Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes: Sprint Showdown – Charlotte Motor Speedway
Friday, May 16, 2014
MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 9 Stanley Ford Fusion
YOU MADE A BIG SAVE AT THE START. WHAT HAPPENED?
“That was a pretty big save right there. I was just racing hard there with Ricky. I passed him off of four and slid up the race track just with the loose rear end, so I defended myself into turn one and I guess he didn’t like it. He’s gotten me three times now, so I’m kind of getting sick of that. But we put ourselves back in position at the end and just didn’t have the car to get back to the front. We tried really hard and
we learned a little bit for next week and we’re gonna give it some for the 600.”
WAS THAT FUN COMING THROUGH THE FIELD?
“That’s not something you really want to do, but we just put ourselves in a bad spot and had to come back from it.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR.-No. 17 Building For America’s Bravest Ford Fusion
“It wasn’t at all what we wanted. The first run I felt like we had a decent car and felt like we weren’t too far away, we could make a change or two and have something that could contend for a first or second spot, but we made an adjustment to make our car looser and it got tighter. We’ve been working on a lot of things, some driving style and some with the car and I think we’ve got a direction to go for next week, which is always a positive. I don’t think we were terrible, we just have to fine-tune what we’ve got and I
think we can be a lot better off. I’m looking forward to getting back next week and tune on it some more. I think come next week we should be quite a bit better.”
WHAT HAPPENED WITH MARCOS IN THE FIRST SEGMENT?
“He got to the inside of me in three, so I let him go and he slipped off of four and I got back underneath him. Then he wanted to run me in the grass, so I kind of lifted a little bit. Then I went back to the gas and got up to the inside of him again and he wanted to run me in the grass a second time, so the
third time going into one I just didn’t lift. He does that to everybody, so it is what it is. He rebounded and had a good day. He had a fast car, but that’s part of it.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion
“I think we got a bad set of tires to be honest with you. We were really fast in practice. We were econd-quick in practice and thought we had a really good car and the tires that we put on for qualifying the car was just all over the place. We qualified poorly because of it and we took off at the beginning of that race and the car would not drive very good at all – not anything like it was in practice. We came down pit road and put four new tires on it and it drove like it did in practice and we passed a bunch of cars back and got to fifth. I wish we would have started the race with this set of tires and be able to adjust from there, but it is what it is and we’ll go back to the shop and learn from it and we’ll be ready for the 600.”
