Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Coca-Cola 600 – Charlotte Motor Speedway
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Ford Finishing Results:
2nd – Greg Biffle
7th – Brad Keselowski
13th – Joey Logano
17th – Aric Almirola
24th – Sam Hornish Jr.
27th – Trevor Bayne
28th – Cole Whitt
30th – Michael McDowell
31st – Brett Moffitt
33rd – David Gilliland
37th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
42nd – Ryan Blaney
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – “We unfortunately had an engine problem. It was really unfortunate. I thought our Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion was pretty good. Jeremy Bullins and everyone on the team did a great job of working on it all night and getting us better, and it really took off on that one restart and I thought we were gonna be pretty good. We had great take-off speed all night, but we just struggled for grip late in runs. I thought we made a good change to help that for this run and unfortunately, the motor let go on us. That’s just unfortunate. You come out here and I don’t know how many laps we ran, but it felt close to 300 and to almost be there and have that issue is just unfortunate. I hate it for these guys. They work so hard and they gave me a good piece and we were getting it better all night. I would have really liked to see where we ended up, but I’m excited for our next outing in this thing and we can always look at the positives and say we had a good run going. Everyone is working really well together on this team, so we just need to get running a little bit more and I think we’ll be OK.” HOW MUCH DID YOU LEARN TONIGHT? “A ton. Racing around some really good guys all night, top 15 all night, you really learn a lot of things and I definitely can apply that.” DID YOU FEEL IT STARTING TO GO OR WAS IT ALL OF A SUDDEN? “There was really no issue. It sputtered and started to go maybe half a lap before and then it really went up. I didn’t expect it to really explode like that.” DID YOU FEEL THERE WAS MORE TO GET OUT OF THE CAR FOR THE END OF THE RACE BEFORE THAT HAPPENED? “We were getting better and better. We kept working on it and getting it better throughout the run and had great take-out speed like I said, but we struggled a little bit on long runs. I thought we made up some good ground on that restart and then kind of got shuffled back and kind of stayed there and couldn’t make up any ground. But I thought we were making gains on it for the longer runs and it’s just unfortunate we couldn’t make it happen.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – “It was a long race. I hate to see it come down to fuel mileage, but that’s part of the game too.” WAS THE HEAT A FACTOR TONIGHT? YOU LOOK WORN OUT. “It was hot. I burned my foot and didn’t feel good, but it’s a tough race. I gave it all I had and felt good about the effort we gave.” YOU SEEMED TO KICK IT IN HIGH GEAR ON THAT LAST RUN AND MADE A COUPLE OF PASSES, BUT DIDN’T HAVE TIME ON YOUR SIDE. “I don’t know about time. The 78 was the best car and he finished in front of us and the rest were all because of fuel strategy, which is part of this sport too, but it was a good effort.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “The sun started going down and our car was not good. Nothing got better. We went one way with something and went back the other way and nothing. There’s only so much you can do when the race starts. We were good on the bottom for a couple laps and then we tried to move up and we were junk, and then you’ve got to adjust to that lane. There was never one good thing about the car. Usually you at least get a good exit or a good center and I was just fighting way too much stuff.” JUST ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS? “You don’t chalk it up to anything, you’ve got to fix it. This is a Chase race when we come back and we’re awful here. We’ve just got to figure out how to go faster. I don’t really know. It used to be one of my best race tracks and now I think it’s one of my worst race tracks. I don’t know what’s changed or what we’re doing differently, but I need a night to think about it and try to figure out something different.”
