Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Folds of Honor/QuikTrip 500 Qualifying – Atlanta Motor Speedway
Friday, February 26, 2016
Ford Qualifying Results:
3rd – Trevor Bayne
5th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
10th – Brian Scott
14th – Greg Biffle
17th – Brad Keselowski
23rd – Ryan Blaney
26th – Joey Logano
27th – Aric Almirola
29th – Landon Cassill
31st – Chris Buescher
38th—Jeffrey Earnhardt
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – WHERE DO YOU FEEL YOU MISSED IT? “We were just really loose. I don’t really understand. We weren’t super-fast in practice, but we were a top-10 car for sure. We were really, really loose the first run and made some changes, but it’s hard to go fast here the second run when tires wear out so much. We did go a little faster, but that one kind of hurts. We’ve got to figure it out. We’ve got a little bit of work to do. It’s obviously a new package and we apparently don’t have our heads wrapped around it perfectly yet, but we’ll get it. We’ve just got to keep our heads down and keep digging. It’s still a long weekend here. I thought we were pretty good in race trim, we just have to race a little bit from the back now.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Autotrader Ford Fusion – WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR CAR AND THIS PACKAGE? “I don’t know. It seems pretty early. I guess it will be good until we all screw it up. It’s the right direction in my mind. It’s just a matter of time for the teams that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop it and screw it back up. That’s our job.” WHAT ABOUT TODAY WITH YOU AND JOEY IN QUALIFYING? “We haven’t had very good qualifying speed. Our race run speed earlier today was really strong, so I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to tell those nuances so early in the season with a different rules package on the car. I’m not sure exactly what to make of all of it yet.” HOW MUCH OF A ROLE DOES GOODYEAR PLAY IN MAKING THIS A SUCCESSFUL PACKAGE? “It’s like the baking soda to our cake. Too much or too little and it doesn’t rise or it turns out tasting like crap.” THERE ARE 39 CARS HERE AND THE FIELD COULD BE 40. IS THAT OK IN YOUR WORLD? “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it. I’d rather see it be a full field. I don’t know. I guess I feel like NASCAR is going through its own process, much like the rest of the country is, of trying to decide whether we want to be capitalists or socialists and some days each one sounds good (laughing).” YOU’LL START 18TH. WHAT DO YOU NEED TO WORK ON? “Obviously, what you race here and what you qualify are two different things. Sometimes they carry over and a lot of times they don’t. If there’s one track where it doesn’t, this is one of them. You always look at those high tire wear tracks as being the type of tracks where what works to qualify versus what works to race are two different things. I’m pretty optimistic. I remember a couple of years ago here I think we qualified in the twenties and drove up to third or fourth in the first run. Hopefully, we’ll have that again.” WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE STEWART-HAAS NEWS? “I was kind of blown out of the water because it’s such a big move. I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t see that one coming. Maybe my first thought was, and I texted Dave Pericak and said I thought it was a ballsy move. To go after a team that has had the success that they’ve had over the last three or four years at Stewart-Haas Racing you better bring your cajones to the table and to pull it off is even that much more. I thought, and I haven’t really put together all my emotions or thoughts on it, but I think the strongest one at this point is it’s good for the garage whenever the manufacturers are more involved. There are really only two needles in this sport that you can move that have the ability to lift the tides of all ships, and that’s a stronger, more connected fan base and OEMs. Fans because of course if we have bigger attendance and higher TV ratings, it just drives up value. And OEMs because anytime an OEM strengthens their commitment it forces the others to review theirs and more than 90 percent of the time I’d say they raise their allocations. So in that sense, it’s always a good thing when an OEM gets deeper into the sport, whether it be with a team or more activation – name whatever metric you want. I guess my predominant thought at the moment, subject to change, is that an OEM further engaged in this sport is a great thing.” YOU HAD NO INKLING ABOUT THIS? “I found out the night before.” AND YOU HADN’T HEARD ANY CHATTER BEFORE? “No.” WHAT WILL IT BE LIKE TO HAVE ANOTHER TEAM LIKE YOURS WITH FORD? “I don’t think it’s a big deal for me. I think it’s a huge deal for the executives at Penske, trying to define that relationship to the advantage of all, but for me, at this point, I don’t see it as a big deal.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 EcoBoost Ford Fusion – “Our Ford EcoBoost Fusion felt really good in race trim and felt good in qualifying trim. I’m a little disappointed there. I overdrove turn three a little bit. I thought we had probably another tenth in it right there, so I feel really good about the speed the guys brought down in this car and all their hard work. Hopefully, it can continue in race trim tomorrow and making sure we have something that will run good on the long run. That’s gonna be tough here at Atlanta with the low downforce and sliding around with the soft tire, so I felt good about it today. We made about a 16-lap run and felt good, so we’ll see how it goes from here.”
BRIAN SCOTT – No. 44 Twisted Tea Ford Fusion – “I think it’s great for this team. It’s our first year working together and our first race with Twisted Tea. It’s nice to have Roush Yates Ford power, I tell you that much. The engine did a great job tonight and, all in all, it’s just a good start. It makes us feel good. You never get a good gauge where you stack up as a team at Daytona, so it feels really great to come here and have a good first qualifying effort. It gives me a lot of confidence and a lot of enthusiasm going for the rest of the season.” HOW DOES THIS PACKAGE FEEL FOR YOU? “It’s just an overall balance thing. Obviously, qualifying the balance that we had here at Atlanta felt good for me and we were able to make it to the final round, and we’ll see going forward. I think it’s too early to cast a verdict on this low downforce package with the balance and stuff that you have. Atlanta is such a unique place in itself, so we’ll see when we get to a couple more mile-and-a-halves and it will be interesting to see what our short track program is like. There’s a lot more indicators and gauges for the strength of our race team still to come, but I’m proud that we’re passing this first hurdle well.”
