Ford Performance NXS Notes and Quotes
Drive4Clots.com 300 Advance – Auto Club Speedway
Friday, March 20, 2015
Ryan Reed, driver of the No. 16 Lilly/American Diabetes Association Ford Mustang, visited the infield media center at Auto Club Speedway this morning to talk about coming back to his home state and a variety of other topics prior to tomorrow’s Drive4Clots.com 300.
RYAN REED – No. 16 Lilly/American Diabetes Association Ford Mustang – “I love racing here. I have a lot of friends and family coming out and it’s just really special to me. I’ve come here and watched a lot of races as a kid and watched my dad race around here, so to be back here racing myself is really special. I think having your friends and family here adds a little pressure too, but it’s a lot of fun.”
JAMIE DICK AND BRIAN VICKERS HAVE BOTH BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH MEDICAL ISSUES THIS WEEK. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT SOMEONE GOES THROUGH WHEN SOMETHING LIKE THAT HAPPENS? “First of all, thoughts and prayers go out to both Jamie and Brian. It’s tough anytime you hear about a medical situation keeping someone from doing something they love, but I don’t really have any advice. I think you’ve just got to work with your doctors and do the best you can and when everyone feels the time is right, then that’s what you do. You just work with your doctors and that’s what I did and was really fortunate. So thoughts and prayers go out. I hate it.”
HOW HAS THE WIN AT DAYTONA CHANGED THE PERCEPTION ABOUT YOU AND DID THEY STOP COMPARING YOU WITH KEVIN HARVICK? “It’s cool. If you’re just talking about my hometown, it was great to see the support from Bakersfield and everyone there and all my friends and family. It was just a lot of fun. I’m actually gonna go back home after my race on Saturday and catch up with some friends and family. I know Kevin was there earlier this week, so there’s a lot of pride coming from Bakersfield. It’s a huge racing community and we’re all really proud to be from there, and having Casey Mears be from there too, it’s cool to see how many racers have come from that area.”
HOW HAS THE PERCEPTION OF YOU CHANGED SINCE THE WIN AT DAYTONA? “I don’t know. Hopefully, in a good way I guess. I don’t know. Maybe some more tweets from Bakersfield? I don’t know. “
WHAT ABOUT THE NEW ROUSH FENWAY DRESS CODE AND HOW THAT CAME ABOUT? “So during our Roush Fenway photo shoot me, Chris, Elliott and Bubba all showed up wearing plaid button-up shirts and that was not intentional at all. They told us to bring a casual button-up shirt and we all showed up wearing plaid, all different colors too, so it made for a nice picture but we weren’t real impressed. Elliott said it was Chris’ idea on Twitter, so we can go with that.”
HAS JAMIE REACHED OUT TO YOU OR HAVE YOU TALKED TO HIM BECAUSE YOU’VE EXPERIENCED WHAT HE’S STARTING TO GO THROUGH? “I haven’t spoken to Jamie. I tweeted him and said, ‘Sorry. Feel bad for you for the diagnosis and I’m here for you if you need anything.’ Like I said, if he wants to come up to me I’d obviously answer any questions he has for me as honestly as possible, but Diabetes is different for everyone. I’m sure that he’s working with his doctors and doing everything he can to get back healthy.”
HOW MUCH DIFFERENT HAS THIS YEAR BEEN COMPARED TO LAST YEAR? “I think I had wrecked five cars by this point last year, so we have that going for us and obviously the win was huge. I think there’s just a lot more confidence. I had made a lot of mistakes by this point last year that I got to learn from. Obviously, at the time I hated making them, but I don’t think I’d change it now. I got to work a lot with Jack and Ricky and a lot of people at Roush Fenway helped me learn from those mistakes and they helped me not to make them again. We still want to continue to run better. Until we’re running top-10 consistently and winning races Roush Fenway isn’t where they want to be, so we still have to continue to get better on the race track, but everyone off the race track is doing everything they can. We’ve made improvements, but we’ve got to continue to make improvements and find speed.”