SAM HORNISH JR. – No. 9 Twisted Tea Ford Fusion – “The car wasn’t very good to start, but the guys made some good changes on it and got our Twisted Tea Ford Fusion a lot better, but we got caught at the exact wrong time two or three times when people spun or brought yellows out. It seemed like we couldn’t catch a break as far as getting back on the lead lap. We kept gambling to try and get ourselves back close to the lead lap and at one point we were four down, so to end up two down wasn’t too bad. I feel like we had a top 15 car, but just didn’t get that out of it today.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Ortho Ford Fusion – PRESS CONFERENCE – “I’m really excited for the team and the organization. We’ve been working really, really hard on our cars. It’s been well documented how bad we’ve been running, so it feels good. It’s kind of funny because I decided if I finished in the top 10 tonight I was gonna stand on the door top and be all excited and cheer and I finished second and I’m not happy. The thing is we ran in the top 10 all night. The car was good and had a lot of speed. That was a huge improvement. We haven’t done that in probably a year, so I’m super-excited about that, and then because of that run and where we were running it gave us the opportunity to try and stretch the fuel window and make it. I was putting a lot of pressure on Carl. I started going with about 10 laps to go. The crew chief told me to save all I could and just stay in front of the 88 and I made the decision that I was gonna try to beat Carl. I got pretty close to him there and then with two to go the fuel light came on that the fuel pressure was low, so I came around and had to start pushing the clutch in and shutting it off and coasting and try and preserve what fuel I had to make it back. I was excited to see the checkered flag. I wasn’t sure I was gonna stretch two laps of gas out, but it was probably on the straightaway it sucked some air and started flashing the fuel pressure, so I was able to run it around the corners and didn’t have any more issues, but I stayed in front of the 88 and finished second and it’s a big boost for the team, but probably a bigger boost for the team was how we ran tonight on the race track.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – DID YOU KNOW IF CARL HAD ENOUGH TO GO THE DISTANCE? “We knew that Carl was gonna try and make it, and certainly nobody knows whether he had enough gas. I was sure hoping and praying that maybe he’d be about a lap short because we’ve lost a few, everybody has lost a few like that, but it is what it is. He’s smart. He knows how to save gas. He’s won a lot of races like that, and I was just hoping that maybe that engine he had was using a little bit more than I thought, but it wasn’t the case.”
ARE YOU AND JGR CATCHING UP TO HENDRICK? “We certainly haven’t come anywhere close to catching them. One common thread it looks like to me is Chevy. It looks like they’re head and shoulders better than the Toyotas and Fords because the Ganassi cars are pretty fast, all the Haas cars, which are Hendrick-affiliated, so there are really eight cars there, but the Childress cars and the single-car team, the 78 car, led the whole race. He had the fastest car, so it’s pretty obvious those are all Chevys. They definitely kind of have a stranglehold on it, it seems like. The 11 has been fast and the 2 and those guys, but we have seen some dominance out of the Hendrick bunch this season. There have been a few seasons like this I can remember, but we certainly are nowhere near catching them. We’ve met our first goal, at least my first goal, is to run in the top 10. We haven’t been able to do that in a year-and-a-half, and run there, not take two tires and get a 10th-place finish – actually run the whole race. We ran 600 miles virtually right in the top 10, so that’s a huge improvement for us and now we’ll just work on trying to get into the top five and then the wins will come after that.”
WHAT’S IT LIKE TO GET A GOOD FINISH HERE AND MOVING NOW TO DOVER? “I’m really excited about the finish. I don’t care if we were in Mexico right now, I’m pretty happy that I finished second. This is a good race track for us. I had about a half straightaway lead here years ago when the 48 blew up and the caution came out and I didn’t have enough gas to make it. Neither did the 88 that day and the 29 ended up winning, but we tested Dover and did a one-day test up there and I’m looking forward to that. I’ve got a couple of trophies from there. We run good there. The test didn’t go as good as we’d like it to, but we maybe learned a little bit here that can go along with that test and see if we can challenge and run in the top 10 again. Michigan, I’ve kind of got it circled on my calendar because if we’ve got speed on these kind of tracks back again, that’s a good race track for us so we’ll see how we stack up.”
