Ford Performance NXS Notes and Quotes
Ford EcoBoost 300 – Homestead-Miami Speedway
Saturday, November 21, 2015
DRIVER’S CHAMPIONSHIP PRESS CONFERENCE
JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – No. 60 Fastenal Ford Mustang – TALK ABOUT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS CHAMPIONSHIP TODAY? “It has been a great year for us. I am recovering from a cold so I apologize for being a little hoarse. The way the championships worked out in traditional fashion before the Chase was introduced to the Cup series you had to win the races when you can and minimize the points lost on a day when you can’t be your best. Unlike the Sprint series where it is a focus on winning races and you don’t have to worry so much about giving up on a bad day. Chris was on his game this year with Scott Graves as his crew chief and he was on his game. They managed to win two races and managed not to give up points on days they weren’t their best. That is what got us to this point. I think I have been in the XFINITY series for 25 years. I have been in the Cup series for 28 years. The third year in the Cup series we started racing XFINITY cars. It is a good series for drivers to establish themselves and earn a right of passage into the Sprint Cup and we have enjoyed a number of rookies there and a lot of success with our drivers in that series as well as the Truck series and we have won two championships in the Cup series as well.”
SPEAKING OF THE RIGHT OF PASSAGE, WHAT ARE THE PLANS FOR CHRIS NEXT YEAR? “We are still not sure what his arrangement will be next year. He will be involved in a Cup car to some extent but whether it is a part time program or full program we are still in the midst of finalizing the conditions of that. We have a number of possibilities but we aren’t ready to announce that today.”
WHAT MADE YOU TAKE A CHANCE ON CHRIS? “Chris was really identified by the Ragan family first. They gave him lodging to bring him into the Charlotte area. He is from Texas of course and you needed to have a connection to be able to finish high school and to work your way up the chain here in the Charlotte area for the progression. David Ragan’s dad, Ken Ragan, housed him and gave him a place to start. He was brought to Robbie Reiser’s attention and Robbie was impressed with him and brought him to my attention. I get the credit for finding all the driver talent we’ve had but it is generally someone else in the organization that had the first contact. He was identified by Robbie as somebody we should take a look at and we gave him some support, not a lot, for a number of years in the ARCA Series and he eventually won an ARCA championship and when we got him in a full time XFINITY car on his second year of that it has come to fruition.”
DO YOU EVER LOOK INTO YOUR XFINITY PROGRAM AND FIND THINGS YOU NEED TO APPLY TO YOUR CUP PROGRAM OR ARE THEY TOO DIFFERENT? “The front suspension rules with the way the shock absorbers and bump rubbers are in the XFINITY series and Cup series are different. I understand the XFINITY series will get the bump stops and shock absorber retention system that the Cup guys have next year and that will make them more similar than they have been. To the extent we can we have applied our software to those programs and with the changes that need to be done for the difference in components we use the same tools. The aero program one benefits the other with the way we cool our brakes and differential heat exchanger and the various things you do to affect the drivers cooling the air coming in and out of the passenger compartment are very similar. NASCAR, since they made the wheel base the same has allowed us to use the same chassis minus some of the differences as I mentioned in the front suspension. There is more information that flows from the Cup side based on the fact we have more engineers. We have one engineer per team for the XFINITY cars but three per team for the Cup guys that work directly with the team and that generates more ideas that benefit the XFINTY guys more than the XFINITY benefits the Cup.”
CAN YOU ASSESS THE OUTLOOK OF YOUR CUP PROGRAM FOR NEXT YEAR? SPECIFICALLY HOW THE LOW DOWNFORCE PACKAGE MAY BENEFIT YOU GUYS. “We have not been a fan of the high downforce, high drag package. I would like to think that given a set of rules if we had the same opportunity everyone else does we would find the same solutions but we have not progressed as rapidly as some of the other teams have. That has left us not having the year on the Cup side we would like to have. We had the two races with the low drag package and with the tires Goodyear brought those two times it sure looks like it is more lined up with the driving preference that our drivers have. I think that they will have more enthusiasm for it in 2016 than we have had in the last couple of years.”
HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT FOR YOU TO WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP ON FORD CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND? “It is always great to win at any Ford event. I know my team has won when they declared the 100th anniversary of Ford as something to be celebrated and Greg Biffle won at Michigan which was in the backyard of Ford Motor Company and that was a great honor a few years ago and we have managed to win also when Ford had their 1,000th win in NASCAR with Greg at MIS as well. Whenever Ford has their flag out we have managed more times than not to rise to the occasion. I wish we had a Cup championship or manufacturers championship opportunity but we missed that this year and will have to satisfy ourselves with the drivers championship with Chris and hope for the best next year.”
