Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
STP 500 Advance – Martinsville Speedway
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Aric Almirola, driver of the No. 43 STP Fusion, is currently 10th in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings. He stopped by the Martinsville Speedway infield media center to talk about the start to his season and hopes of taking this weekend’s race sponsor to victory lane tomorrow.
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 STP Ford Fusion – “It’s always exciting to come to Martinsville and drive the 43 car. The King has had so much success here. I think he’s won 15 races here and altogether with Petty Enterprises and Petty Motorsports and everything I think they have 19 or 20 wins here, so it’s a place that’s near and dear to Petty’s heart. They’ve had a lot of success here and anytime you come here with the 43 car is special, but to come here with the STP colors on the car is that much more special with that iconic paint scheme. It’s such a neat weekend for us to have STP sponsoring the race and seeing how involved they are and how they’re activating at the race track and all they’re doing. It’s just a lot of fun to be a part of it. Anytime you get to drive that STP 43 car it’s cool to see the reaction of all the fans and all the crew members because you’ve got to think that most of the crew members and guys working in the garage they’re all guys that grew up watching the sport too, so they’ll walk up and are like, ‘Man, that’s awesome. That car looks so cool,’ and everybody loves it when that car shows up.”
ANY PLANS FOR THE OFF WEEKEND? “Me and my wife actually just talked about that last night and we’re just gonna kind of hang out and stay put. I traveled a lot this off season. I went to China and traveled a lot for sponsors and all over the country doing appearances and then at the beginning of the season spending 10 days in Daytona and then going to the west coast for three weeks I’m ready to sit at home on my couch for a while and just kind of recharge the batteries. So we’re gonna stay at home. We might take off for a couple day trips to take the kids somewhere fun, but for the most part we’re gonna stay home and relax.”
WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GO? “We’ll probably go hiking or something. We’ve always enjoyed hiking. We’ve got a couple of backpacks and we throw the kids in and take off and go hiking, so we’ll probably go up to the mountains and do a couple day hikes or something like that.”
WITH LESS HORSEPOWER DOES IT IMPACT HOW MUCH YOU’RE USING THE BRAKES? “I think we are using some more brakes than what we’ve seen in the past because we’re used to having the engine slow the car down, but with that I think the straightaway speeds seem to be a good bit slower than what we used to have because we don’t have the acceleration to get up to that top speed that we used to get up to before having to brake for the corner, so I think it’s evened out. I think we’re using probably about the same amount of brakes, we may just use them a little bit longer. I feel like the cars don’t drive that much different other than the acceleration up off the corner, so I think tires will still play an issue here at Martinsville like we’ve seen in the past, but I don’t think we’ll be spinning the tires off the corner as bad as we used to 20-25 laps into the run last year and all the years leading up to this year. Twenty-five laps into the run you’d see real comers and goers, guys that their rear tires would just be burned off the car and we were one of those cars that could move on old tires really well in years past. Last year, I think we started 36th in the October race and by lap 100 before a caution came out we were already up to like eighth, so our car just really took care of the rear tires real well. We’re already seeing this weekend, I don’t know if it’s just because it’s cold or what, but it doesn’t seem to be really abusing the rear tires like we used to.”
DO YOU CIRCLE THESE SHORT TRACKS ON THE CALENDAR OR IS IT TOO EARLY TO TELL HOW YOUR SHORT TRACK PROGRAM WILL BE? “It’s too early to tell. We’ve done a lot of work over the off-season witih moving shops and trying to take a little bit more control in our own hands. I feel like that’s paid off on the mile-and-a-halves. I feel like we’ve run a little bit better than last year. Last year, every once in a while we would hit it right and we’d run really good, but, for the most part, on average, we were a 20th-place car. I feel any given weekend right now we can run in the top 15. We’ve proved that week in and week out. Vegas, I was running ninth and had a pit road speeding penalty and cost us a good finish there, but, for the most part, Atlanta we ran 11th, Vegas I was running ninth when I got my speeding penalty, California I think we finished 11th. So we’ve run really well. We’ve run consistently in the top 15 this year on the mile and a halves, so I think that’s been an improvement. We’ve worked really hard on our short track program trying to make that better as well and, so far, this car this weekend drives really good. We just don’t have the speed. I can’t find, here it’s a tenth and when we go to the mile and a halves it’s like three or four tenths and we can’t find it. We get the balance of our car driving good and we just don’t have that raw speed, so that’s something we’re gonna have to go to work on and find, but most weekends we’ve got the car driving good and balanced good and that’s been showing up in the races and we’ve been competitive.”
