, and over the last few years specifically, on the speedways. That kind of, I think, escaped us as a Ford camp this year as far as the speedway stuff, which is a little bit unfortunate because I felt like Fords had a pretty big advantage before this year on the speedways and, sure enough, I came in right when they lost it. I think it comes from direction and point of emphasis. Certainly Martinsville has been a point of emphasis specifically for the Hendrick group and I think to some extent for the Gibbs group with what this track means to Hendrick Motorsports and with what it means I would say specifically to Denny Hamlin that’s probably steered the direction in that sense. I think there are other tracks that you look at that are more important to the Ford camp, I guess I would point out maybe Michigan. I look at them as having dominated at that track and that’s interesting how that works over time, for sure, because I look at those tracks and say, ‘Man, it’s almost like you need different makes,’ but I think it’s probably more a reflection over the focus of the team side more than the manufacturer side. For Ford, in particular, until this year their only real major factory-supported team was Roush and the Roush satellite teams, which put them in a position to be tied directly into their team’s focus more so than maybe their manufacturer’s focus. Hopefully, this year we can do both and I think that’s very possible. We’re a lot faster here than we were last year at this time in practice, and we seem to have a way to find that extra little bit of speed when the race comes around, and if we can do that based off last year where we qualified in the back and found our way toward the front by the end of the race, if we can just find that extra little bit, I honestly think we can win here. I think both Penske cars have been very, very strong in testing and all those things that we’ve done to prepare for here. It may not have shown exactly what we wanted to in qualifying, but I sure wouldn’t write us off come Sunday.”
