Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
NSCS Hollywood Casino 400
Friday Oct. 3, 2014
FORD QUALIFYING RESULTS
3rd Aric Almirola
4th Joey Logano
6th Brad Keselowski
11th Greg Biffle
12th Carl Edwards
22nd Marcos Ambrose
23rd Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
31st David Gilliland
37th David Ragan
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 43 Farmland Ford Fusion – “That was really important for us. Even though we are out of it we still want to compete like we are in the Chase. Prove we are capable of doing it and prove it to ourselves and everyone else out there. This is exactly how we need to do that. We need a good run Sunday. We still have a lot to race for. We can get as high as fifth in points and that should be our goal, to get as high in points as we can. I have to take a second to talk about one of my best friends. He lost his sister today to breast cancer. She battled breast cancer for a long time and they thought she was in remission and it came back and we lost her today. I am thinking about him and his family today.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “That was faster than we were in practice, so that is good. Overall it is a good starting spot. Fourth is good. The outside lane is good to be in. We will try to move up from there and make sure we make good use of that good starting spot. That is important. Track position is important here and qualifying is one of the most important things of the weekend here and I am glad we were able to capitalize and get a good starting spot.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – “Our first outing I thought we were going to get the pole we just didn’t pick up any speed from there. It is still a lot better than what we did in practice and we will start sixth. You can certainly win from there. We will work on it more tomorrow to pick up some more speed.”
ARIC ALMIROLA PRESS CONFERENCE — “This is a great way for us to bounce back from Dover. This is a huge weekend for us in Kansas City and we always look forward to coming here. It is the headquarters for Farmland Foods and this is probably my best track as far as average finishes go. I always look forward to coming here and I get excited about racing here. Hopefully we will have a good weekend for the Farmland folks and prove that we can contend and consistently run up front even though we aren’t in the Chase anymore we can still compete like we are.”
HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR CHANCES TO WIN SUNDAY? “I like my chances this weekend. We run really well here and we have consistently run well. I think every time we have finished a race here we have been in the top-10 so I am excited about this weekend based on past results and how our car has been this weekend so far.”
HOW MUCH OF WHAT YOU DID TODAY WAS RACE PREPARATION AND HOW CLOSE WAS THE SETUP TO QUALIFY SO WELL TO YOUR ACTUAL RACE SETUP? “We were really fast off the truck in race trim. We ran for about the first half hour to 45 minutes in race trim and I think we were sixth or seventh fastest in the first 15 minutes of practice and we were in race trim. I think we were one of the fastest cars in race trim. A lot of the cars ahead of us where in Q trim already. That was encouraging. We didn’t change a lot. We took our balance and did our normal adjustments we typically do to switch from race trim to qualifying trim and the very first run of qualifying practice the car felt great. It felt like it did in race trim. We didn’t make too many changes, just every team has their typical things they do to switch from race trim to qualifying trim, and that is what we did. The car has been good. The one thing we have to be careful of is when we first started this morning the track was real gray and didn’t have rubber down and was cool. The race will be a lot hotter and more rubber down by the time we race Sunday afternoon.”
WHAT WILL RACING BE LIKE WITH REGARD TO THE CHASE DRIVERS? “We all have something to prove whether we are in the Chase or have just been eliminated or not in the Chase. We all still race to win. Every single one of us gets paid to go out and try to win the race. I am not going to race any differently. I can’t speak for every other driver. Even in years past when I didn’t make the Chase I still raced to compete and get the best finish I could and try to win the race. Obviously you are mindful of the guys that are racing for a championship but I am not just going to pull over and let them go. I have a lot of sponsors that want to see us compete well and run good and get the best finish we can and that is what we are going to do.”
CAN YOU GRADE OUT YOUR YEAR WITH ROOKIE CREW CHIEF TRENT OWENS? “I think Trent has done a fantastic job this year. Coming over form the Nationwide garage I told him from the very beginning that when you step foot in our shop you have to be ready to overachieve because we don’t have all the resources and we don’t have a huge engineering staff or all the tools and resources that a lot of the teams that we compete against do. He was excited to take on that challenge and I think he has done a fantastic job of overachieving and we have ran really well this year. The hard part for us, and I talked about it last week at Dover after we got eliminated from the Chase, was that weekends like last weekend where we literally ran 28th all weekend is our Achilles heel. We run good and run good and then have a terrible weekend and don’t know why. I think he is getting a handle on that but I think that takes time and it will take time for us to continue to build a notebook and understand our race cars. I think that as we continue to work together and get better and build our notebook and understand what we need out of our race cars and what I need out of the race car that we will get better and better. This is just the beginning.”
