Ford Racing NNS Notes & Quotes:
Food City 300 – Bristol Motor Speedway
Friday, August 22, 2014
Ford Finishing Order:
1st – Ryan Blaney
10th – Chris Buescher
13th – Trevor Bayne
14th – Ryan Reed
28th – Dakoda Armstrong
RYAN BLANEY – No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO MAKE THE PASS ON KYLE BUSCH ON THAT FINAL RESTART? “First of all, I have to apologize to Kyle Larson. I just got loose on the bottom and got into him. I’m really sorry about that. I was trying to pull a slider and got really loose, so sorry about that. But Kyle (Busch) didn’t go on that last restart. He said his tires were jacked up, but we got to the second line and I went – you can go and luckily we were able to hold him off here. It was a great Discount Tire Ford Mustang for us tonight. We lost track position early, but we made it back and Jeremy Bullins and everyone on this team did an awesome job of making sure we got it back. It was one heck of a race. We won at Bristol. Penske drivers are 2-for-2. Hopefully, they can make it 3-for-3 tomorrow night.”
YOU SAW KYLE INCHING UP TO YOU IN THE FINAL LAP. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? “Not mess up. I lost a Truck race here last year by getting tight and getting out of the groove and lost it to Kyle, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t do that again. I was just driving my guts out there trying to stay ahead of him. I know he was too. He messed up a couple of times in getting back in, but what can I say about these guys. I have to thank Nationwide Insurance, Discount Tire, Hertz, Snap-On, SKF – everyone that helps us put this program on. I’m really thankful to be here. Thank you, Roger for giving me the chance. I’m looking forward to more this year.”
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Mustang – “We stunk this weekend. We were just terrible. The car wouldn’t go and I don’t know. I’m pretty frustrated right now. This is the time of year we’ve got to turn it up and be battling for wins and top fives to get up in this championship and we didn’t perform this weekend. I don’t know the ingredients to get us there, but it’s just so frustrating.”
CHRIS BUESCHER – No. 60 Roush Performance Parts Ford Mustang – “It was an event filled night. We started 23rd. We struggled in practice but these guys worked hard and changed a lot of stuff to get our Roush Performance Parts Mustang up front. They did a good job. We got it going in the race and Scott made some great calls on pit road and got us some track position and we were able to hold on. We ran solidly in the top 10 for a lot of the first half of the race and then we had to battle the rest of the race because something happened. I’m not sure what it was, but we came home 10th after missing that accident on the backstretch. It actually caught the spoiler and about ripped it off. That was incredible. It was a wild night. I really appreciate Roush Performance Parts and their participation.” ON RESTARTS YOU WANTED TO BE ON THE OUTSIDE. “Yeah, it’s a different Bristol from back in the day. We’re all fighting for that outside now. The bottom just has no grip compared to the top and what it is is where they went up there and ground the race track and it just lets rubber get in it and it has bite – lots and lots of bite. It’s a scramble to get up to the top, but it’s still a lot of fun. It’s a tough, tough race track. I think I hit the wall about 17 times. I told Scott he had to find the guys who are painting the walls because I feel I need to help them tonight. I owe them that much.”
RYAN BLANEY PRESS CONFERENCE
RYAN BLANEY – No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – “First of all I’ve got to apologize to Larson. I got really loose and got into him there and unfortunately wrecked him. I’m sorry about that. I was just trying to pull a move. We had a good car all night. We lost a little bit of track position there early with a bunch of people taking two and it was so hard to pass tonight. You could have a way better car and it was really difficult to pass people and late in the run is when I thought our car was the best – maybe 80 laps into a run it would really start coming to us and we just kept getting some spots on restarts. Cautions fell our way good a couple times and that last restart Kyle has been going really late, close to the second line, and so I was kind of indecisive if he was gonna go early because he’s gone late every single restart or if he was gonna keep doing the same thing. He ended up going really late, and then we got to the second mark and he didn’t go, so I went. I heard he said after the race that the 7 car jacked him up, so we were able to get away and make a few good laps there in front of him. It’s awesome to be here in Bristol Victory Lane. I’ve been coming here for 10 years with my dad and it’s been one of my favorite race tracks to watch a race. There’s so much history here that it’s awesome to finally be in victory lane. Hopefully, Team Penske can get another one tomorrow night. That would really be cool.”
