FORD PERFORMANCE NASCAR SPRINT CUP NOTES AND QUOTES
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Charlotte Motor Speedway Test Session
Aric Almirola, driver of the No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion, took part in today’s test session at Charlotte Motor Speedway and stopped by the infield media center to talk about how this are progressing and his outlook for this weekend’s race in Phoenix, AZ.
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – YOU WERE HERE YESTERDAY FOR THE GOODYEAR TEST AND TODAY. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED? “Yesterday, we did a lot of testing for Goodyear – 10-lap runs, 20-lap runs and a couple 25-lap runs. We spent probably three or four hours in the 2016 rules package with the tire that Goodyear brought for that rules package, and ran some laps on that. And then me and Kasey and Martin went out and did somewhat of a little bit of a race and ran around each other, so we didn’t really do a lot of actual team testing for ourselves yesterday. Today has given us the opportunity to kind of run on one set of tires. We’ve been on the Goodyear controlled tire all day today and we’ve just been running through a lot of setup things and a lot of aero stuff and a lot of things that we kind of came up with over the winter and we’ve had a lot of questions about, whether they were gonna be better or not. It’s hard when the wind tunnel tells you one thing sometimes the race track agrees and sometimes it doesn’t, so we’ve just been kind of validating some stuff on the race track that we’ve seen in the wind tunnel. We’ve been kind of validating some stuff that we’ve been seeing in our new simulation software and kind of correlating that to the real world aspect at the race track. It’s been a great test for us as far as those things are concerned.”
WHAT DIFFERENCES DID YOU FEEL BETWEEN THE 2015 AND 2016 PACKAGE? “From my seat the 2016 package has a smaller splitter, a smaller radiator pan, so essentially less front downforce, and then a smaller rear spoiler, essentially more less rear downforce, so just total less downforce and I guess it’s pretty even according to NASCAR. We have not had a car in the wind tunnel with the 2016 rules package yet, so this is all just purely based on the information we’ve been given from NASCAR from their technical studies. But it was just kind of an even total less downforce, not less front, not less rear shift, but just total less downforce and it kind of felt like that on the race track. The cars didn’t have as much grip. We were going about six or seven miles an hour faster at the end of the straightaway at the end of the straightaway than the 2015 package, but we were about 9-10 miles an hour slower in the middle of the corner. So from that aspect I liked that. I think all the drivers are kind of wanting to go slower in the middle of the corner, not slower than our competition, but just slower in general because that helps Goodyear bring a tire that lives longer. Those center of the corner speeds when they’re really high like we’ve seen, that puts a lot of load in the tires and it creates a lot of heat in the tire and it just creates a nightmare for Goodyear to make a tire to live through that. So if we can continue down this road with our rules package and continue to get the center of the corner speeds down to where we have to let all the way off the gas and use some brake and those kind of things, I think it will open up a big window for Goodyear to be able to bring a more softer tire with more grip that wears out and it’s gonna be durable as well. I’m excited about it. I thought overall the car, when we went to the 2016 package, slipped and slid around the race track a little bit more, which I was perfectly fine with, and I think it has the potential to put on a really good race and I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
KEVIN HARVICK HAS WON THREE IN A ROW AT PHOENIX. HOW IS ANYONE GOING TO BEAT HIM? “Wreck him maybe? I don’t know (laughing). In situations like that it just makes everybody work that much harder going there. Everybody is playing catch-up when we go there. It seems like we’ve been playing catch-up with the 4 for the past year. It just makes everyone work that much harder to come up with new setups and make their cars better and lighter weight and more aero. It takes everything to beat that 4 car. They’re stellar right now. There’s no doubt about it. You show up at the race track and do everything you can. You try and get your car driving the best you can and then you hope you can just go race him heads-up, really. We’ve seen in the past from time to time they’ve been able to beat themselves too with the best car, so I don’t think anybody is going to Phoenix handing Kevin the trophy. They know he’s a really good bet, if you want to go back to Vegas on your way to Phoenix, but besides that I think we’ll all show up and expect to go race him.”
