Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
5-Hour Energy 301 Qualifying – New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Friday, July 17, 2015
Ford Qualifying Results:
2nd – Joey Logano
10th – Brad Keselowski
14th – Greg Biffle
16th – Ryan Blaney
27th – Sam Hornish Jr.
29th – Aric Almirola
31st – Trevor Bayne
32nd – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
33rd – Cole Whitt
34th – Brett Moffitt
37th – David Gilliland
SAM HORNISH JR. – No. 9 Shaws/Smithfield Ford Fusion – “We thought that we made some pretty decent changes in between practice and qualifying that were gonna enable us to hopefully be able to transfer through. You get out there and so many times the track has rubber on it or it’s a little bit dirty from a practice session before, so you want to wait and let some other people clean it off. We waited probably just a little bit too long, but, all in all, I’m really happy with the guys that work on this Shaws No. 9 for us. It was real close to getting the speed we needed to be able to transfer, but not quite enough. I like racing here at Loudon quite a bit, but I’ve never qualified very good. We’ll just have to go out there and do the best that we can throughout the race. Three hundred laps, three hundred miles here is short in comparison to a lot of the other races that we run at, but it’s a long time here at Loudon so we’ve got plenty of time to get it done if we get our car right for Sunday.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 SKF Ford Fusion – “We definitely got a lot tighter the second round for some reason, I’m not sure why. I thought our SKF Ford Fusion was really, really good in the first session obviously with being the fast time. In the second one on both laps we were just really too tight and couldn’t get the front end to do anything, so we’ll go back and try to figure it out on why we lacked a lot of grip the second run. We made a good amount of changes, too, to try to get the front end to turn between the first and second session, and it went worse. We’ll figure it out. We’re just happy to be racing here this weekend. The past couple weekends have been pretty tough on us with Daytona and Kentucky getting rained out, knowing we had a fast car, and I think we’ve got a fast SKF Ford Fusion for this weekend. It’s not the starting spot we wanted, but I think our race car will be pretty good and we’ll find that out tomorrow in practice.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – PRESS CONFERENCE – “Second. It seems like the story of our week here coming off Kentucky with a strong second-place run and then qualifying second here as well. Not that I’m complaining about it, but it’s not much fun finishing second, being so close to getting trophies and pole flags and all the fun stuff. There’s not really much fun that happens when you finish second, but we’re close. We’ve got speed in our race car once again. We all know how special Loudon is to me to try to make something happen here, so it’s nice to know we’ve got a fast race car. And I think it’s pretty good in race trim as well. We weren’t very good in qualifying trim in practice. We changed a lot of things and kind of lit it up a little bit, so it’s something good to know for some things to work on in practice tomorrow and try to make it happen.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — YOU SEEM TO HAVE A GOOD GRIP ON THIS TRACK. WHY? “It’s been a long time throughout my career this was my toughest race track, where I felt like I just got beat everytime I got here and didn’t understand why. You keep trying different things and different setups and different driving styles and all these different things and it’s not just one thing that clicks off and you say, ‘Oh, that’s it.’ It’s a lot of different little things that eventually if you take a little bit of this technique, take a little bit of this that worked one time, take a little bit of this that didn’t work and try something different, and you keep improving and we’ve turned it into a good race track for our team, which is a lot of fun. It’s special when you take one of your worst race tracks and make it one of your best race tracks. That takes a lot of work to do that, but it’s not one of those race tracks that came naturally to me. You say, ‘OK, this is what it takes to go fast here. This is my style that works here.’ Nothing came natural at this race track, so it’s challenging to get around it, but it’s fun now that we’ve got a decent handle on it. There are still quite a few cars that are really good here a lot of the times, but I feel the last four or five times we’ve been here we’ve had a fast race car, so hopefully we have that again Sunday.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR FOUNDATION AND HOW THAT’S GOING HERE? “This time we did a golf tournament. We’re trying different fundraisers out and trying to figure out what works best for the area. The go-kart race was a great event and had a lot of fun, but the golf event allowed me to kind of go around and say hello and have some more personal time with everybody there, which was a lot of fun to do. I tried to hit some golf balls. I’m not a golfer by no means, but we made we had fun and didn’t crash too many golf carts, so that was good. It’s fun. We raised a lot of money. The foundation has been a big part of my life and Brittany’s life the last few years, especially this year because we’re trying to grow it so much and trying to do so much with it. We actually launched it sitting right here at this table about three years ago, so it’s the most rewarding thing that we can do, and it’s cool to know that you can take the fame and everything that comes along with being a race car driver and change people’s lives with it if you put a little bit more work into that, and I think that’s pretty cool to be involved with.”
