Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
NSCS GEICO 500
Sunday Oct. 19, 2014
FORD FINISHING RESULTS
1st Brad Keselowski
8th Marcos Ambrose
11th Joey Logano
21st Carl Edwards
22nd Ryan Blaney
25th Greg Biffle
29th David Gilliland
30th David Ragan
32nd Trevor Bayne
39th Aric Almirola
FUSION ADVANCES TO ELIMINATOR ROUND WITH JOEY LOGANO AND 22 TEAM
- Brad Keselowski’s win vaults the No. 2 into the Eliminator round of eight.
- The win is the sixth Cup win of the season for Keselowski and 16th of his career.
- The victory marks the second in the 2014 Chase for the 2 team (Chicago).
- Ford Racing’s 14 wins this season is the most for the manufacturer since 2005 (16).
- The win is Ford’s 28th Chase win and 632nd all-time series victory.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Redd’s Wicked Apple Ale Ford Fusion (Finished 1st)
VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – “I can’t believe it. Talladega is such a wild card and to be able to win here you have to catch breaks and make your own breaks, a little of both. I can’t believe we won at Talladega. This race is the scariest of the three in the bracket. To be able to win here is really a privilege, it really is.”
TAKE US THROUGH THE LAST COUPLE OF LAPS. “It was about the restarts and getting clear and putting yourself in the right position and we were able to do that.”
YOU BATTLED BACK FROM EARLY PROBLEMS, TALK US THROUGH WHAT YOU HAD TO DO TO PULL THIS OFF. “We just persevered. We didn’t give up. I got a lot of help from my teammate Joey Logano and wow, this is just special. Everything about today is special. I want to say thank you to everyone that supports our team.”
PAUL WOLFE, crew chief, No. 2 Redd’s Wicked Apple Ale Ford Fusion – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW
– TALK ABOUT THIS WIN, WHAT IT MEANS AND WALK US THROUGH THAT LAST RESTART. “Obviously this win is huge. We feel like we have been one of the strongest teams all year here, especially the second half of the season. This team has worked hard and I feel like they deserve a shot at a championship. The issues we had at Kansas put us behind and having to fight all the way back, everyone executed and did their job today. We knew coming in there that we would have a shot at it but to actually do it with so many thing out of your control at this race track is huge. I am so proud of the guys. Brad’s driving there in the last few laps was just phenomenal. That is what it came down to. You saw the 48 on the restart before that it looked like he tried to make it three wide and ended up going way back. It is about being smart and understands this type of racing and Brad does a great job of that.”
HOW ABOUT THAT LAST RESTART SPECIFICALLY? “It is so up and down. One minute we thought we had a shot and the next minute we didn’t and we were trying to manage all that and the emotions. It ranks right up there – it was very exciting with not knowing what was going to happen right down to the end. It was a great win and I and looking forward to the next round.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE THIS DAY AND THE WAY YOU CAME BACK BUT ALSO HELPED YOUR TEAMMATE WIN? “It was amazing, actually. We got crashed there and it wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just one of those situations, but we were able to recover from that like we’ve been able to in the recent past. The Shell/Pennzoil team did a great job helping us out there and then we worked our way slowly but surely up there and had a shot at it there at the end, but it didn’t work out.”
WHAT ABOUT YOUR DAY? “It was a crazy one. I won’t say we got spun, but it happens and we ended up spinning through the grass and not much damage happened to our car. We went down a lap making sure we didn’t blow the fenders off it getting down pit road and changing tires, so we were able to recover from that and slowly but surely worked our way back toward the front to a position where I thought we had a shot at winning it. I was able to try and get a run here and there from other cars, but it just didn’t work out.”
WHEN YOU LOST BRAD ON THE BACKSTRETCH WERE YOU WORRIED THAT HE MIGHT BE IN TROUBLE WITHOUT YOU THERE TO PUSH HIM? “No, at that point I was kind of on my own. He was in good shape, but I was in bad shape where I was and that’s why we lost a bunch of spots there at the end.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS SEGMENT AND MOVING ON? “I thought we did a great job – a win, a fourth and an 11th unfortunately here at Talladega, but we’re doing what we have to do to win this championship. Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix are obviously gonna be very important and we have to do what we’ve been doing. We can’t let anything get to us. We’ve got to stay focused on what we’ve been doing.”
IS THERE A COLLECTIVE SIGH OF RELIEF THAT TALLADEGA IS DONE? “Probably for a lot, but not me. I was in good shape coming in here with that win, so I felt good about it.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion – “We knew we couldn’t wreck and it ended up playing out exactly like we planned. We stayed out of the wrecks and made it in, but that was nerve-wracking. Congratulations to Brad for getting another Ford into the next round. That’s awesome the way they stepped it up. For us, it’s awesome. We’ll just keep on trucking. We’re back tied for the points lead.”
YOU WERE CLOSE TO THAT LAST WRECK. “I don’t think I could have been any closer. That was crazy.”
THOUGHTS ON MOVING FORWARD? “I’m excited. Martinsville is place we feel like we can go and do some good. We’ve run really well there lately. We had a test at Texas and Phoenix is a place where we know we can win, so I’m excited.”
ANY NERVES BEFORE THE RACE? “I felt a lot more confident before the race than I did on that last restart. I just don’t know how you plan this race out. We tried to outsmart everybody and it almost caught us, so it’s really down to pure chance. I’m just glad it worked out for us.”
DID YOU KNOW WHERE YOU WERE IN POINTS ON THE FINAL RESTART? WERE YOU TRYING TO BE AGGRESSIVE TO GAIN SPOTS? “I was trying to be aggressive on the last restart and get some positions and fortunately I was able to. But Jason Hedlesky (spotter) and Jimmy Fennig kept me updated and that helped a lot.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 12 SKF Ford Fusion – WHAT HAPPENED ON THE FINAL RESTART? “The very, very top would go pretty good for maybe a lap and then it would kind of die down. I thought we had a good run going until it almost got really hairy there for a second and we almost wrecked a bunch of cars and everyone had to back out and that kind of killed our momentum, but the car is in one piece and the 2 got to victory lane, so all in all it wasn’t a bad day. My first experience at Talladega and I learned a lot about these cars and how they drive on these superspeedways, so that was a good part of it.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – “We were just all starting to shuffle around there and getting ready to pit, and I think it was the 83 in front of me, and I think he might have been trying to check up to get to the bottom. I just barely started to push him and it hooked his car and we all wrecked.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL – No. 95 K-LOVE Ford Fusion – “All of this really started in that first incident when the 1 came down the track and got the right-front. We were just hanging on from there and trying to manage the race. We had a lot of right-front damage from that, so we were trying to manage the tires and just work on it. We had a right-front go down there, but you’ll have that at Talladega. I’m happy with our team’s performance because we had great speed in qualifying, practice and were up front there before all of this happened. I feel good about what our team is doing. I’m proud to be a part of it and now we’ll just move on and finish out the year.”
