Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Go Bowling 400 – Kansas Speedway
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Ford Finishing Results:
> 5th – Ryan Blaney
> 10th – Brad Keselowski
> 13th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
> 18th – Aric Almirola
> 22nd – Brian Scott
> 24th – Chris Buescher
> 25th – Trevor Bayne
> 27th – Greg Biffle
> 31st – Landon Cassill
> 34th – Joey Gase
> 38th – Joey Logano
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 AAA Ford Fusion – “It just looked like the 2 got loose and then the 11 got loose. I was hoping the 11 would come down the hill and when you’re in the smoke you can’t see anything. I hit the wall, so I knew where that was and I just kept riding and riding and hoping the 11 would come down the hill because I couldn’t see and he stayed up there and I got him right in the door. It’s unfortunate. Our AAA Fusion was good. We made some good changes on it and actually made it to where I thought it was a possible winning car with all the circumstances going right and with those restarts the way they were, maybe we would have been able to capitalize. It’s just racing. Things happen sometimes.” A LOT OF GREEN FLAG RUNS. “A lot of green flag runs. Really hard to pass. A lot of guys were taking air off each other to limit passing, but it was challenging and a lot of fun. When you’ve got a few cars together you can get a lot of back and forth and you had to be real strategic on the moves you made from inside the race car.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Alliance Truck Parts Ford Fusion – WHAT HAPPENED ON THAT RESTART? “Kyle did what he had to do. He put a little block on and I still got underneath him, but the little block kind of opened up a run for the 11 car from behind and he put it in there and it just spun all of us out. That’s part of it, I guess.” IT LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE ALL SPINNING AT THE SAME TIME. “No, you don’t have to hit each other. The air just spins everybody out. It’s hard to explain because you can’t see it.” SHOULD DENNY HAVE KNOWN? “I don’t know who should have known. We know now (laughing).” YOU’RE LAUGHING ABOUT IT RATHER THAN BEING MAD. “I’m disappointed, but I don’t think there was anything malicious. We’re just all racing for wins and that was everybody’s shot to win the race.” IF TRUEX DOESN’T HAVE HIS PROBLEM CAN ANYBODY CATCH HIM? “I don’t know how good he was, but it looked like at times he was really good. I don’t know what happened to him.” WHERE IS YOUR PROGRAM ON THESE INTERMEDIATE TRACKS? “The Gibbs cars are better than everybody pretty much everywhere. I think that’s pretty obvious. I feel like we’re kind of hovering in that fifth to tenth range, which is respectable but not as good as we want to be – but in striking distance. If we get a few breaks to go our way, we can win races and we’ve shown that. We almost got a break to go our way today, and I think we would have had a shot at winning the race but it didn’t come together. All in all, we’d like to be just a touch faster.” DENNY SAID HE MADE THAT AGGRESSIVE MOVE BECAUSE HE’S ALREADY LOCKED IN THE CHASE. WOULD YOU AGREE WITH THAT? “Yeah, I think that’s where everybody is that’s won a race.” HOW WAS YOUR NIGHT? “It was a long night. We had so much long run speed, but weren’t where we wanted to be on the short runs, so we would kind of lose track position and then gain it back at the end. We kind of clawed our way up into that fifth to tenth range and stalled out there a couple times. With about 30 to go we made a great strategy call that got us up to fourth with fresh tires, and it looked like we were gonna have a shot to give Kyle a run for the race win and kind of got caught up there in turn three battling for second, so that kind of put us in the back. We drove back up to 10th in the last 20 laps from 17th or whatever, so it was up and down.” HOW WAS THE RACING? “It’s so hard to explain to our fans what’s going on that you can’t see, but the air is controlling the whole race. You can be three-quarters of a second faster than someone, but you get stuck behind them in that air wake and you slow right down. At the end there we spun out and none of us hit each other. All air spun all of our cars out, and that just shows how aero-sensitive the cars still are. It’s better than we’ve been, but obviously could still be better.” THE WHOLE RACE WASN’T THAT CRAZY. “Yeah, I guess the one crazy moment there was I was in it.” WHAT WAS THE NATURE OF THIS RACE? “It’s a good question. I think the cars would change a lot short run to long run. The green flag cycles kind of broke it up and then, of course, the Gibbs cars had enough speed to kind of control the pace and they did all race.” CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE INCIDENT AGAIN? “I think everybody got a glimpse of just how important and how impactful the air is to the race cars. We just all went down in the corner and the air spun us all out just with the positioning we had. It’s unfortunate, but it is what it is.” OTHERWISE A TOP-10 FINISH. “It was an up and down day for us. The ups were when we were up front and battling for second, and the downs were spinning out and going to the back and then back up again with the dozen or so laps we had at the end.” WERE YOU CAUGHT OFF GUARD BY HAMLIN’S MOVE? “No, I wasn’t caught off guard.