Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Toyota Owners 400 – Richmond International Raceway
Friday, April 22, 2016
FORD QUALIFYING RESULTS
· Qualifiying for Sunday’s race was canceled due to rain.
· The starting grid will be set due to practice speeds from Friday morning
STARTING LINEUP
2nd Joey Logano
6th Brad Keselowski
12th Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
16th Trevor Bayne
19th Greg Biffle
20th Brian Scott
24th Aric Almirola
28th Landon Cassill
29th Ryan Blaney
33rd Chris Buescher
39th Jeffrey Earnhardt
JOEY LOGANO PRESS CONFERENCE
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion – YOU WILL START ON THE FRONT ROW SUNDAY WHICH IS A BIG DEAL HERE.“Yeah, it is a good start for us for sure. I feel like my team did a great job understanding the weather today before we hit the race track. We went out there and made our qualifying run off the truck and then focused in on race trim thinking that we weren’t going to qualifying anyway. The plan was executed perfectly besides second instead of first. Overall it is a good starting spot. The last few weeks we have been up in the top-three in qualifying and I am proud of the effort there. It is important to start up front here. A lot of times you think about how this race runs and it is similar to Martinsville and having track position allows you to be more conservative with your car and tires. If you are in the back you don’t have the opportunity to save anything. It is nice to start towards the front and get a good pit stall and hit this race hard and see what happens.”
THE SWITCH TO DAY RACING HAS BEEN A BIG TALKING POINT. WHAT DO YOU TAKE FROM LAST YEAR THAT YOU CAN PUT TO GOOD USE ON SUNDAY? “I think the change is a great thing for racing. I think it is really nice that usually when the track is warm and the sun is beating on it that it takes more rubber and the track gets wider. When the track is wider it puts on a better race, in my opinion. I think it is a good change that the track and NASCAR made to go out and put on a better race and I also think Goodyear brought a good tire this week that really rubbers in the race track and has a lot of fall off. I am excited to see how this race is going to play out. I think it will be a lot different than what the fall race was. There was no rubber in the race track and it was cool out and everyone was stuck on the bottom all night long. I don’t think it will play out that way. I may be wrong but I don’t think it will play out that way.”
HOW CRITICAL DOES THIS MAKE YOUR PRACTICE SESSION TOMORROW? “For some it will be more critical than others. A lot of people spent all of practice in qualifying trim. There is a chance of rain tomorrow as well. We looked at it to make sure we got good balance on our race trim package and that is why we really focused in on race trim today. To me, every time you hit the race track is critical. Is it more critical tomorrow than it would have been if we had the extra 20 minutes today? I don’t think it really changes that.”
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE TONY STEWART BACK THIS WEEKEND? “We are glad to have him back. The 14 number has been out there every week but Tony hasn’t been in it so it is nice to have Tony back out in his final year. I can imagine he wants to go out on a good note and it is nice to have him back in the car and be in that position where he loves to be and try to end his career on a high note.”
DO YOU THINK SOMEBODY LIKE TONY STEWART SHOULD MAYBE GET TO TALK MORE FREELY ABOUT THINGS LIKE SAFETY CONCERNS BECAUSE OF HIS STATURE IN THE SPORT? “I think we have all kind of put our opinion out there as a group over last evening. Whether it is Tony or whoever it is I think a lot of times we want to be able to talk and voice our opinions, especially on the safety front of things. I don’t think it really matters who it is. With Tony there is plenty of experience behind what he says and a lot of people listen to his opinions because he has a lot backing him up.
DO YOU THINK THE DRIVER COUNCIL WILL BE MORE VOCAL AND PUBLIC WITH ITS OPINIONS IN LIGHT OF THE REACTION TO TONY’S INCIDENT THIS WEEK? “I think we have seen some vocal coming out of it already. There have been a lot of good things the council has done, especially this last year. The goal was for everyone to work together. The goal was to have not just a driver council and the owners and NASCAR and the competition group. All of us are supposed to work together to grow the sport into something even larger than it is right now. That is the ultimate goal for the council.”