HOW HAS IT GONE WITH SAM AS A TEAMMATE SO FAR? “That’s been really good. I think it’s been really seamless. When we found out that Marcos had decided to leave and go back to Australia and we had kind of decided on Sam as the driver, I was excited about that. I had been in a lot of the meetings leading up to deciding on a driver and I was excited about having Sam as a teammate. And then we went and tested at Nashville twice before the end of the season, before we couldn’t test anymore, and both times we went and I tested and he tested – we hopped in and out of the cars – our seats are pretty close to being similar. Our body builds are pretty close, so it was an easy transition for us to get in each other’s seat, and that was really nice to be able to go to Nashville twice and test and be able to understand our driving styles and what the differences were, and surprisingly our driving styles are a lot more similar than I ever would have expected. Me and Marcos were total opposites. Marcos has a very unique driving style because of all of his road course racing experience, but he had a very unique driving style and it made it very difficult to match his setups when he was better than us and vice versa. When we were better than him, they could not just take our setup and put it in his car because of his driving style being so different. It’s been really nice to be able to have a teammate like Sam, to be able to share information, and a lot of the stuff that we felt at the Nashville test and then going into Atlanta, I think Atlanta was a great example. I think he qualified eighth and his car was really good on Friday, so starting Saturday we kind of transitioned more of our setup towards his setup. We didn’t copy it exact, but over the winter we understood what the differences were that we needed to have in my car versus his and we had a good Saturday at Atlanta. That translated into a good Sunday. We ran top 15 all day and finished 11th and I think a large part of it was due to the 9 car being so competitive off the truck.”
CAN YOU TAKE ANYTHING FROM TODAY’S TEST AND APPLY IT TO CHARLOTTE IN MAY? “I think the All-Star Race is gonna be unique and something interesting and exciting all on its own. I’m guessing or I’ve heard that there’s a possibility we’ll run the 2016 rules package in the All-Star Race, so the potential is there for that. That would be really cool to be able to see what that race is like and for all of us to kind of go out and have fun with no points on the line and race something completely different than what we’ve been used to. But as far as the 600, that’s one race that everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to win the Daytona 500, the Brickyard 400, the Coca-Cola 600 and the Southern 500. Those are the four major races in our series. We want to win all of them, but out of all the races the really big ones to win are those four, so anytime you come here in May you know it’s a grueling race. It’s 600 miles, so you’ve got to have a car that lasts and that’s kind of what we’ve really worked on today is making a setup on our race car last. We can run some fast laps. We were really fast yesterday. We’ve been really fast today, but you’ve got to make it last for a long run and you’ve got to make it consistent. You’ve got to make it drive good in the heat of the day when it’s hot and sunny and slick like you do in the 600, and when it cools off like it does at night time in the 600. So you just go through so many swings and transitions with the race track that you’ve got to have a really consistent race car.”
IS THERE ANYTHING NASCAR CAN DO THIS YEAR TO SLOW THE SPEEDS? “I don’t think so, honestly. We have less horsepower and we have a little bit less downforce, but we have less horsepower, so we go faster in the middle of the corner like Keith was saying. Our entry speed into the corner is slower because we have less horsepower and so because our entry speed is slower it allows us to run faster across the center of the corner and we still have a relatively large amount of downforce on these cars, so we run qualifying at Atlanta and qualifying at Vegas you hear all the drivers talk about it. We’re really, really close to wide-open, if not some of the guys are wide-open. We’re just going extremely fast across the middle of the corner and the only way to really make us go any slower in the middle of the corner is to make us go faster at the end of the straightaway so we have to slow down, or take a bunch of downforce off the car. Obviously, going fast at the end of the straightaways is not something that’s in everybody’s best interest I don’t think. NASCAR or anybody else wants to see us running 230 miles an hour at the end of the straightaway. We did the test at Michigan with full horsepower from last year’s horsepower and all the aero devices off and very limited amount of downforce and I think we were like 224 getting into turn one, but we slowed down all the way to like 170 in the middle of the corner. Whereas when we had the reduced horsepower and a lot of downforce we were like 205 at the end of the straightaway and were like 198 in the middle of the corner. So that 170 to 198 in the middle of the corner is a huge difference when you ask us when we blow a tire out it hurts a lot worse. I know people don’t think there’s a big difference between 170 and 190, but if I put my truck on cruise control at 20 miles an hour and you stand in front of it, it will hurt I promise.”
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR IMPRESSION WITH THE CAMERAS ON PIT ROAD AND QUALIFYING SPEEDS HAVE BEEN UP. HAS THAT SURPRISED YOU? “Yeah, I think Keith touched on that some too. It doesn’t really surprise us. We kind of expected that. We have more on-throttle time. We have less horsepower, it’s a little bit less horsepower, and they took away some downforce, but in my opinion, and I think in a lot of other driver’s opinions, we’re still kind of over-downforced if you will. I know that’s a terrible term, but we still have a lot of downforce for the amount of horsepower that we have. We’re still going plenty fast at the end of the straightaways and now we’re going a lot faster through the middle of the corner. And our setups are getting better and better as we’ve evolved with this Gen-6 car and this rules package. With the lower ride height rules the cars and everything is evolving. You see it year after year after year. We just keep getting faster and faster and faster and it’s because there are a lot of smart people in that garage area that work on these race cars, so it’s a tough challenge for NASCAR to try and slow them down because that’s what those guys get paid to do. There are a lot of people in that garage that get paid a lot of money to figure out ways to make our race cars go faster, and they’ve been able to do it time and time again no matter what the rules changes are.”
