Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Camping World RV Sales 500 (Talladega Superspeedway)
NSCS Friday Quotes
Friday, October 18, 2013
David Ragan, driver of the No. 34 Safecar.gov Ford Fusion, combined with teammate David Gilliland for a surprising finish in the spring race at Talladega. The win for Ragan was a game changer, not only for the driver but for the Front Row Motorsports organization. Ragan met with members of the media Friday morning to look back on that magical spring afternoon.
DAVID RAGAN, No. 34 Safecar.gov Ford Fusion – YOU RENEWED YOUR CONTRACT WITH FRONT ROW MOTORSPORTS FOR NEXT YEAR AND YOU KNOW HOW TO GET AROUND THIS RACE TRACK, JUST TALK A LITTLE ABOUT BOTH OF THOSE THINGS. “The Talladega races are always special. I am a NASCAR fan and I enjoy this style of racing and I enjoy coming here and being a part of the show. I am as big a fan as everyone so I will be sitting back watching the truck race on Saturday and having fun getting ready for the race on Sunday. We are excited to have that in our back pocket, David Gilliland and myself coming back to Front Row Motorsports next year. It is important to start as early as you can prepping for the 2014 season. I know a lot of the guys are getting cars ready for next year already. I know some of the NASCAR rule meetings have taken place and hopefully we get some of those rule changes out as soon as possible and as soon as this race is over I know our speedway cars will get stripped down and ready for Daytona. That process starts very quickly and the sooner we get our driver agreements done our teams can go ahead and start working on sponsorship agreements and other partnerships we have with our team and manufacturer. In order to be competitive out of the gate you need to start working on it as soon as possible. We were glad to get that done and we have gotten a lot better performance wise over the last year and a half in my time at Front Row Motorsports. It is a smaller team with a smaller budget compared to some of our counterparts but we have given a lot of effort and a lot of hard work and made a lot of gains. Hopefully we can keep the momentum going this off season and into next year and continue to have a good story to tell.”
YOU BROUGHT THE SAME RACE CAR BACK HERE THAT YOU WON WITH IN THE SPRING, THAT CAR KNOWS WHERE VICTORY LANE IS. “Yeah it does. I have been fortunate to drive some good race cars at the speedways. You have to have a car with speed. Handling doesn’t come into play a whole lot. You will hear on scanner chatter guys talking about the speed in the race car. With the restrictor plates trying to keep them under 200 mph it is all about getting the speed and being able to draft well. You have to work on the engine package and what I do behind the wheel is important but you can throw the handling out. If we have a car with speed that is able to draft well that doesn’t lose the draft and handles well in the middle of three or four-wide then we will have a shot to win. If we can just be there at the end, 500 miles is a long race here, hopefully we can be in contention with a handful of laps to go and then we will see what happens.”
WE ASKED YOU IN THE SPRING WHEN YOU WON HERE IF THAT WIN MIGHT ATTRACT MORE RESOURCES FOR YOUR TEAM. DID THAT TRANSLATE TO BETTER PREPERATION HERE? “I think that I am a little smarter coming into this race versus the spring race and from a monetary standpoint, financially we are a little stronger. Obviously SaferCar.gov is a safety initiative that the Department of Transportation and CSX aligned to promote safer vehicles, so having a sponsor on our race car is important. This deal had been in the works for a long time and they will be on our car again later this year but deals like that go a long way for a team like ours and its growth. We had Farm Rich products on our Ford that spring for the May race and it was a one race deal and they agreed to come back as a primary for another race this season and have tentatively agreed for some races next year. Certainly it jump started a few conversations and made some of our current partnerships stronger. We are still reaping some benefits of the win but after they drop the green flag on Sunday we will always be a past champion but not the defending race winner. We need to go and show that it wasn’t a fluke and be able to lead some laps and have a shot at another good finish.”
CONSIDERING THE ROULETTE WHEEL THAT THIS PLACE IS, WHAT WOULD YOU CONSIDER THE CHANCES THAT YOU AND DAVID GILLILAND COULD HOOK UP AGAIN? “I think the chances are not in our favor. You never know what may happen but I don’t think the chances for that perfect storm happening two consecutive races is probably not realistic. The chances of us both having a good day are realistic and you just never know. You have to control the things that you can control and if I can do that and David can do that with this team, we may be in that same situation again but we are certainly not counting on any situation like that to just come out of thin air late in the race.”