JEREMY BULLINS, Crew Chief – No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – “I think, like Ryan said, we had a really good car on the long run. I felt like the other day in practice our car got better on older tires and we really needed the longer runs. Like you said, we got behind on track position between the competition yellow and the yellow that came out right before that. It kind of mixed up the strategies a little bit and we wanted to stay on four tires right there and that put us behind a little bit. We took that one opportunity to put two on it and I wish it would have gone green a little bit longer right there because we were really making ground on some of the guys that had stayed out and were on different strategies, but caution came out and we put four on it and got back in sync with the leaders and he just kept getting a spot here or there and finally got ourselves in position to be where we needed to be at the end. He stood up to these guys and did a great job.”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED – KYLE HAD BEEN SO GOOD ON RESTARTS. WHAT DID YOU FIGURE YOUR CHANCES WERE? “I knew he was a little bit better than us, at least early in a run he seemed to have the dominant car all night. But I honestly was just thinking of trying to stay in second there when we were restarting on the bottom inside of him. And then that happened so fast, we got the lead and I was trying to make some good, solid laps. I was surprised that we got a good restart and were able to get in front of him. I was really just thinking of salvaging second because it was gonna be so hard to try to get by him. He was so good and luckily things went our way tonight and we had a good enough car to put ourselves in that position and luckily it paid off for us.”
KYLE LARSON SAID YOU WERE FASTER THAN HIM IN THAT SITUATION, BUT THAT MAKE YOU MORE INTENSE ON THE FINAL RESTART TO WIN? “I was trying to get my mind off of it. You don’t like to do that to somebody. I feel really bad about it, wrecking him, because we had a great race going. I feel really bad about it and I hope I get to talk to him. It was just a small mistake and he’s made that move so many times and I made that move so many times and he knew what was coming so he dove off in the corner as fast as I did and I didn’t expect him to do that and I got really loose. I didn’t think it intensified anything. I was ready to go before that. We were ready for our opportunity and luckily we got it and were able to take advantage of it.”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED — LIFE HAS BEEN PRETTY GOOD FOR YOU THE LAST WEEK OR SO, HASN’T IT? “Yeah. Other than the Truck race last week and yesterday. It’s been a rough couple weeks in that Truck, but this really makes up for what happened yesterday. I was so bummed out after yesterday’s race about us. I was so happy for Brad to get his first Truck win, but we were so far off yesterday in our Truck and it really bummed me out and then we had practice right after the race and I was trying to get my mind off the Truck and focus on the Nationwide car and today was kind of a new day that I could just focus all on the Nationwide car. With the news that we had last week with the Wood Brothers it’s been a very up-and-down couple of weeks for us and this definitely brought us way back up. It’s been kind of a back-and-forth couple weeks for us, but I think things are looking up right now.”
ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO NEXT WEEK? “I love road course racing, so I’m really excited to go up to Mosport next week with the Trucks. We had such a good Truck there last year and unfortunately broke about halfway through the race running second or something and this really just gives me extra motivation, extra confidence to go to that road course and gain some more points back there in the Truck deal. I’m pumped to get to Canada and this definitely makes you even more excited to get back in a race car.”
DO YOU WATCH KYLE ON HIS RESTARTS AND STORE THAT FOR THINGS LIKE A LATE RACE RESTART? “You’re always watching what they do. You’re always watching the leader in those situations. Even if you’re eighth or seventh or something like that you’re always watching the leader of where he restarts. Kyle was obviously the dominant car and it looked like he was gonna be the restarter late in the race, so I really paid attention to him. He does that a lot. He likes to go really late. I’ve learned that in the Truck stuff and also racing with him in other Nationwide races. He goes really late, so I was kind of prepared for that and my spotter, Joey Meier, did a great job of confirming with me that he was going very late, so that really did kind of prepare me for that a little bit better. So, yeah, it was a whole bunch of things that really helped me on that last restart.”
JEREMY BULLINS CONTINUED – WERE YOU GETTING EVERYTHING YOU COULD THE FINAL 30 LAPS? “I think once we got behind with a bunch of guys that got off-sequence early and we kind of lost our track position I felt like we were kind of clawing all night. So we weren’t really leaving a whole lot on the table. I felt like for us the reality is if you’re on the top you’ve got a chance. If you’re on the bottom, you’re probably gonna lose a spot, so, for us, I was wanting to get to sixth and wanting to get to fourth and knowing that if you could get that even number position and you got a caution, you had a shot at making something happen. We ran fifth there for a long time and everytime a caution would come out you’re just hoping you can hang on to fifth and then get back to work. I think for us after the first caution, after the first pit stop, we were racing hard all night. We didn’t have the opportunity to take care of our stuff. We had to go.”
DID YOU SAY ANYTHING TO RYAN BEFORE THE LAST RESTART AND HOW INTENSE WAS IT FOR YOU? “I said coming about Wednesday doing media stuff I said this is where it all started – Friday night and Saturday night short track racing. All you want is to be on the front row with six or seven laps to go. All I said to him was ‘get after it, it’s time to go.’”