WAS THERE ANYTHING YOU’VE FOUND THE LAST TWO WEEKS THAT HAS LED TO STRONG RESULTS? “I think mostly what I know of that we’ve found is the setup on the race car, a little bit of a different front suspension and springs and shocks, we’ve kind of gone a different direction and that seems to be – I can’t believe that we’ve missed that for a year. We haven’t found anything to get our cars to go faster and then we change some minor stuff and all of a sudden here we are. I’ve got my fingers crossed that with all the simulation and all the things we have, hopefully we can pinpoint what we changed and what made the difference and then continue to try and work in that same direction and hopefully each race track is different, Dover is definitely different, so we’ll see if those changes we made improvements will continue on.”
YOU LOOKED WIPED OUT. “I’m upset we didn’t win. I was close.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED — HOW HARD IS IT THAT YOU HAVE TWO YOUNG TEAMMATES THAT DON’T HAVE THE EXPERIENCE OF SOME OF YOUR PREVIOUS TEAMMATES? “It’s been a tough challenge altogether, even last year when Carl was there. It was really tough trying to find anything to get our cars to go and when we came around to qualifying for the All-Star and practice I was a little concerned why the other two cars weren’t showing the speed that my car was showing because if we truly found something I would think it would help all the cars. But I just talked to Ricky on pit road and he felt like his car was fairly decent tonight. He got a lap down early and got the lap back, he was running 14th and I guess he had a left-front hub seize up, and then I saw the 43 also there, so maybe it’s trickling down, but I’m looking forward to those guys – both Ricky and Trevor – running faster so we can use a little bit of the data from them as well.”
DID IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE THAT CARL WAS THE GUY WHO WON THIS RACE? “No, not at all. It was just a special weekend to have my second cousins name on the windshield. I went and visited a friend of mine from the mountains earlier in the week that passed away yesterday, so there’s a lot going on. It’s Memorial Day Weekend and I really, really wanted to win. I tried so hard and we just came up a little bit short. I feel really good about finishing second, I do, but just over here reminiscing about what it would be like if I would have won.”
HAS THE NEW CHASSIS YOU BROUGHT OUT A FEW WEEKS AGO HELPED FROM A HANDLING PERSPECTIVE? “I think what’s happened to us is we’re stacking pennies and we can’t look back and say, ‘That was it right there.’ But what I will tell you is at Texas the car seemed like it was a little bit more predictable to drive. Maybe it drove a little easier. It didn’t have a bit more speed, so we were super-disappointed. We were all hanging our hat on here it is, we’ve worked extremely hard on this car, here it is, and we didn’t have any speed. Then we worked tirelessly in the wind tunnel and found a little bit of stuff that helped with the splitter and the pan – those things – with the new chassis that enables us to do a little bit more aero work, and then we kept working on the setup and trying different things and different springs, some of the stuff we saw in the garage area. You’re always picking up bits and pieces where you can, some different testing and different shocks, and all of a sudden all those little things that we’ve found has gotten us some speed. I think it kind of surprised all of us that when we kind of hit on it that it was kind of right there. We’re gonna look exactly at what we’ve done and try to keep trending in that direction, but it wasn’t any one thing. That’s what we’ve said all along, there isn’t one thing we’re missing, it’s a bunch of it. It was probably off on aero and were probably off on suspension and all those things.”
BRETT MOFFITT – No. 34 CSX “Play It Safe” Ford Fusion – “It was a long race, that’s for sure. In the middle of the race, we got the CSX Ford running pretty good. We just got stuck a couple laps down and could never get them back. Cautions weren’t falling in our favor, so we didn’t get any extra help there. But we learned a lot and we’re thankful to CSX for the support.”
COLE WHITT – No. 35 Speed Stick Ford Fusion – “Our Speed Stick Ford didn’t really race the way we expected it to in the conditions. Maybe there was something off with the car, so we’ll go back and take a look at it. But Randy (Cox) called a good race and got us a pretty good finish out of it.”
