Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
STP 500 Qualifying – Martinsville Speedway
Friday, April 1, 2016
Ford Qualifying Results:
1st — Joey Logano
11th — Brad Keselowski
12th — Ryan Blaney
13th — Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
14th — Greg Biffle
20th — Aric Almirola
26th — Brian Scott
32nd — Trevor Bayne
33rd — Landon Cassill
36th — Chris Buescher
37th — Joey Gase
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “Todd does a great job with this Shell/Pennzoil Ford. I get to drive this things and it’s so much fun every time we come here to Martinsville, especially in qualifying. We’ve got to figure out the race part. We haven’t got that grandfather clock yet, but qualifying is something that Todd and I have wrapped our heads around and really understand what we have to do inside the race car and outside the race car. I couldn’t be more proud of these guys. I say all the time that Martinsville is the most important track to start up front and that’s when you’ve got to come here and really show what you’ve got. Everyone back at the shop, the way they build these cars, they did a great job for us today. I’m excited. This is a nice little fire for us to get us going. We’ve had a good season so far, but you want to break through and get some wins and this pole is definitely gonna help with some momentum.”
YOU KNOW THE STALL TODD WILL CHOOSE AND IT’S A REAL ADVANTAGE. “It’s huge. There was a point, I was re-watching the race last night when I got up here, and we came down pit road fourth and we went out first. A lot of it was because we had a great pit stop, but we also had a great pit stall selection and that really helped us as well. Starting up front here is important for a lot of reason. One is pit stall and two is really staying out of trouble, so I’m excited about the race.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – “It’s nice to get to the third round, but it didn’t go the way we wanted it to. We didn’t really have good speed that last round, but it’s nice to get a decent starting spot. It’s on the outside, though, so that kind of stinks, but we’ll see how our car is tomorrow.” YOU WORKED ON QUALIFYING ALL DAY TODAY, SO WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR TOMORROW IN RACE SETUP? “Tomorrow is a whole different ballgame. Making sure it’s good in race runs is completely different in how you drive the race cars, so we’ll search for a certain feel and see if we can try to find it.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Roush Performance Ford Fusion – “I’m really happy with that, but you’re frustrated at the same time because it’s so close. I’m not one to make a bunch of excuses, but the 42 locked the left-front up just past the start-finish line all the way down to the corner. There was smoke everywhere on my first lap, so I thought he was wrecking, so I was all shocked and let up early. I just didn’t quite get my mojo back until the last lap there. I wish I would have run one more because the car definitely has a bit more speed than that, but I was just sort of cautious after the 42 smoked that tire off. One, I didn’t want to do that myself and the 6 backed it in the fence because of axle hop issues, and I’m having a little bit of that, so I’m really happy starting 14th but I think we could have been in that top 12 with just a tick more.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Fastenal Ford Fusion – “We just got a little bit tight on the lap that I thought was our best lap and I thought it could have been a little bit better. We didn’t need much, but I was happy with the Fastenal Ford. This is our best qualifying effort at Martinsville. It will give us a good starting spot for Sunday’s race. We did a long run today. We ran 60 laps in a row and now we can sit back and look at our game plan for tomorrow and try to come up with the best race setup that we can, especially on the long run here at Martinsville. That’s where we struggled over the last couple races here and hopefully we can be a little bit better. This place hasn’t been too good to me in the past, so we’re looking to improve that. We’ve already done that in qualifying.” WILL THERE BE CHALLENGES STARTING 13TH? “There won’t be as many challenges as starting 23rd or 33rd where we generally qualify here. I’m definitely happy with everybody at Roush Fenway, working hard to get our cars better at every race track. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time this off-season on the short track program. We were really working on our mile-and-a-half program, so to come here and be a little bit better than last year is a boost of confidence that we’ve got things going even on the short tracks.”
LOGANO CONTINUES TORRID QUALIFYING STREAK AT MARTINSVILLE
Joey Logano won his third straight NASCAR Sprint Cup Series pole today at Martinsville Speedway. In addition, this marks the seventh straight race he’s qualified sixth or better at the half-mile track. Here’s a look at his last seven qualifying efforts: 1st (2016); 1st and 1st (2015); 2nd and 3rd (2014); 6th and 4th (2013).
POLE-WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “First off, anytime you can tie Jeff Gordon with a record that he’s got here at Martinsville makes me feel good. I didn’t know that was up for grabs today, but it’s nice to be able to at least get close to something he’s done here. The fact of the matter is we don’t have one of those trophies yet. We’ve figured out the qualifying part really well, but we really want to be able to win this race. This is something we’ve been really close to and we have a little extra motivation coming up here this week to really show what we’re made of, so it’s nice to be able to come up here and do what we know how to do, execute qualifying like we know how to at this race track. Ever since we unloaded this morning it’s been top of the board. It’s a fast race car. We knew that. We just had to keep our heads in the game and do what we know how to do.”
WHAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING ABLE TO WIN THREE STRAIGHT POLES AND BEING FAST ON SUNDAY? HOW DIFFERENT IS IT? “It’s a lot different and here probably more than most race tracks because you think about going fast here for one lap and going fast here for 500 laps. You need a car that’s fast at lap 400. If we did what we did today, it wouldn’t make it. There’s no way. I don’t think I would make it. I know after five laps I’m breathing so hard inside this car. I don’t know why qualifying at Martinsville gets me more than anywhere else we go. It gets the adrenaline going for sure, but it’s just such a razor’s edge that you’re running on and in the race you can’t really do that because your tires would wear out so quick. You may be fast for a few laps for sure, but it would fall off pretty hard. You definitely have to change your whole mindset when you go from qualifying to race trim here, probably more than most places.”
OBVIOUSLY WHAT HAPPENED LAST YEAR HERE WAS A BIG TOPIC. WAS THE KENSETH DEAL ON YOUR MIND? DOES THAT PLAY INTO THE MOTIVATION HERE? “To be quite honest with you it’s hard erase it from your mind. It happened. It’s in the past though, but it is something that drives you. You’ve got to use things like that to motivate you – not only you and your team. I think re-watching the race and stuff like that, if that doesn’t give you a little fire, nothing does. I know I felt really excited and really pumped up and jacked up to come to this race track and show what we’re made out of. This is a good start. Qualifying here is more important than any other race track we go to. Having a good pit stall pays a lot here because you’re coming down pit road so many times, so I think it pays really big here. And also starting up front allows you to save your car, like we talked about earlier. We’ve got a good start for sure. We’ve got 500 laps to go and we’ve got a couple practice sessions tomorrow in between.”
WHEN DID YOU RE-WATCH THE RACE? “Last night. I went to sleep not very happy (laughing), but ready to go.”
DID YOU HAVE ANY BRAKE ISSUES? “Brakes are something you always think about at Martinsville. You’re using them 1,000 times. You’re stopping twice a lap, and you’re on them hard. You’ve got to really slow down for these sharp, flat corners. It’s always a fine line, but the brake companies these days do such a great job giving us something that we can abuse for quite a long time throughout a race. But the fact of the matter is if you go a little bit too much they heat up, they start burning up, you’re putting heat into your tires through the rotors, so there’s a certain way you obviously don’t want to go to much with it and it’s just knowing when to push and when not to.”
IS LAST YEAR THAT BIG OF A MOTIVATOR? “It is a motivator. There’s no doubt and as an athlete you should use things to motivate you. You should use things to fire you up. That’s what I think drives people to work harder and to have that right attitude. That drive is something I’ve learned there’s another step inside of me that day and being able to reach that and achieve that on a consistent basis is something I find very important to reach, so I definitely used that. I use it as something that was a good thing that day. It’s hard to take something good out of that day, but I found something that I feel like was larger than a championship in my eyes.”
IS THERE A COMMON THREAD YOU’VE FOUND AS A TEAM HERE IN QUALIFYING? “It’s teamwork. I know that’s a cliché answer, but it really is because the driver can’t do it on his own and the car and team can’t do it on their own. Everybody has to work together as one team out there. Todd and I really spent a lot of time understanding why we’ve been fast here. In the past, you wonder why you weren’t. You make a little gain here, a little gain here, and eventually it’s like, ‘OK, all the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together.’ You just keep finding a piece everywhere and you start to make something out of it and we really understand why we go fast, and that’s the most important thing. You can hit on something every now and again by accident, but you’re not gonna do that over and over again if you don’t understand why you’re doing it and I think that’s something our team has done a great job is really understanding why we do certain things to our race car or why I drive the car a certain way – really communicating that to each other.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY ISSUES THAT THE TRACK USED LAST YEAR’S INCIDENT AS A PROMOTIONAL TOOL. DO YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEM WITH THAT? “I can’t blame them. They’re trying to sell tickets, right? In my eyes, is it great racing that happened? No. Did it draw a lot of attention to the speedway? Yes. If I ran the race track would I do that, and I have to put myself in his shoes? Yeah, I would. I get it. I remember going to Dover after we flipped there eight times and looking at the program and they had one of those that move and it had the Monster with my car in its hand and every time you moved it, it slammed it into the ground. I was like, ‘Wow, that kind of sucks from my point of view,’ but to everyone else they probably thought that was a big moment in that race. Sometimes you can’t look at everything through your lens particularly, you’ve got to look through other people’s lenses and look at a bigger picture and a little bigger scope than that.”