DO YOU STILL PLACE MORE EMPHASIS ON THE PLATE RACES AND MORE RESOURCES ON THOSE RACES THAN THE OTHERS? “We feel like we are at more of a level playing field when the draft is in play and everyone is in the same pack. We put more emphasis on the short tracks and road courses where we can be more competitive as a team. The tracks we struggle at are the 1.5 mile tracks were it takes a lot of resources to figure out your aero platform and how you are riding on your bump stops and research and design to kind of trick the system. The set of rules NASCAR has if you can figure out not necessarily how to beat the rules but how to use them to your advantage, that requires a lot of money, testing and people and that is somewhere we fall short at. You get to a speedway and Martinsville next week where you go back to the mechanical things that we all grew up racing and it is a little simpler and some of our best finishes this year have been at Bristol, Richmond the speedways and the road courses.”
THESE PLATE RACES BRING A LOT MORE DRIVERS INTO CONTENTION. DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT AND GOING FOR A WIN AND WHAT AFFECT IT COULD HAVE ON THE GUYS IN THE CHASE? “I think the folks that are in the Chase have to be a little more conservative because they have to get through this week without a 30th place finish, without a DNF. The guys not in the Chase can be a little more aggressive behind the wheel and our crew chiefs can take a few more chances on pit road, maybe stretch fuel mileage, maybe not take tires that last pit stop. Yes, we can be a little more aggressive but if you look at those three or four guys battling for the championship their track record here is pretty good. I think what we have learned with the Gen 6 car is that you can’t be so conservative throughout the day and just expect an easy move toward the front in the closing laps. You have to make the commitment to get to the front as soon as you can and you will see some harder racing throughout the day and trying to keep that track position. You just can’t improve your position as quick as you could four or five years ago. To answer your question, we can be a little more aggressive but everyone is racing for something, whether it be that 14th place in points to be the best of the rest or a top-25 or top-30. We all have a lot to lose.”
DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT IF YOU ARE AROUND THOSE GUYS? “Yeah, you think about it a little. You certainly don’t want to be that guy that makes a mistake and ruins their chances for a championship. At the same time, one race isn’t going to make or break their chances for a championship. You can look at other races and other performances they have had and get over it I guess. You do put that into consideration when you see those guys though and I am sure our spotters will do the same thing and try to give them some consideration on pit road. We will maybe let them make the first move and kind of go afterwards. You do pay attention to those top two or three guys.”
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE CHANGED WITH THE CAR TO MAKE IT BETTER NEXT YEAR? “I don’t really know all the questions, much less the answers. The first thing is you have to know the questions to figure out what to do. I was kind of out of touch this week and have been in Georgia all week so I don’t know what happened at the test at Charlotte. I think a representative of our team was there to kind of hang out. I think the biggest – and I wouldn’t even call it an issue because I think the racing that we have had at the 1.5 miles tracks have been really good this year and we have seen a lot of track records and these cars are certainly safer – the Gen 6 car has been everything and more of what we wanted it to be as an industry. If we could figure out how to tweak the 1.5 mile racing so that they cars aren’t so aero dependant and you can catch a car and pass them or move around, I think that is the biggest thing. The teams, NASCAR, Goodyear can all get in a little better circle and communicate better so we don’t have the issues like at Kansas with the temperatures and tires reacting like they did. I think if we can improve a few small issues like that it would be very good but the product we have is extremely great and better than we all expected for the first year of the Generation 6 car it has exceeded all expectations and has a lot of sped, a lot of track records, a lot of passes and a lot of racing. If we can work on that 1.5 mile package, maybe it requires a different package at those tracks, I don’t know what that is. I do know that with some testing and putting everyone’s thoughts together I am sure they can come up with something.”
