Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Quicken Loans 500 – Phoenix International Raceway
Sunday, November 9, 2014
LOGANO QUALIFIES FOR CHAMPIONSHIP FOUR AT FORD CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion, finished sixth and clinched a spot in the Championship Four next weekend at Ford Championship Weekend. Brad Keselowski finished fourth in the race, but fell five points short of making the transfer cut while Carl Edwards ended up seven points out of the final round with a 15th –place finish.
Ford Finishing Results:
4th – Brad Keselowski
6th – Joey Logano
9th – Greg Biffle
10th – Marcos Ambrose
15th – Carl Edwards
17th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
18th – Aric Almirola
24th – David Gilliland
25th – David Ragan
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “There are a lot of emotions, believe me. When the 4 car laps you, you don’t know how the race is gonna play out. You don’t know if there are gonna be enough cautions to get the lucky dog or will you get the lucky dog. When you go down a lap it’s not a day-ender, but it makes your day a lot harder. We missed the lucky dog by one that time, and we had a decent car but when you’re trying to work your way through the field and race really hard you burn your stuff up too much and you get in trouble. We were able to adjust our car to that and then worked our way back up there slowly but surely.”
WHO HAS THE ADVANTAGE GOING INTO HOMESTEAD? “I say we do. Everybody has the same amount of points it’s all about how good your team is and I feel like I’ve got the best team.”
TALK ABOUT THE EMOTIONS OUT THERE TODAY. “When those situations happen you try to stay calm, but it was just so hard to do because there’s so much on the line. I wasn’t mad at anybody, I was just frustrated trying to get up through the field and trying to pass cars. When you’re doing that you wear your car out so much that we ended up going down a lap. We missed the lucky dog by one and then got our lucky dog. Then we got crashed when the 18 was spinning out and then I was able to recover for a sixth-place finish after all that. My hat’s off to all the Shell/Pennzoil guys on this team. They deserve to be in the final four. We proved it throughout this whole Chase and really this whole year, and I’m glad to be sitting here and going for it and have some fun next week.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – “We were a little bit short. I’m obviously a little disappointed. I’m not disappointed with the effort, just disappointed it didn’t work out. We just couldn’t overcome the Martinsville hurdle. We had a decent day, but we needed a win to overcome the week we had at Martinsville where we broke the gear. We just weren’t quite fast enough to pull that off the last two weeks and that’s what it was going to take. It’s been a good effort. It’s been a great year. It’s nothing to hang our head on. We controlled the things we could control for the most part and that’s just how this deal works.”
YOU DROVE AS HARD AS YOU COULD TODAY. “We weren’t the best car today. We were a third to fifth-place car and we finished fourth. I’m not happy with that, but it could be worse. We put in solid efforts, solid runs and it just wasn’t enough today.”
YOU WON THE MOST RACES THIS YEAR BUT YOU DIDN’T ADVANCE. DOES THAT MAKE IT FEEL WORSE? “It doesn’t feel good to have won the most races and not being in it at Homestead, but it still feels like it has been a great season, winning six races. Nobody is going to win anymore than that, and that’s something we’re proud of.”
IS THIS THE MOST EXHAUSTING RACE YOU’VE BEEN IN? “No, but it was a good race.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Fastenal Ford Fusion – “I’m really proud of everybody. We had some runs that we shouldn’t have had. We made it awfully far, so I’m very proud of everybody. We’ll just go to Homestead and try to get another win. Hopefully, Joey can get the win and bring Ford a championship.” YOU WERE JUST TRYING EVERYTHING THIS WEEKEND WEREN’T YOU? “Yeah, we tried every trick that we could. We just didn’t have a lot of speed all weekend. The car actually drove pretty decently at the end, so I thought Jimmy did a great job with it. We just didn’t have enough speed, so that’s how it goes.” YOUR TEAM CAME A LONG WAY. “These guys dug deep and worked hard. I’ve never been a part of something like this where everybody just doesn’t give up. This means the world.”
JOEY LOGANO PRESS CONFERENCE
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – HOW DID YOU GET BACK FROM BEING A LAP DOWN? “I think Denny and I had the exact same day out there. Both of us had a little issue on pit road and we got stuck back there, went down a lap and recovered and we finished fifth and sixth. We were able to keep our cool throughout the day. I think that was important. We were able to get the lucky dog. We got some damage avoiding the 18’s crash and was able to fix that and recover again to get ourselves back in. It was definitely a drama-filled day, for sure. It’s not what we wanted. We were hoping for just a normal, uneventful day to just get a nice top 10 was all we needed, which is what we ended up doing, but it was definitely eventful along the way. I’m proud of my team and proud of everyone who has helped get us to this point and we’re gonna have some fun next week going for a championship.”
WHAT IS IT LIKE IN THE CAR TO STAY FOCUSED ON MAINTAINING A POSTIVE OUTLOOK EVEN WHEN IT DOESN’T LOOK GOOD? “It’s very difficult, but if you look at the past year’s that’s what won championships and it still does now. It may not win the championship next weekend, but it gets you to that point. The last couple weeks we’ve had a couple days that we had to be like that, where we had to recover and get something decent out of it. Just like in the past you try to minimize the damage and to do that is very hard. It’s something that I know for years I wasn’t good at, but I was able to figure it out slowly but surely. You’ve got to have a team behind you that can do that too. It’s not just a driver battling back, that’s everyone keeping their heads together and not imploding from the inside.”
HOW DID YOU KEEP YOUR COMPOSURE TODAY? “I don’t know. It’s definitely hard to deal with it, but at the same time we’ve just done what we’ve done all year and there’s no point in changing it. Todd said to me, ‘You don’t reinvent the wheel at this point, you just polish the wheel a little bit and become a little better in every area.’ That’s what we’ve been able to do the last couple of years since we started working together and it’s paying off, so it’s been a fun ride so far.”
COULD YOU FEEL THE TIRE RUB FROM INSIDE THE CAR? “As I was turning down to miss the 18 the 10 was there and we banged doors fairly hard, but it didn’t know the toe out or anything like that, so it was just a fender rub. We had the red flag to talk about it a little bit, which is always nice to kind of calm down and get a game plan before the pits open and all we really needed to do was pull some fenders out and keep them from rubbing and get racing again.”
MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 9 Stanley Ford Fusion – “The track changed a lot, but Drew did a great job of making adjustments. We really made the car a lot better all race. It was super-tight in the middle, but we made the right calls. It’s nice to get a good finish. The last few weeks have been a struggle and it’s nice to get back on track. It was a good day for our STANLEY team.”
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion – “I’m really proud of our Long John Silver’s team today. That was a big difference from last week. Our car was pretty good all day, only needing small changes here and there as the race went on. Jay (Guy) did a great job with pit strategy and keeping up with what the car needed, the pit crew was rock solid all day and we did what we needed to do. We’ll work on getting another good run in Homestead to finish off the season.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 34 Taco Bell Ford Fusion – “That was a great job by our No. 34 Taco Bell team. Phoenix has always been a tough track for us, so a top-25 lead-lap finish is a good day for us. Derrick (Finley) and the pit crew did a good job all day and put us in a position for a solid finish. Now this team needs another good day next week in Homestead to take us into the off-season on a high note.”
