Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Irwin Tools Night Race Advance – Bristol Motor Speedway
Friday, August 22, 2014
Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 Ford Fusion in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, along with Roush Fenway Racing announced a deal this morning with Ortho as a primary sponsor, beginning next week at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Biffle spoke about that news, in addition to his current battle of trying to qualify for the Chase.
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Ortho Ford Fusion – THOUGHTS ON ORTHO COMING ON BOARD. “I can’t tell you how excited I am to have Ortho on the car for 2015 and these upcoming races. It’s gonna be really exciting at Atlanta. I got to go by the shop and see the car the other day and they wouldn’t let me take a picture of it, so they said I can’t unveil it yet, but that was a lot of fun to see what the car is gonna look like in Atlanta. I’m just really excited to be aligned. I’ve been very lucky throughout my career to be aligned with great companies and not a lot of them, and I’m really excited to be going forward with Ortho on the car and to see some of the fun things we’re gonna be doing together in promoting the brand and, obviously, promoting the fire ant in Atlanta is really exciting too.”
MIKE SUTTERER, Vice President, Ortho, Regional Marketing – THOUGHTS ON COMING BACK TO ROUSH FENWAY RACING. “We have a great history and have had a lot of success with Roush Fenway Racing. We’ve been to victory lane a dozen times and had a championship and we’re really excited about our new partnership with the Ortho brand and Greg and the outstanding No. 16 team. The Ortho brand and the Roush Fenway Racing brand is really a natural fit together. There are a lot of synergies. We both try to be number one every day in everything we do, whether it’s the No. 16 race team working hard at the track every weekend to win, or whether it’s the Ortho brand working hard in fans homes and yards to keep insects away every day. So we know NASCAR fans are incredibly passionate and loyal to drivers and teams and their business partners and we’re just excited to be part of that. We know the Ortho brand is already in millions of fans’ homes and we’re looking to keep those fans, but with our partnership with Greg and the No. 16 team, we’re looking to add some new Ortho fans as well in 2015.”
STEVE NEWMARK, President, Roush Fenway Racing – HOW EXCITING IS IT TO HAVE ORTHO ON BOARD? “I do want to express our sincere appreciation to Mike and the entire Scotts Miracle Gro and Ortho organizations for putting their faith in us to come back into this sport in a very, very big way. I think everyone in here is familiar with some of the iconic brands that are under their umbrella and we’re extremely excited about a lot of the fun and creative stuff that we can do with this partnership. I think probably example one is how often do you get to carry and eight-foot ant around and not have people throw you out of places, and I think you’ll see more creativity when we go out and unveil the paint scheme. But from our perspective, I think we’ve been talking over the last few months at Roush Fenway a lot about our strategic vision and about getting back to our roots and being true to our DNA, which is truly rooted in driver development and Greg is obviously a product of that and now really the leader and mentor of our driver stable. We’ve reunited with Mark Martin and this is kind of the next in a litany of those actions that are helping fulfill that vision, which is getting back together with Scotts and Ortho. They have been an integral part of our history and obviously have had a lot of success and I think everyone in here is familiar that NASCAR is a superstitious lot and I think we were looking at the stats and 12 percent of the time that Scotts/Ortho has been on the car we’ve been in victory lane, so we’re hoping to continue that trend and start it off well at Atlanta. We do appreciate and we’re really excited about some of the fun stuff we’ll do with this marketing platform.”
QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
STEVE NEWMARK CONTINUED – WERE YOU IN ANY KIND OF SCRAMBLE MODE WHEN 3M SAID THEY WEREN’T COMING BACK? “In this sport, I think everybody is familiar with this, but you’re always looking for more partners and to try to build that program. We had engaged in discussions with Scotts because of that history even before some of those things unfolded, so this, like a lot of other things, was in process and it stood alone based on the marketing potential I think both partners see.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – YOU DECIDED TO STAY AT ROUSH FENWAY. WHAT WENT INTO THAT PROCESS? “Jack gave me my first opportunity to come into this sport like he’s done with a lot of drivers and that doesn’t always mean that you stay at one organization forever, but I’ve had a lot of success there. I did have other opportunities and I felt like the opportunity presented in front of me was to get Roush Fenway back to number one like Steve and Mike talked about. We’ve been there and we certainly feel like we can get back there. I’ve been in this sport a while and I’ve been up and down, and I can clearly remember some of these guys that are at the top of the list right now lapping them nearly every week. ‘There goes that guy’ as we go on to finish in a top five position. The cycles changed and it’s easy to jump ship when the cycle is not in your favor, and I knew everybody is working hard. We have the resources and with a lot of people behind the organization I knew that we could get back to winning races. I think Michigan was proof of that. We certainly didn’t win Michigan, but it was a win for us and our organization. Ricky Stenhouse had a fast race car. We had a fast race car. We’re making improvement and we’re on our way to get back to winning races and it’s gonna take another five or six races. We have a great test coming up on Monday at Chicago and I’m really excited about that. I’m more excited for the test in Chicago than I am anything else right now because that gives us two days to work on finding that last bit of speed in our cars for Atlanta and moving forward for the rest of the year.”