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Zest Ford Fusion – “It definitely isn’t what I felt like we deserved. I thought we had a top-10 car. We just have to clean up everything from pit stops to getting the car a little bit better throughout the race. We kind of just maintained. We have to be able to work on it to get it faster throughout the race, but, all in all, we had a decent day with the Zest Ford. I’m glad we’re upset with 13th-place finishes, so we’ll continue to get better.” HOW WAS THE RACING TONIGHT? “I was worried about here because it’s similar to Las Vegas, so we don’t have the really fast race tracks figured out right now on the long run. We kind of struggled with that at Vegas and we struggled again tonight, so we’ve got to look at what we’ve got to do to make that a little bit better.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – PIT ROAD INTERVIEW — “It went smooth all day, really. I thought we were really good early in the race and as the night fell I felt like we lost a little bit of speed comparable to other cars that we were better than in the beginning of the race. They got a little bit better and we got better at the end there, but just needed a little bit more. That last run I thought we were sitting in a good spot. We started fifth and the top two were on old tires and I’m like, ‘We might be able to be all right,’ but we just couldn’t get by those guys and held on. It was definitely a solid day for us and something to build off of.” THIS MIGHT MAKE YOUR DAD FEEL A BIT BETTER AFTER LAST NIGHT’S ACCIDENT. WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT HIM AT ALL? “No, he’s doing all right, but I hope this will definitely make him feel better.” HOW EXACTLY DID THE TRACK CHANGE AS NIGHT FELL? “This track is very temperature sensitive and when it cooled off I’d gain a lot of grip. We were back and forth on being tight and loose. We were okay at the end. Overall not a bad day.” HOW FUN WAS IT RACING WITH JOEY LOGANO FOR 9TH AND 10TH BEFORE HIS INCIDENT? “Yeah that was interesting.. He’d be better than us in the beginning, I’d pass him and he’d pass us back. That was a lot of fun. It’s a shame he got in a wreck.” IS THAT THE BEST WAY FOR A YOUNG DRIVER TO LEARN? “When you can run with the best guys, you learn a lot. and that was a great learning experience.”
RYAN BLANEY PRESS CONFERENCE – “We started off the race really, really good, and I thought that’s when we were the strongest – when the sun was up and the track was a little bit hotter. We were really strong and then as the night came and it cooled off a little bit, we lost a little bit of speed. I felt like everyone kind of gained grip and got better and we lost a little bit. It took us a while to try to get that back. We got it closer towards the end there, but it was still a decent finish for us. We got some spots with that little accident, but we were up there all day. It was just a good day for us, a good night and something to build off of for sure.”
HOW IS YOUR DAD? “He’s fine. My dad got out of the hospital this morning. He called me this morning when he got out and he was still laying in the hotel room and was about to come home. I think he got home actually in time for the race, so I think he was able to watch the race. He got his bell rung pretty good, but he’s all right.”
GETTING THAT CALL HAD TO TAKE A LOAD OFF. “Yeah, it did. I knew last night he was gonna be all right. It scared me for one second because we got done qualifying yesterday and I get back to the motorhome and I left my phone in the bus and I got all these text messages like, ‘Heard the news. Is everything all right?’ I was like, ‘Am I in trouble?’ It was like, ‘Is there anything we can do to help?’ I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ It’s amazing how you find out what’s actually going on on Twitter from other people and getting texts or calls or something like that. So when I initially saw it, I was a little worried because they made it sound worse than what it was on Twitter, but I called one of his crew guys and he told me he was gonna be all right and he was alert and awake and everything like that. I haven’t seen a video of it. I was told there was a video of it, but I don’t know if I want to watch it. He’s gonna be all right. He’s probably mad he’s gonna be out of sprint cars for a little bit, but that’s the only thing he’ll be upset about.”
WHEN YOU HEAR NEWS LIKE THAT DOES IT MAKE YOU FOCUS MORE ON RACE DAY? “Not really. I wasn’t any different going into this race than I was last week or the week before that. It’s just that people, especially last night and today, they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m so happy he’s OK.’ I’m grateful he’s all right, but you’ve got to know that’s part of the sport. That’s the risk we take when we get in any form of race car, so it didn’t affect me too much. He’s doing what he likes to do and doing what he loves. Things happen like that. It might be a little harsh to say and maybe I’m not saying it right, but it didn’t really add any focus. I was going into this race normal like I always do.”
WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THOSE FOUR CARS SPUN? “I was right behind it. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t see who got loose, who got into who, I just saw smoke and had to bail out of there. It stinks the 22 got tore up. He was pretty fast at the end of the night. I don’t know if the 2 got tore up or anything like that, but I don’t know if he finished. That stunk for them. I felt like their cars were pretty good at the end of the race. I actually think it hurt my car a little bit. I had to bail to the apron and it hurt the nose a little bit, which was unfortunate, but luckily we were able to get by that and move on.”
DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING THAT WILL HELP AT CHARLOTTE? “Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think for sure we can learn stuff. Even though it’s a different track and a different surface, you can definitely learn things of what these cars do when tracks cool off and it goes from day to night. So there are things we can sit back and apply for the 600 in a few weeks.”
