Ford Racing NNS Notes & Quotes:
History 300 (Charlotte Motor Speedway)
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Ford Finishing Order:
3rd – Joey Logano
6th – Trevor Bayne
12th – Sam Hornish Jr.
17th – Michael Annett
25th – Steve Wallace
33rd – Travis Pastrana
38th – Chris Buescher
TRAVIS PASTRANA – No. 60 Roush Fenway Racing Ford Mustang – “My pride hurts more than anything. I felt like we had a really good car. The guys gave me a good car. I obviously slipped and spun out in qualifying and then we were starting out loose at the start of every run, but it would get better and better at the end. I felt like we had a great car. All of the guys really worked hard on it and it’s just really disappointing. We knew we had to be in front of Nelson there for the lucky dog and I didn’t want to be the one that caused it, but I just ran out of talent there.”
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 6 Pillow Pets Ford Mustang – “I wish I could have given Mike Kelley a little bit more information at the beginning to make that adjustment we did with about two runs to go because the car really came to life. We kind of stayed around 14th there and then we made those changes and it became a top-three car. We just needed track position. We’ve got to figure out how to qualify better and then go from there, but after the weeks we’ve had this feels about as good as a top-three or a win. You’ve got to walk before you can run, which is what one of my guys just said, so we’re getting stronger this year. We’ll just keep digging.”
MICHAEL ANNETT – No. 43 EFS Ford Mustang – “It was definitely an adventurous race back. I got out and looked at the car and it seems like every corner of it is hit. I got in a three-wide situation there with Sam and lost quite a few spots. I had to overcome a speeding penalty early on, which is my fault, and that just made our day long with where we qualified, so I didn’t do anything to help myself today. But the car came home in one piece. We ran all the laps and got a top-20. It’s not what we wanted, but something we can go off of.”
SO THIS RACE TESTED YOU WELL IN ALL FACETS? “Definitely. Some of the tests I wish we didn’t have to do and I know we’d have a better finish, but I’ve never been a good qualifier, so I figured sitting on the couch for six months wasn’t going to be a magic snap of the fingers. Still, I’m happy with our run today and, like I said, able to roll in here and take the checkered and go on to Dover.”
WERE THE RESTARTS A HANDFUL FOR EVERYBODY? “I don’t really know what the deal was. I think there were a lot of guys on different tire cycles. I know we were. There was one time we started up in eighth and within two laps were 13th because of the guys taking new tires behind us, but it was hard to move forward and hard to pass. I think on restarts everyone was trying to get as much as they could and sometimes you make mistakes or be a little too aggressive and that causes some accidents.”
HOW ARE YOU FEELING? “I feel great, honestly. I was telling someone else that the only thing I really felt was my neck. You definitely realize there are muscles you only use when you’re in a race car and you can’t really train for it. My neck was a little bit sore, but if that’s the only things that’s sore, it’s an easy fix.”
WERE THE LONGER GREEN FLAG RUNS HARDER TO DEAL WITH? “No, the green flag runs were good because that’s when our car was the best. As long as your car is handling well, if your back hurts or your neck hurts, you’re feeling fine. We enjoyed the long green flag runs. I was able to do the treadmill coming out of the hospital, so my conditioning was there, but there are some muscles that you use in a race car that you can’t train for.”
HOW HARD WAS THE TRAINING TO COME BACK? “I actually wasn’t even allowed to do any weights until about two weeks ago and even then they said we were gonna start doing physical therapy and I was going to be in the gym. I’m used to going and maxing out on the bench press and they went over to the weight rack and grabbed the little girl pink weights that are like two pounds and brought them over. I was like, ‘What are we even doing here?’ But you do 30 reps of those and you’re tired, so it was stuff like that and working my way up. Today, I felt like I just got out of the car after Homestead last year.”
SAM HORNISH JR. – No. 12 Snap-on Ford Mustang – “The green-flag pit stop we got with about 60 to go we went the wrong way on our adjustments. We were too free to feel like I could do anything or even just sometimes hold some of those guys off. We were able to get the lead and I went down into one and the back end swung way out on me and I got lucky that we weren’t taking it to the garage at that point. The Snap-on Ford Mustang was good, but we just weren’t good at the right now. We needed to keep going in the right direction, but we took a step backward and got ourselves back in the pack. I got stuck on the inside and the restarts were nuts – three or four-wide with people throwing it down in the corner – but I had some fun today, I just wish we could have got a better finish.”
WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE 3 AND 43? YOU HAD A NICE SAVE THERE. “The 18 got into us and Matt came over and said he was as low as he could go. I knew he was down there, but I didn’t expect to get bumped. I got lucky that we didn’t end up in the wall, but that’s exactly what I’m talking about. The restarts were tough going and we got lucky and kept ourselves out of the fray for three-quarters of the race, and then we put ourselves in it for the last 25 laps. We’ve just got to be better than that. We’ve got to make better adjustments and we’ve got to be on the same page. It was simple miscommunication. I said one thing and Greg thought it meant something else, so he went back on an adjustment and just freed our car way up.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – PRESS CONFERENCE – LEARN ANYTHING FOR TOMORROW? “We can definitely apply some things, but, really, the 600 tomorrow the sun is gonna be going down and the race will be starting around right now, so it will be a way different race than what you saw today. But today I felt like our Discount Tire Ford was a third-place car. We started at the beginning of the race and moved up. We had a flat tire and we dropped way back, and then from there we were just trying to fight our way forward and it was tough to pass today. I’m a little confused why last year we really ran the high lane in three and four. We were right up against the wall and we really couldn’t get that going. I tried a few times and I just really couldn’t get it going and get it cleaned off enough to get up there, and I don’t know why. It’s like it’s a different tire or something is different that’s not allowing us to go up there and I’m not really sure what it is because you don’t see the Cup cars up there either, which is a little odd to me. But I thought my guys did a good job on fighting forward after our flat tire and we slowly but surely got there and we made the most out of our day. I feel like we had a third-place car and we finished third. We’ve got to do something to beat that Kyle Busch guy because he’s pretty good. We’ve got to do something about that and we’re gonna keep working hard at Penske Racing and try to get this 12 and 22 car up there.”
HOW FAR DID THAT ADJUSTMENT ON THE FIRST STOP TAKE YOU THE WRONG WAY AND HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO GET BACK FROM THAT? “Not at all, actually. I was pretty free on top of the flat tire. I think we went three-and-a-half rounds down on the track bar and a few pounds of air-pressure and trying to tighten the thing up, and then once we realized that I’m like, ‘We could be in trouble,’ but I was still loose the next run. We just had a really loose race car and it really wasn’t until the last pit stop that we got the car tightened up enough, so maybe it worked in our favor a little bit besides losing all the track position.”
WHAT’S THE ANSWER TO BEATING KYLE BUSCH? “Do you have any ideas?”
IS IT THE COMBINATION OF CAR AND DRIVER OR COULD ANYONE DO WHAT HE’S DOING? “No, I don’t think Joe Blow is gonna step in any car out here and beat anybody. These guys are good. Everybody out there on this race track is obviously some kind of driver to be here, so that’s not gonna happen. But I think you’ve got a great combination. You have a great team there – guys I’ve worked with the last six years or so – so I know they’re a good team and I know Kyle Busch is a good driver. You put all of that together and you’re gonna have one heck of a deal trying to beat these guys. We’ve just got to go back and work harder than them. I know they work hard and I know we’ve got to work harder than that even.”