YOU AND BRAD WORKED TOGETHER LAST YEAR ON RESTART, LETTING ONE OR THE OTHER IN. IS THAT SOMETHING YOU CAN DO AGAIN THIS TIME AROUND? “That’s something that every teammate does out there. It’s something that may be more obvious to most right now because I felt like the two Penske cars were the best cars here in the fall, so we were both up front a lot and doing that. I feel like it worked out pretty smooth every time, to be honest with you. The way I looked at it is either one of us was able to come down in front. It didn’t really check up the field much. I thought that was pretty smooth. I can count a ton of times I’ve seen Hendrick cars do it or Gibbs cars do it. Everybody does it. That’s part of it because you get stuck on the outside lane and it’s brutal. I was watching the race last night and they replayed the spotters trying to get a driver down and how intense that spotter is trying to yell at their driver to get in that hole. That’s how much it means to get to the bottom. That’s why when you’re with your teammate and you have the opportunity to work together it really helps because you can be a winning car and you start second or fourth and you go back to sixth or seventh it takes a whole run to get back to where you started. That’s why getting down to the bottom and working these restarts in the right way is so important to even have a car to race at the end.”
SO YOU WOULD RATHER BE FIFTH THAN SECOND IF IT’S NOT YOUR TEAMMATE UP THERE? “I’d rather be third (laughing). It depends. Sometimes fifth is better than second if you had to look at those far apart, that would be kind of tough, but quite possibly that could be the case.”
DOES THE DOWNFORCE COME INTO PLAY HERE AT ALL AND DO YOU LIKE THIS NEW PACKAGE? “I love the package. I think it’s definitely the right direction. I think when you get behind other cars it does not affect the car behind as much. It still does. Of course it’s always going to because something is punching a hole in the air. Until we figure out a different way of doing it, which I have no clue how that would be. I’m not an engineer, I’m just a driver, but until we figure out what that is there’s always gonna be some hole in the air, but the fact of the matter is we’ve made it so much better being behind another car and being able to race. I think that’s shown in every single race so far, that there’s been better racing that what we had last year, for sure, so I like that part. Here at Martinsville, there’s gonna probably be the least amount of change from last year because it’s the slowest race track we go to and downforce plays the least amount. But I’m sure it will play a little bit in the race when you tuck up right behind somebody because even at Martinsville, when you get really close to another car you lose air on the nose and you can definitely tell, so aero does come into play here, but the downforce change is probably the least amount here. We’ve been in qualifying trim the whole time, too, so I probably don’t have the best read on it yet. I may know a little bit more tomorrow when we get back into race trim.”
WE TALK ABOUT JIMMIE AND JEFF AND DENNY WHEN WE COME HERE, BUT YOU’RE RIGHT THERE THE LAST TWO OR THREE YEARS. DO YOU FEEL OVERLOOKED COMING HERE? “Not when I get introduced at driver intros (laughing). Those guys have all won races here and I haven’t, so how are you supposed to talk about me. We’ve won a lot of poles and we’ve led a lot of laps now, but we haven’t won a trophy yet. Jeff’s not here anymore, so it should be a little easier but I think Chase is pretty good as well. I’m sure he’s gonna be up there racing with us, too.”
WAS THE ONLY THING STANDING BETWEEN YOU AND WINNING HERE LAST YEAR THE INCIDENT WITH KENSETH? “I felt like there were definitely points in that race that we had the best car. There’s points in the race Brad had the best car. There’s points in the race that the 4 was the best, the 24 was the best, the 20 was the best at times, but at that point in the race towards the end I felt like our car definitely picked up. The track went through a little bit of a swing as the race went and we made some good adjustments to our car to get the speed out of it that we needed to, and I felt like at that point in the race, towards the end there, we were the best car on the race track. As the leader kind of pulling away, I felt like we just had to run our race and everything was gonna go fairly smooth from there. There wasn’t many laps to go, so that gives us some confidence. We know what to do and how to work and go fast here. Do I feel like we should have won the race? It’s hard to say. There are so many things that could have happened. We could have had another caution and we could have had a different strategy or had a bad restart or maybe a pit stop went wrong. It could have been anything, so it’s hard to say did that cost you a win. Who knows, but it definitely didn’t help. We know that.”