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion – “We saw that we had speed last year at Kentucky and Darlington with this low downforce package. I would say fourth is a surprise for sure. I was hoping for a top-15 day. That’s what we’re working towards and that’s our goal every week – to run to top-15 until we can run top-10 every week and be consistent and don’t make mistakes. This is a pleasant surprise, for sure.” A LOT OF EYES ARE ON RFR THIS WEEKEND. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO GET OFF TO A GOOD START? “It’s great. Obviously, we had a little speed at Daytona, but Atlanta is where you see what you’ve really got. Obviously, we hope that translates to race speed. It’s not just one lap speed, we have to make our cars last and not wear our front tires. That’s kind of my concern right now, but there’s been a lot of effort put into this and I’m really proud of my guys. This feels a lot like a win.”
TREVOR BAYNE PRESS CONFERENCE – “Obviously, this comes with a lot of work that Roush Fenway Racing has been putting into our cars for the season. Last season wasn’t a reflection of work ethic at all, it was a reflection of being a little bit behind. This season, we’re really looking forward to this low downforce package as we’ve talked about over the off-season. We felt like our best races were at the low downforce tracks – Kentucky and Darlington – so everybody that’s wondering what’s going on at Roush Fenway Racing, a lot of hard work and a lot of attention to detail. We had a meeting last week talking about execution. Everybody’s intentions are right. Everybody wants to go fast. Everybody wants to win races, but now we’ve got to execute and make sure we make these fast Fords last. I felt like in practice we had maybe a top-15 car. I definitely didn’t see that second on the first run out there. That kind of surprised me a little bit when Matt came on the radio and said, ‘P2, good job buddy.’ I was excited to hear that. It seems like our cars have some speed. Driveability is really similar to what we’ve battled with in the past, it has just a little bit more speed in it, so we’ll see if we can’t make it last for 500 miles.”
TREVOR BAYNE CONTINUED – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WERE IN THE MEDIA CENTER? “It’s been awhile and it’s probably not for anything performance related. We’re really excited for that. I was talking to Jamie Little after qualifying and my previous best was 29th here, so to qualify fourth that’s a pretty big improvement and we look to hang onto that. Watching Matt Puccia last year, he and Greg were able to do some things that other cars weren’t able to do in our group, so I’ve been really looking forward to working with him personally. I feel like I’ve got a great group of guys around me from my car chief, engineer, spotter, we’ve done a lot of revamping there, but we’re just the guys that go to the race track, so it comes from all of the work back at the shop on cars and bodies and attention to detail like I talked about.”
HOW FRUSTRATING IS IT GO THROUGH THAT? “It’s tough. People aren’t on the ground going through it with you from the media side of things or fans. They just see your results and they want to beat you down and say, ‘What’s going on?’ They think you just kick back on the couch and hang out and go to the race track and run 29th, and that’s not what we do. We work as hard as anybody does and put in the time and effort and do all the right things that we can do, we just have to get our cars faster. One of the things that’s been preached to us from Kevin Kidd, Robbie Reiser and Jack Roush is execution. They say our cars are gonna get better, we’re gonna work through it, we’re gonna get our cars faster and when those times come, we have to be able to execute and I feel like we did that today. We had a fast race car. We went out and got a top-5 starting spot, so now with our practice tomorrow we have to make use of that time, make sure our car will last, like I keep talking about. I was really tight, so I’ve got to make sure I keep the right-front on it. I’m really proud of these guys because it’s really hard to go through a season like we went through last year as a group – from everybody at Roush Fenway Racing, the guys that go to the shop at 6:30 every morning and go and watch the TV on Sunday and see their cars running like that it’s disheartening. This is a really good shot in the arm. Stenhouse is sixth, so it’s not just a one fluke deal. I think we’ve got some speed in our cars, so it comes from a lot of effort and getting through the hard times. We’ll have hard times to come. Everybody does, but I think we can fight through it as a group.”
HOW BIG OF A MOTIVATOR IS THIS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM AND DOES IT CHANGE THE MINDSET? “This is motivating because we know we can do it now. We get the cars and the right pieces under us and we can do it as a team. The starting spot, we’ve seen these races be so tough to pass. Atlanta is a little bit unique because as the tires wear out, we saw Jimmie Johnson and some of those guys last year drive from the back. You can do it a little bit here, but it always make your day better when you’ve got that clean air up front – long run stuff does pay a big deal here, though, so that’s what we’ll work on. Like I said, it’s a huge shot in the arm for these guys that go in and work so many hours and for myself, to sit here and have to look at Twitter or Instagram or whatever and watch all these people talking bad about us and they don’t realize the effort that we’re putting in, so it’s great, it’s motivating and we’ll keep fighting.”
WHAT WILL YOU FOCUS ON TOMORROW AND DID YOU PRACTICE QUALIFYING TODAY IN PRACTICE? “We did do three qualifying runs at the end of practice. We started in race trim. The biggest issue that we fought was tight. You don’ t want to be tight here at Atlanta because it chews up that right-front tire. My loosest run all day was my first qualifying run out there when we were second, so it shows there’s speed in being loose here. We just have to make the tires stay on the thing for the long run. A short run car is great, but long runs are what wins the race, so that’s what we’re gonna work on tomorrow. Matt and I have talked a lot about it and we’ll come up with a plan to do that.”
