Ford Performance NXS Notes and Quotes
Alert Today Florida 300 – Daytona International Speedway
Saturday, February 21, 2015
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 60 Kellogg’s Cheez It Ford Mustang – RUNNER-UP PRESS CONFERENCE
“First off, we are just happy to be running this race this year after last year going the way it did. We are just proud that we were in it and has Cheez-It on board our Ford Mustang. It was fast all weekend. I was just trying to stay out of trouble and there was a lot of it. We barely got out of it. I think we actually ended up in Ty’s door at one point getting through one of those last ones. It was a melee. A lot of torn up equipment. I am happy we could get out of it and get Ryan his first win. Knowing the feeling last year of getting that one off your back. I was proud of the guys. They worked really hard and we are not trying to dig ourselves out of a hole this year. We should be in good shape going forward.”
CAN YOU COMMENT ON KYLE BUSCH GETTING HURT WHERE THERE WAS NO SAFER BARRIER? SHOULD THERE BE A SPOT ON THE TRACK WHERE THERE ISN’T ONE? WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE? “I think that has through the years develop and turn into kind of a reactive cause. We keep running into situations where people find spots that aren’t thought of before and I think the sport has progressed far in the safety aspect and we start to take it for granted. There is really no room to do that. It really needs to, in my opinion, be as safe as possible and if that means lining the inside walls as well then that is probably a good idea.”
WHAT DOES THIS DO FOR ROUSH FENWAY AS AN ORGANIZATION AND FOR YOUR TEAMMATE RYAN REED? “For our organization this is huge. I am so proud to get Ryan his first win first off. That is a huge accomplishment and to do it here, I am extremely happy for him. Obviously this is one of those places where things get crazy at the end and we were able to weed through it. It was close and it wasn’t due to anyone else’s lack of trying. It was a wild finish. For our organization, we have good things coming. We worked really hard in the off-season. We have a lot of new personnel behind the scenes and new teammates in Bubba Wallace and Elliott Sadler that will really help us going forward. Elliott has taken on a role more of like a mentor, someone that has the extreme amount of experience that he does and it able to bring a lot to the table. It is helping us already. It maybe that you can say this race was completely due to that or didn’t help at all but we appreciate all the help we get from him. I know Ryan and Bubba and myself have all been listening to him. I expect the changes we’ve made to transfer more to the bigger tracks, the 1.5 mile tracks especially. If we get that program turned around I feel like we will be very competitive this year.”
CAN YOU COMPARE AND CONTRAST THIS RACE LAST YEAR TO THIS RACE THIS YEAR FOR YOU? “Honestly, it was painful to sit on a pit box and watch this race unfold last year and not be in it. As a racer, I am not a very good race fan when I know I should have been able to be in that race. That hurt. We took that last year and we tried to build off of it and put ourselves in a situation where we didn’t worry about points and just went out and tried to win races. It put us in some situations where we were able to take some chances and get the Mid-Ohio win. Now that we have that first one out of the way this year, I am confident we can get more. To be able to come to Daytona and make the race, make it comfortably and push our teammate to the win and bring home a second place finish is great for our team and organization as a whole. From what I have heard, I didn’t see them much because we stayed in our own group but from what I have heard all our cars were very good today and up in the front group. It is big. I am so happy we got to run this thing and get the seat time that I missed out on last year. It is night and day different. It is not comparable honestly. There is no way to describe the joy we had in qualifying. I was so nervous I thought I was going to be sick coming up through qualifying, especially after the second group tearing up some equipment. I was hurting. To be able to pull it off was special for us and I am looking forward to the rest of the season more now.”
