Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Coke Zero 400 (Daytona International Speedway)
Saturday, July 6, 2013
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “It was a right-front. I don’t really know what it was. I really don’t think I ran anything over and in looking it over it looks like a shoulder failure to me. I don’t know why. I haven’t seen any tire issues out here. It was a big hit, but a bigger hit in the points, really. We’ll have to fix this thing up and put a new right-front suspension on and get back out there to try and gain a couple more spots if we can. It’s just a bummer. The Shell/Pennzoil team has done a great job all year gaining up some points. We’ll lose a lot here, but we’re not out of it by any means.”
DISAPPOINTING BUT THEY’LL GET YOU BACK OUT. “Yeah, it’s the whole right-front setup – rotors, spindles, you name it, it’s all bent. That was a big hit, but they’ll be able to bend some stuff back and put some suspension on it and get me another shot out there to gain a couple points if we can. It’s just very frustrating. I was tight the whole run, but we wouldn’t expect a tire failure here, so we’ll take a better look at the tire and see what happened.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 U.S. Air Force Ford Fusion – “They started to crash there in front of me and I was clear, but a couple of cars came from the top of the race track down in front of me and I got in a wreck. I was actually being really patient back there and was kind of minding my own business riding around right on the yellow line kind of expecting a crash, but hoping that I’d be out of harm’s way where I was at, but, unfortunately, I wasn’t.”
MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 9 Stanley Ford Fusion – WHAT HAPPENED DOWN THE STRETCH? “Jimmie got a little loose or he just didn’t see my move coming, and I split him coming off of two. He came down to check the spot and I was already there and he just bounced us straight into the 5. That’s plate racing. We’re all trying to win.”
DID YOU FEEL LIKE YOU WERE IN THE RIGHT POSITION? “If we hadn’t cut the tire down, we would have had the lead, so you can’t ask for much more than that.”
YOU WERE BEHIND KAHNE AND JOHNSON. WHAT WAS YOUR PLAN BEHIND THOSE TWO? “At that point I had the 15 pushing me really good and I just wanted to get him to keep pushing me and try to get rid of the 48 because he had been leading a lot of laps. I knew if I didn’t make a move then, it wouldn’t happen.”
SO A TIRE CUT DOWN? “Yeah, the left-rear tire got cut down when the 5 spun out. Jimmie pushed me down to the 5 and pushed the fender on the tire.”
SO JIMMIE KIND OF MOVED DOWN? “Yeah, he moved down off the wall and ran into me and then I moved to try to get away from him a little bit and just pushed me straight into the 5.”
SO WAS YOUR INTENT TO COME UP THE MIDDLE AND SPLIT THE 48 AND 5 AND HAVE THE 15 PUSH YOU? “That’s it.”
CASEY MEARS – No. 13 Geico Ford Fusion – “It was OK, but we should have been better. That second-to-last restart we restarted eighth and the 15 laid way back on the restart and had a huge run. There were three lanes open. The bottom lane moved to the bottom and I had like three lanes to try to block and he had a run and got to the inside of us and we dropped all the way to the back. But we had a really big run there at the end and picked the right lane and got through a bunch of guys, so that’s not the way we wanted to finish because we were sitting in the catbird’s seat there, where I thought we could have had a chance to win this thing, but we rallied back for a decent day.” THE LAST 20-30 LAPS SEEMED TO BE A DIFFERENT RACE. “Yeah, the night race really helps this place a lot because in the spring when we ran during the day there wasn’t enough grip to really form a bottom line. With it cooling off and having more grip, the bottom lane seemed like the place to be today for the most part and that made it better.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – HOW WOULD YOU SUM UP TONIGHT? “Crazy. I tell you, it was wild out there. We had really good track position running up front and then that caution came out on that pit cycle and got us to the back and we were just stuck back there. So I decided to stay back there for a little bit while I was there and then we started working our way up and got hit off of turn four and knocked the toe out. We struggled with speed a little bit the rest of the night, but we kept digging and got up there. I think we finished 16th, but didn’t get hurt bad in the points and made it through Daytona. We didn’t end up hitting the wall or anything like that, so we’re good.”
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – YOU SEEMED TO BE IN GOOD POSITION ON THE FINAL RESTART. “Up to the white flag I thought we had shot at that thing with the 2 car pushing us. We had the top with open track ahead of us and the 17 got in there somehow to our left-rear and got us completely sideways. I thought we were crashed, so luckily we didn’t tear it up and finish that one early, but it wasn’t the finish we were looking for with that strong of a car. We ran in the top 10 all day and could drive to the front, but we just didn’t get a good finish. I had fun today. It was actually a fun restrictor plate race, but I wish we could have kept that momentum on the top with the 2 car and got to the front.”
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion – “We’re happy, but a little disappointed. We were there. We were definitely in contention there at the end and had a good run on the last lap coming off turn two, so I felt like we were in contention to win right there, for sure. Kurt and I had a good run on the outside and came up a little short because we ran out of help. But I’m proud of my guys and proud of our effort. I’m happy and overall it was a good day for us.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Fifth Third Bank Ford Fusion – POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE — “I felt really happy about that. It’s good to finally get a top 10. We’ve been working all year long and we’ve got a couple of 11ths and 12ths and it was good to break that barrier and now it’s buy one get one free at Best Buy this week, so now we give the fans a little something to celebrate this week. Hopefully, we can keep this going.”
WHAT HAPPENED ON THE FINAL LAP? “I had one to the inside of me. I thought I was gonna get shuffled back to about 15th there, and I saw the 88 form a line up top in the mirror and I saw the 10 was with him and had some good cars pushing him, so I thought they were all gonna get by me. Then all of a sudden a few of them got turned down the race track and I think the 10 got spun right in front of me and then all of a sudden we ended up across the finish line and nobody was in front of us, so it was a crazy finish. I thought the racing was a lot better this go-around compared to the 500. It seemed like everybody was racing really hard and a lot of side-by-side racing, which these fans deserve to see, and I’m just excited about our top 10.”