SAM IS 29TH IN POINTS. IS THERE ANY URGENCY TO TRY AND GET HIM RUNNING BETTER OR HAS IT JUST BEEN A STRING OF BAD LUCK? “We’re working really well together. Ever since we went to our first test together last October at Nashville before testing got banned, we went to Nashville two or three times before the end of the year and we worked really well together. We went back and forth on cars and car setups and drove each other’s cars and really got a feel for what each other needed and liked out of their race cars and through that process we got really comfortable with knowing kind of what to gauge off of if each other liked their car. We knew that if Sam liked his car, I could take his setup and change just a couple things to free it up and I would like it. So we’ve kind of used that this year. Atlanta on Friday we struggled pretty bad and Sam was pretty good. I think he qualified in the top 10 at Atlanta, so we looked at that and we put all of Sam’s stuff in our car, minus a few things that we knew we would change for my driving style, and on Saturday we had a really good race car and it transferred into Sunday. We ran really strong and we ran close to the top 10 all day and finished 11th, so that has worked for us and vice versa. We have been able to share a lot of notes with the 9, but they have just had a tremendous amount of bad luck. I mean, he’s hitting tire carcasses on the race track, he’s having window tear-offs block his grille and overheat his engine on a green flag run and making him come down pit road, and he’s had a right-rear tire blowout at Phoenix. He’s just had all kinds of issues that have cost him some finishes. Last week at California his spotter cleared him and he wasn’t clear and he got wrecked. I think once they get their luck turned around Sam will be fine. He’s a great race car driver and been a great teammate so far. He’ll be fine. He’s just got to get his luck changed.”
HOW BIG OF A DEAL WAS SPRING TRAINING FOR YOU AS A KID? “That was so cool to grow up in Florida and be able to go to the spring training games. Obviously, we had the Tampa Yankees right there and my family always enjoyed going over to Plant City in the spring because we’d go over and watch the Reds and then when we were done watching the Reds play we’d go and take to the strawberry fields and pick cartons of fresh strawberries in Plant City and bring them home with us. That was always a big trip for us. It seems like I remember being able to skip school a couple times or get out of school early to go watch games. Some of my baseball teams would take off and go on trips together and watch some. My dad and stepdad and some of the other coaches would always make us focus and pay attention and watch like, ‘If there was a man on first watch and see when the batter hits how the players in the field react and move and where they throw the ball.’ They just always kind of made us think about situations, so that when we got put in those situations we knew the proper way to react in those positions. I enjoyed playing baseball as a kid growing up. I loved it. I loved racing more, but I loved baseball too, so being able to go and watch the professional athletes play, I loved that. I’ve never been a huge autograph fan for whatever reason. I don’t know, I just haven’t cared. I care more about meeting somebody and shaking their hand and having a two-minute conversation than getting someone’s autograph, so, as a kid, it was always neat to go and go early. I could care less about getting somebody’s autograph, but just to shake their hand or to watch them swing at batting practice was neat for me. I have a lot of fond memories of watching spring training.”
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE TEAM? “The Cincinnati Reds, honestly, because of that. I grew up so much going to their spring training games and back in the early nineties they were really good. They had Chris Sabo and Barry Larkin and Rob Dibble pitching, Hal Morris, Paul O’Neill, Eric Davis. I can name off a lot of them. I had all of their baseball cards.”
WAS KEN GRIFFEY JR. THERE AT THE TIME? “Ken played there for a while, but for most of my childhood he was a Mariner. I actually met Ken Griffey Jr. when we went back and I threw out the first pitch for a Tampa Rays game last year. He was there hanging out and he actually lives in Florida now.”
