Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Auto Club 400 – Auto Club Speedway
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Ford Finishing Results:
1st – Brad Keselowski
7th – Joey Logano
11th – Aric Almirola
15th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
20th – Chris Buescher
24th – Cole Whitt
29th – Trevor Bayne
32nd – Greg Biffle
35th – David Gilliland
43rd – Sam Hornish Jr.
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 AAA Ford Fusion – “We were OK. We got ourselves up to third and it felt like we were pretty good. We were every bit as good as the 20 if we could ever get out front, but we just made a mistake on pit road. I don’t even know what happened yet, so I just know it was a tire violation of some sort, and we weren’t able to recover in time. You get that with the last pit stop and we had a couple cautions to help us try to gain those spots back, but we just didn’t get back there in time. I’m interested to see how Brad did it. He had four tires there, I think. That was a good call on Paul’s part to make that happen.”
THIS IS LIKE LAST YEAR WHERE BOTH OF YOU HAVE WON NOW. WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU AS A GROUP KNOWING YOU’RE BOTH IN THE CHASE? “It’s nice that we’re both in the Chase. We can both race aggressive now and obviously he raced aggressively anyway. It’s nice for both of us to have a win already and it’s great to see Team Penske still having speed and we’re just racing hard and doing everything we can to keep up with these guys. The other cars are a little bit faster than us right now. We’ve got to find some more speed, but we’re racing really hard and that’s what we’ve got to do.”
CHRIS BUESCHER – No. 34 Dockside Logistics Ford Fusion – “It was a lot of fun. I can’t thank Front Row Motorsports enough to give me this opportunity and for Roush Fenway Racing to allow me to go do it. To be able to help another Ford Performance team out this was a blast. It’s the kind of race track I wanted to make my Cup debut at – some place that the pace falls off, the tires wear down and you’re able to really hustle it and race late into a run and this was just that. We went through a lot of changes today, a lot of ups and downs, and a lot of confusion too on my side just trying to keep up with where we were at with the lucky dog and with wavearounds. Green flag stops, everything moved so fast and I really had no clue where we were gonna finish coming to the checkered. I didn’t know where we were at, I just knew I had to beat a couple guys around us and tried everything we could. It was a lot of fun. Thanks to everybody with Ford that allowed me to do it.” WAS THERE A POINT WHERE YOU SETTLED IN? “It was nerve-racking at the beginning. The first 50-100 laps even just trying to race around some guys – just getting that little initiation, I guess – people pushing you around trying to show you who is boss, but after we got 100 laps in I just started to feel a lot better and started settling into a run where we were comfortable and a lot like our XFINITY race we were able to find a place and keep moving forward with that.” WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST THING YOU WILL TAKE OUT OF TODAY? “A lot of it has been trying to get used to the amount of downforce and grip in the Cup car versus the XFINITY car. That’s something that took me a lot of the race to figure out. Restarts were tough because I didn’t realize how far you could push it, how hard you could really drive the car. After we figured that out, our restarts got better the last half. It’s always those little things and I don’t know if this is my last Cup start for the year or if we’ve got a couple on the way, but, regardless, this is a lot of information to jot down in a notebook and remember for my next Cup start.” YOUR GOAL WAS TO FINISH ALL THE LAPS AND YOU DID THAT. “We completed the race, finished on the lead lap and got a top 20 out of it. I’m ecstatic about that. These guys did an awesome job today.” SO IS THERE A CHANCE OF MORE CUP RACES WITH THIS TEAM? “Honestly, this is all we’ve talked about to this point. We’ll just have to wait and see. I’m sure we’ll get back to the shop in Charlotte on Monday and start going through it, but at the moment this is a one-race deal, but I wouldn’t mind doing more, that’s for sure.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Eckrich Ford Fusion – “It was a solid day for us. We ran top 15 most of the day, so I’m really proud of Trent and all the guys on this Smithfield team. They gave me a solid car and we ran solid all day and then I was really worried there at the end. I thought we were gonna get kind of suckered out of a good finish with all those guys we had trapped a lap down and they all got back on the lead lap, so I was thankful to get a really good restart on that last start and pass quite a few cars. I think we passed like 11 or 12 cars on that last restart, and we got the finish we probably deserved. We ran up there all day, so I’m proud of the guys. That was a decent car for us and we just keep making progress. Our cars are not where we want them, but we’re getting the most out of them each week, so we’ll just take it and go from there.”
