Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Toyota SaveMart 350 – Sonoma Raceway
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Ford Finishing Order:
5th – Joey Logano
10th – Sam Hornish Jr.
14th – Aric Almirola
19th – Brad Keselowski
20th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
22nd – Cole Whitt
23rd – Trevor Bayne
27th – Greg Biffle
30th – Justin Marks
34th – Michael McDowell
43rd – David Gilliland
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Love’s Travel Stops Ford Fusion – “That was a bad deal. I just passed Sam Hornish up in seven and went through the esses and I just told Donnie, ‘I think I’ve got a left-front going down. It’s soft.’ We were gonna come in and pit that lap and I eased up a little bit going through 10, but it never turned and once you get off in the dirt there that’s a bad place to get off. It was a big hit, but I’m OK. I’m just bummed out for the situation. This is a great race track. We really love racing out here and I’ve had some great finishes here, but we’ll have to wait until next year to try again.”
WERE YOU HAPPY TO SEE THOSE TIRES SITTING THERE IN FRONT OF THE WALL? “Yeah, absolutely. Who knows if it would have been just the concrete. That definitely softened the blow a little bit.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “Todd did a good job and got me some track position and got the car running pretty good. We struggled all weekend and got something decent. Once we started running I thought, ‘We’re not that slow.’ We made some adjustments and started getting closer and got a top-five out of it. We’ll take that. I think it’s our third top-five in a row and they’ve all been hard fought.”
DID YOU THINK YOU HAD ANYTHING ON THAT FINAL RESTART AFTER PITTING? “We maybe could have adjusted a little differently to try to take off a little better. I just took off tight and couldn’t get going. We learned some things to make us better the next time, so I think that’s the biggest thing to come out of today.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Fastenal Ford Fusion – “We were actually really good on the longer runs and if we put new tires on it wouldn’t be that much faster, so Nick thought we should take a gamble and we stayed out. We got a little too loose. If not, I think we could have maintained a top 15. All in all it was a good day for us. We kept it on the track for the most part and didn’t miss any shifts and finished. It’s our best finish here in a while.”
SAM HORNISH JR. – No. 9 Jacob Ford Fusion – “I put myself in better positions two out of the other three times I’ve been out here but got run over. That time we weren’t in a very good position, so we put tires on it and we were the ones going forward. All in all I’m real happy with the effort everybody put forward on our Jacob Companies Ford Fusion. With how fast we were on Friday I was pretty disappointed with how we qualified and I was disappointed with about half of the race today, but we hung in there and got the best finish that we could out of it. I appreciate all the guys’ hard work and I’m looking forward to going to Watkins Glen. I’m a lot better there than I am here, so if we can get a top 10 out of it here, hopefully we can get a solid top-five out of it when we go to Watkins Glen.”
THERE WAS A LOT OF BANGING AROUND TODAY. WERE YOU WORRIED ABOUT THAT AT THE END? “I was really clean all the way up to that last seven-lap run to the end and then everybody just started running in there hard. At one point in time I restarted right behind Biffle and we went into turn four and I’m braking, they’re pushing me into him, I’ve got the brakes on as hard as I can, the rear wheels are jacked up and I know he’s into the guy ahead of him so it was just unfortunate that you try to race clean and take care of the car and do all those things and then the last couple laps you’ve got to go for it. We tried to play as cleanly as we possibly could today and I’m proud of the 10th-place finish that we got. I felt like at times today we were like a 25th-place car, so to be able to get that much more out of it is a good day.”
THOUGHTS ON KYLE BUSCH WINNING. “I think that’s great. Obviously, Kyle is a winner and he knows how to get it done on the road courses as well as the ovals, so to be able to see him do that is great. By the same token, I wish it was me. But to see him get back in the car, he’s been fast ever since he got in it and it’s like he never missed a beat.”
COLE WHITT – No. 35 Uponor Ford Fusion – “It was OK. I wish it would have went a little bit better, but I felt like I kept my car pretty clean up until about halfway through the race. I felt like we were pretty good on the long runs, but we didn’t really get any at the end. I just had to use our car up against guys that were driving over their head on the restarts. I just used my car up and I couldn’t do anything with it from there.”
THE LAST FEW RESTARTS GET PRETTY CRAZY. “Yeah, there were people everywhere. I had a pretty decent car up until then, but then I got every fender smashed in on it from there and it didn’t drive as good.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Nathan’s Famous Ford Fusion – “Today was a good day. It was fun having a competitive road course car. That was my best road course finish, and it keeps us in the hunt for the Chase. We’re ready to defend our win at Daytona next week.”
