Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Southern 500 (Darlington Raceway)
Friday, April 11, 2014
FORD CUP QUALIFYING RESULTS
2nd Joey Logano
3rd Aric Almirola
4th Marcos Ambrose
5th Brad Keselowski
19th Greg Biffle
21st Carl Edwards
27th David Gilliland
28th Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
32nd David Ragan
MARCOS AMBROSE, No. 9 DeWalt Ford Fusion – Qualified 4th
“We will take that. It was a really strong effort for RPM. I was just told it was a record for RPM’s starting positions for both myself and Aric. We are really thrilled with that. I thought we had a shot at the pole there for a minute, it just got a little slick. It got a little loose there for a bit and that probably cost us, but overall it is a great day for us and for RPM.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – Qualified 5th
“We were really good in race trim all day today. We have some work to do in qualifying trim because we weren’t where we wanted to be but by the very end we got close. It was a lot of hard work and kind of a never give up attitude today and if that is the work we are going to get I am proud of that.”
GREG BIFFLE, No. 16 3M/Red Cross Ford Fusion – Qualified 19th
“We were too tight and then too loose. We just never hit it right on the money. My first run of the second session I was just too tight and had to come out of the gas down there and had to wait on it a little longer down here to get back to the gas and then we over adjusted and were too loose. That is just the way it goes.”
CARL EDWARDS, No. 99 Ford EcoBoost Fusion – Qualified 21st
“I love this place and so it is tough to not be able to get the car to do what we want it to do. Jimmy Fennig and all the guys have been working really hard we have just been struggling at a couple different spots on the race track all day. I am proud to be driving the Ford EcoBoost Fusion and it is really cool of Ford to put the EcoBoost name on the car. I hope we can get a good run for them. I am frustrated with our qualifying effort but the good thing is we have 500 miles to make up for it.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL WITH RACE SETUPS? “We did enough race setups to know we need more race practice. We talked about that. We wondered if we could just race practice in this qualifying session. That is what makes this sport so tough. You get a certain amount of time and then you have to go battle all these guys. It is fun. It is starting to become the old Darlington again.”
JOEY LOGANO AND ARIC ALMIROLA POST QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion – Qualified 2nd
TALK ABOUT YOUR DAY TODAY. “This place is so tough. Earlier in practice the sun was out and it isn’t a good read for what you will have in the race but you try to get that set in your mind of where you think the track will be and try to tune that way. In practice I felt we had good speed in race trim, especially on a sticker run the second practice and we ran about 15-20 laps and our car was good there. I think we will be good tomorrow. Qualifying today our car was good, just not good enough. Aric and I are up here talking about how fast this place is. It is insane. It is one of those places that takes a lot of guts to go fast here. It is crazy because you are right up against the wall and if you give up a little you are mad and if you go to hard you are in the fence. It is crazy when you go through one and two and you get to turn two and you never lift. You are just wide open and it is like, ‘Holy Cow!’ It is such a cool place to qualify. That is probably the most fun you will have all weekend. It gets tougher for the race. Overall it keeps us as the only car that has gotten through every session this year and I am proud of that still. Track position is important here and starting on the front row is a good thing.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 43 Fresh from Florida Ford Fusion – Qualified 3RD
ARIC, YOU SET A NEW TRACK RECORD TODAY. “Before that third session I told myself that I watched the shootout and when I went to go qualify for that third session I said I wasn’t going to watch it and just run as hard as I can and if I rub the fence I rub the fence. We missed it just a little bit. We made one adjustment right before the third session and I don’t think we went quite far enough. We were just a little too tight but that was a heck of a lap by Harvick. The track record lap I actually felt like I was going faster in the third session than the second session but the record was in the second session. It was a great lap for us and I am proud of everyone at RPM. We have been bringing better and better cars for our 1.5 mile program. We were off at the beginning of the year but we have gotten better and a lot more speed in our cars since we started the season. It was a great lap and it is Trent’s hometown here in Darlington. He grew up seven miles away from here so I told him when we got here that he was going to have to carry me this weekend because it is not one of my favorite places. He is doing a good job so far.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – OTHER THAN TALLADEGA AND DAYTONA, CAN YOU THINK OF A SCENARIO WHERE A DRIVER WILL TAKE MORE THAN ONE OR TWO QUALIFYING LAPS? “No, to do that you have to take tape off the grille and when you do that you will just give up speed. Talladega and Daytona are the only places where we will do that all year.”
DID YOU HAVE AN ISSUE BEFORE YOU ROLLED OUT ONTO PIT ROAD? “Yeah, we had a little issue getting over the platform and it is odd when that happens because when there are 20-something cars rolling through that don’t make it and we didn’t touch anything on the rear end of our car and it was good yesterday when we went through pre-tech, it doesn’t make sense. We didn’t touch anything and we rolled back through and it was fine. That platform is very finicky and it is odd when there are so many cars. It isn’t like we are all ganging up on them to say we are going to get something through this weekend. It is just a finicky machine and sometimes it reads it a little weird and you have to roll around and try again.”
WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO GO AROUND HERE AT 184 MPH? “It feels freaking fast, I promise you that. I remember the first time I came here I was shaking after qualifying. It is insane. I can’t really put it in words. I have never driven anything like an IndyCar or anything but this is the place you go to with the most sensation of speed, here and Dover you really feel like you are hauling the mail. For one, you are going so fast into turn one and you look at that corner and you barely lift and you just book right through it. It is just crazy. I am having a hard time putting it into words. You go into three and enter high and your car is loose and if you go to hard you will chase the back end of the car into the fence. Then you are right back to the gas and wide open right up against the wall. That sensation of going fast and also having no room for error out there on the race track is what makes it feel like you are just crazy out there.”
ARIC ALMIROLA CONTINUED – YOU GUYS PUSHED THE CAR OUT FOR THE LAST SESSION. WAS THAT TO SAVE HEAT ON THE ENGINE? “No, actually after that first session when I tried to fire the car up when I would go to turn the starter on and it would try to engage with the flywheel the electrical system in the whole car would shut itself down. We obviously have a short in our starter or something and every time we would flick the starter switch on it would shut the electrical system down so we had to push start it the last two sessions. It made it interesting trying to blend on the race track.”
THE 43 CAR HAS BEEN REAL FAST THIS YEAR. WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN TO START THIRD AND HAVE THE TRACK RECORD WITH TRENT OWENS ON YOUR TEAM? “It has been good. Our 1.5 mile program has been off but our short track program has been better than we expected. Typically we haven’t run well on short tracks and the roles are reversed this year. We put a lot of effort into our 1.5 mile program recently and we ran better at Texas, still not where we need to be but better. We brought a race car here this weekend and it has a lot of speed in it and I feel really good about it. Trent has a lot of pride coming here to Darlington having grown up not far from here. I told him before we got here that he would have to carry me because I do not like this race track and tend to struggle here. So far he is carrying me pretty good and brought me a really good car with a ton of speed in it. Now we need to make it last 500 miles but I feel good about this weekend. Everyone at RPM has been bringing better and better race cars to the track every weekend.”
