Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge (Texas Motor Speedway)
NNS Saturday Post Race Quotes
Saturday, November 2, 2013
SAM HORNISH JR. POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE
SAM HORNISH JR., No. 12 Wurth Ford Mustang – THIRD PLACE FINISHER – TALK ABOUT THE MOMENTUM YOU TAKE FROM A STRONG RUN TODAY. “It is a real good run to come back from being a lap down. It was a good strategy call to get us the wave around and we had to start at the back and then when we came down pit road the yellow came out and we had to go to the back of the lead lap cars. I am really proud of all the guys at Penske Racing and the work that they do, not only on the race cars but on the setups and things like that. I tried to stay calm and work my way back up there. We over tightened the car up when we got back to the very end and it just didn’t happen. I didn’t have anything for Brad or Denny at the end. We had an opportunity to make it three wide for the lead there but I thought better of it.”
DID YOU CUT ENOUGH OF THE LEAD TODAY TO INCREASE YOUR CONFIDENCE THAT YOU CAN CATCH AUSTIN? “We did what we could do. We took care of ourselves. We had a decent run. We came back when it didn’t look like we would gain points for quite a bit of the race. I was thinking that we would gain three today. But then I didn’t realize that he led a lap. I thought that we were going to chunk three off at a time. I am really looking forward to going to Phoenix. I love that track and have a lot of good memories there. We will see what happens. We didn’t lose any and that is the key thing. If we can take one or two off the following weekend that puts the pressure on him. He doesn’t just have to finish within a couple spots of us then, he will have to beat us.”
DID YOU THINK THIS WAS A PLACE YOU COULD GAIN GROUND ON AUSTIN COMING IN AND WITH YOUR PERFORMANCE THIS SEASON HAVE YOU FIELDED ANY CALLS FOR 2014? “I didn’t know if we were going to be able to do much here as far as being able to capitalize. Austin has been pretty good on the 1.5 mile tracks, especially the bumpier ones like here and Atlanta and Kentucky as well. Really, for most of the last 12 or 13 races we have ran within two or three spots of each other for almost the entire race. I might be two or three behind him and then it switches around. It seems like I have been around the 3 car a lot the second half of the season. I feel like coming into the race I feel like I can generally be racing around him for the majority of the race. As far as next year goes, I have talked to just about anybody that will talk to me and the unfortunate thing is that there are still a lot of people that by the time I knew what was going on it was late for a lot of things and then the people that still have stuff open are looking for money to be able to fill it. That is kind of a different thing.”
ANY INTEREST OUTSIDE OF NASCAR? “For me, not at this point in time. I came over here because I wanted to be successful at this and this is what I wanted to do. I don’t have any interest in going back to Indy Car at this point in time. For me it is really about how to try to make this work. I have tried to sit down and justify a lot of things in my mind and the one thing that keeps coming up to me is what is going to further my career. Maybe I don’t find something full time for next year but I would rather be in something that at least I could run a couple races here and there and be competitive and work hard to figure out how to be back full time in 2015 as opposed to get in something that I don’t have any chance of winning and a good day would be 15th.”