WILL YOU HAVE ORTHO AT TALLADEGA, WHICH IS SURROUNDED BY FIRE ANTS? “Definitely surrounded by fire ants and we’re gonna have to get them to bring a little bit for us. It’s funny, I keep the product on my bus because when we park in the motorhome lots you just can’t choose your spot, so sometimes it’s like you’re parking there and by the way right outside your front door is a fire ant pile, so it’s kind of funny. I do have it on my bus currently and have for several years, so I don’t know all the races yet that they’ll be on the car this year. I know Atlanta obviously and going forward I’ll defer to these guys on which other races we’re on.”
STEVE NEWMARK CONTINUED – HOW MANY RACES WILL THEY BE ON THE CAR NEXT YEAR? “Obviously, we don’t get into all the different details, but they’ll be on roughly half of the races in 2015.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – HOW DOES IT FEEL TO HAVE A NEW SPONSOR LIKE THIS? “I can say I’m really excited about all the things. There’s been a lot of brainstorming behind the scenes and I’m really, really excited about some of the things we’re talking about doing to promote the brand and I can’t wait to hit the ground running, so to speak, on all the neat things we’re gonna be able to do and promotions to have. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a change in direction. I’ve been very fortunate to build great relationships over a long period of time. I can count my sponsors on basically one hand I’ve had in the last 16 years in the sport, so it’s fun to create relationships and I think more than anything I’ve created a lot of friendships in those companies over those years more than a business relationship or sponsor relationship and I think that also means a lot.”
STEVE NEWMARK – WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE ORTHO BACK? “As far as the organization it’s absolutely huge to bring on a partner of Scotts’ caliber. I think everybody recognizes that we’re able to race because of the relationships you have with your sponsor based on the way this sport operates, but even more so for us when we have a partner like Scotts and Ortho we find that we learn a lot from them and just have an interaction with a group that has such a professional and high-caliber marketing organization that our interaction with them makes us a better organization off the track as well. So we’re really looking forward to collaborating with them and working hard, particularly when they’re gonna have such a significant role in the program next year, that we’ll have that consistency and constant interaction throughout the whole year.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS BEING ON THE CHASE BUBBLE GOING INTO THIS WEEKEND’S RACE? “Certainly all Bristol races are rough, so to speak, and this is a tough place – a really, really tough place – and I think we come in here, you’ve got to really be on offense and defense. You come in here and run as hard as you can. We’re here to win and we feel like we run in the top 10 about every time we’re at Bristol and that’s the position you need to be in in order to put yourself in a position to win. That’s what the 99 team did in the spring. We ran in that position and they got track position and were able to pull out a win, so that’s important and that’s what we’re gonna be trying to do. At the same time, everybody wants to finish the race. You take chances and passes and all the things you can do, but at the same time we know we’re on that bubble in points. I feel it’s gonna take a win still to get in this thing and that’s what we’re going for.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE LEVEL OF PRESSURE AROUND YOUR TEAM RIGHT NOW? “We’ve felt the pressure all year because we haven’t performed to our standards at Roush Fenway – none of the teams have. We have gotten much, much better in the last six weeks and I think our results show a ninth, a fifth, an eighth, a tenth, we’ve turned the corner so, believe it or not, that’s a lot of pressure off of the team versus on the team, so we go into these next three races with a lot of confidence and actually less pressure than we’ve had all season because our performance hasn’t been where we needed to be. Now that our performance is better and we’re seeing that light at the end of the tunnel, it’s so much easier to show up to the race track and compete. We enjoy coming and racing in the top 10 and that’s what we want to do. We have a lot of confidence going into these last three races that we have the speed we need and also we have a test at Chicago lined up Monday and Tuesday, right in the middle of this, so that gives us a lot of continuity going into these last three. I think we feel pretty good.”