WHY IS IT THAT GUYS CAN’T HANG AT THE BACK AND THEN TRANSITION TO FROM THE BACK TO THE FRONT AS THEY HAVE IN THE PAST? WE HAVE SEEN GUYS GET COMPLETELY HUNG OUT. WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE CAR AND HANDLING? “The cars are fast in the draft. You will probably see some 200 mph average speeds in practice today and I think that is one of the factors. As the speeds increase in the draft handling comes into play a little more but it is harder to ride in the back and stay on the back of the pack so to speak. In years past you could ride half throttle and you wouldn’t lose the draft. Now what we have learned with the Gen 6 car and I don’t know if it is the aero package or the rule with our intakes that allow the air to our radiator where we can’t run any tape, but you can’t ride that last car in the pack is very subject to lose the draft. You have seen some very strong cars, Denny Hamlin I recall and a couple of the faster cars in the spring lost the draft. You can’t be that last car. You often see the guys that do take that strategy and ride toward the back of the pack, they are all fighting and nobody wants to be the very last car. I think that creates a little bit of an issue. The cars, you can’t tandem up anymore because of the water temperature issues that you will have. You can’t make efficient passes very quick. The track is in great shape here and we can run three and four wide and sometimes there is just no room on the race track. Even if you have a great run, or have some momentum you can’t do anything with it because there is someone directly in your path. I think a combination of two or three of those things prevents guys from being conservative all day long. Then you have guys that changed their attitude over the last couple of years. I have been wrecked running in the top five and wrecked running 35th. I think we all have the attitude that we will all go out and race and try to stay up front as much as we can.”
COULD YOU SEE A TAPERED SPACER ON THE CAR AND HOW YOU BELIEVE THESE CARS WOULD REACT IF THAT WERE THE CASE? “I think if you put a tapered spacer on the car it would knock some horsepower out. I don’t know an exact number but you would have to imagine 100 horsepower or something like that. If you did that we would be flat out at these tracks. If you did that I think you would need to compensate and take a little down force away at the same time. I don’t know if you do that in splitter height or rear spoiler. If you take horsepower away you have to take down force away. I have been a big advocate that racing is better if the cars are easier to drive. If the cars are hard to drive we are on pins and needles and don’t take as many chances and we are just trying to race our race and not racing others. If you look at some of the tracks where you can move around, the tire combination is right, the cars are handling well and you can move from the top to the bottom and that is when the racing is best. In my opinion, I would like to see the cars lose a little horsepower and down force, slow them down just a hair and that would make for, in my opinion, a little better racing. There are so many different circumstances because every race track is different and tire combinations are different and surfaces are different so you aren’t going to have one small fix for every issue that you may have. You are going to have to have some that are track specific.”
HAS IT CHANGED YOUR MENTALITY BEHIND THE WHEEL? WAS IT MORE INTENSE IN THE SPRING? WOULD YOU EXPECT THAT SUNDAY? “Yea, I would expect that again and the temperatures are going to be cool here and the track will have a lot of grip. Every race we come back with a different generation car you learn more every single time. Even though we may be bringing the same car back we have a different strategy with front springs and shocks and how we will get the ride quality that I want. I think every car should be a little easier to drive and the drivers will be a little more comfortable with a race behind us. Our engineers and crew chiefs go through a long list of post race issues and I think the race will be very tight. I think that you are going to see a lot of guys that are not going to be passive and just cruise around. I know that we are going to have a little different strategy because you learn something every time. Caution histories play into how you will race the race and you look at all that stuff. I would say the race will be pretty tight and I don’t think you will have a lot of guys taking it easy so to speak until the end.”
SIX OF THE LAST SEVEN YEARS THERE HAS BEEN A MULTI-CAR CRASH IN THE LAST SEVEN LAPS OF THE RACE HERE. ARE YOU RESIGNED THAT IS JUST THE WAY IT IS? WHY CAN’T YOU GUYS GET THROUGH THE END WITHOUT CRASHING? “I know exactly the reason, it is because your intensity gets a little higher at the end and the finish is in the closing laps and you are frustrated and your anxiety is probably getting at you. It is a combination of things but the bottom line is it is go time. When it is 10 to go, you can hear the excitement in your spotter’s voice, your crew chiefs voice, nine to go, seven to go there is less give and take. On lap 100, I am going to give a guy an inch or two or trail the brake just to be on the conservative side but in the closing laps all you can think about is setting yourself up for the win and when they throw the white flag. You are going to be aggressive and when that starts to happen there is less give and take and accidents happen. I looked over some caution history this morning and I think 100-percent of the time in the last seven or eight races there is going to be a caution in the last 10 laps. I am not a big betting guy but I would bet for that to happen again this week. Hopefully you are in front of that accident or enough behind it where you clear it. You just never know where it is going to be or when it is going to happen.”
