Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Auto Club 400 (Auto Club Speedway)
Sunday, March 23, 2014
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 43 Farmland Ford Fusion – ON ACCIDENT WITH 33 CAR (BRIAN SCOTT) – “That’s the first chance I got to see the replay. It’s pretty obvious what happened. The 33 was obviously a dart without feathers and coming across the race track. He ran right into me. It’s a shame for our Farmland team, our Ford Fusion was getting a lot better. We didn’t start off the race like we had wanted to but got it a lot better. Man, he came from all the way at the bottom of the race track and ran into me. He’s not even racing this series for points. He’s out there having fun because his daddy gets to pay for it and he wrecked us. That’s frustrating.”
FORD FINISHING ORDER
10th Carl Edwards
26th Brad Keselowski
27th David Ragan
30th Marcos Ambrose
34th Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
38th David Gilliland
39th Joey Logano
40th Greg Biffle
43rd Aric Almirola
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Wurth Ford Fusion (Finished 26th) – “There were a lot of reasons why we blew a tire today or two or five over the weekend and the field did. I don’t know what to really say about it. As a driver you are left between the choice of driving your car to the limit and blowing a tire out or being a wuss and saving it. I saved it as best as I could and probably arguably was not following the 100-percent rule until the last run. That is what you had to do. It was the box we were all forced into today. I pushed it hard on the last run and I was one of at least three guys that blew a tire. It was really unfortunate. If I didn’t push the car hard I wasn’t going to have a good day. It was a matter of who blew it first. I was the second one to blow it but I didn’t blow a tire big enough to get a yellow.”
GOODYEAR WAS STILL SAYING IT WAS BECAUSE OF AIR PRESSURE AND AGGRESSIVE SETUP. “Yeah, well if air pressure was the issue then it is a pretty simple fix, you just enforce a minimum rule. If air pressure was the issue we would have blown this many tires last year because it is all the same air pressure settings as last year. If anything we were more conservative after the issues yesterday. I am not going to say it wasn’t a factor but at the end of the day you can’t add 500-600 pounds of down force to a race car along with a track that has bumps like you are on a freeway in Michigan. The tires just aren’t made for it. There is not enough margin in the cars and tires to do that and that is what we saw today.”
WHAT HAS TO HAPPEN NEXT? IS IT AS SIMPLE AS A TEST? WHERE DO THINGS GO FROM THIS POINT? “This tire didn’t have any margin. We have probably a half a dozen tires remaining that have no margin and I would expect similar issues through the season. No margin from last year and we have increased the demand significantly. If you are going to fix it you either have to change the margin on the tire or put the cars back to their configuration last year where they were less harsh on the tires.”
IN THE MEANTIME, WHEN YOU ARE IN THAT SITUATION ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE IT IN THE BACK OF YOUR MIND TO PEDAL A LITTLE LIKE YOU DID TODAY? “Yeah, we did pedal and I don’t like doing that. You aren’t supposed to do that by the rules right? That is the reality of the situation we were in today. On the last run I was glad we had a win under our belt and didn’t have to worry about if we were going to blow a tire or not. Thank God because we did.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 AAA Southern California Ford Fusion (Finished 39th) – “The first laps in the car we drove all the way up to third just tuning it in as we went. It was fast. I think we had a shot at winning this one. The last two weeks we had a shot at winning and had mechanical issues. Today it was the gear. I am pretty frustrated but at least we are fast. We have that going for us. We are fast enough to win these things. The last two weeks we came home 40th and 20th because of mechanical issues and that makes you frustrated as it should.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Ford EcoBoost Fusion (Finished 34th) – “We blew two tires, but honestly regardless of that it didn’t really matter. We were a 40th place car with tires blowing or not and that is where we finished. We were just awful today. We have to get a lot better.”
