Ford Racing NNS Notes & Quotes:
Hero Campaign 300 – Kentucky Speedway
Friday, June 27, 2014
Ford Finishing Order:
2nd – Brad Keselowski
5th – Ryan Blaney
15th – Trevor Bayne
16th – Corey Lajoie
17th – Ryan Reed
18th – Chris Buescher
20th – Dakoda Armstrong
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – A LATE-RACE SPEEDING PENALTY BUT A GREAT RUN BACK UP THROUGH THE FIELD. “Yeah, I did put us behind with that, but you still have to give credit to Kevin at the end there. He drove by and took the lead, so he was really good. We had a great Discount Tire Ford and I definitely put us behind and was just one spot away from catching back up.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 12 Snap-on Ford Mustang – “It was OK. We didn’t start great, we started ninth, and I got really loose the first couple of laps and we slipped back to 12th but Greg Erwin and everyone at Penske did an awesome job of getting me better throughout the night. As the night came and it kind of cooled off, it came to us a little bit but a lot of it was Greg on the box just making great calls. Track position was so big tonight and we had great pit stops that got us a couple spots on pit road. That definitely helped us. A couple of restarts didn’t really play our way. We got put three-wide on a couple of restarts and that kind of hurt us. I was thinking, ‘When are we gonna catch a break here on the restarts,’ and then finally on that last one we started on the outside and gained a spot. So I’m proud of everybody on the Snap-on Ford Mustang. It’s not a bad showing. We wish we could have been up there for the win, but that’s the way it goes. I’m just happy for the chance.” YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE LAST RESTART WHEN YOU WERE SIXTH? “I thought we had a good chance to win. I knew our line was really strong. We were starting with Kyle and Brad and me on the outside and I thought we would really go, and especially Kyle being the leader. I thought that line would really role and I had to be hesitant in one because the 3 tried to get to my outside and I blocked him and then he tried to go in the middle and I was kind of hesitant getting to the bottom. It was just kind of circumstance, but luckily we were able to get to fifth. I think if maybe we would have had 10 more laps, I could have worked on the 33 but I’m happy for this run. We had a fast car, but we couldn’t really get the track position we needed.”
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Mustang – YOU JUST FINISHED TALKING WITH CHASE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED. YOUR THOUGHTS? “Week after week I’m getting used up by people. It’s frustrating as can be. Chase is a great kid and a great driver, but it’s the same old story. They get to my inside and just run me up the race track, packing air on their doors and wreck us. We’ve got the bad end of the deal three weeks in a row and I don’t know what it takes to get respect around here. I feel like I’ve always raced pretty hard, but clean when I needed to, and I give respect to the people that give it to me. If Brad gets to me or Kyle, you let them go because they would do the same for you. But you race the 3 car or the 31 – I haven’t had an issue with the 9 before – but today you get to them and they race you semi-crazy and it goes both ways. Hopefully it stops soon and we can race, and we can get our cars a little better so we don’t have to worry about those guys. We should be in front of them anyways, but it was a frustrating night for us. We had a top-10 run going there and ended with a 15th-place finish. That’s not what we were looking for, but we’ll keep digging in and get these things faster.”
RYAN REED – No. 16 ADA Drive to Stop Diabetes Ford Mustang – “I was proud of us because we had speed. We practiced top five and qualified top 15 and raced top 15 all night and just couldn’t catch a break there. When the 7 got into us and wrecked himself they penalized me and didn’t give me the lucky dog because they said I was involved, so it just didn’t seem I could do anything right. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time all night, but we had a fast race car. We were faster than a lot of guys in front of us at the end, but just ran out of laps. We needed about a 400-lap race when we’re having that kind of luck.”
CHRIS BUESCHER – No. 60 Ford EcoBoost Ford Mustang – “It was a tough night for us. We tried a bunch of stuff and the guys never gave up. They worked really hard on this Ford EcoBoost Mustang but we couldn’t really get it up under us. It just seemed like it was up on top of the race track, so we’ve got some stuff to work on and we’ll go out here and try to make it better.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI PRESS CONFERENCE – “We had a great day going and I got us behind there with a pit road speeding penalty. I just made a little mistake, but the Discount Tire team did a great job. They gave me a really fast car and just didn’t quite capitalize on it there at the end, but I thought Kevin at the end was just as fast, if not a touch faster, so we had a really good, and like you said, a dominant daytime car but the race obviously finished under night and we were all probably pretty equal then.”
COULD YOU HAVE GOTTEN BY HARVICK WITH A FEW MORE LAPS? “I don’t think so. We weren’t really gaining on him. He looked pretty good.”
WHERE ON THE RESTART DID YOU KNOW YOU WEREN’T GOING TO GET HIM? “The last lap. You don’t give up until it’s over.”
HOW DID YOU REGROUP AFTER THE PENALTY TO CHARGE BACK THROUGH THE FIELD? “It’s just part of the job. It’s a high-stress environment inside of a race car and it’s our job to deal with it if you’re going to be a professional and win races and be competitive. I’ve gone through some adversity before and that’s certainly not the worst thing in the world that can happen to you and we got through it the best we could and obviously not quite good enough with finishing second, but still pretty well.”
