Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Coca-Cola 600 Qualifying – Charlotte Motor Speedway
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Ford Qualifying Results:
2nd – Joey Logano
3rd – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
5th – Brad Keselowski
6th – Greg Biffle
10th – Trevor Bayne
18th – Ryan Blaney
20th – Aric Almirola
22nd – Chris Buescher
30th – Brian Scott
33rd – Landon Cassill
39th – Jeffrey Earnhardt
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “We never say die, that’s for sure. We keep pushing to the end. That’s what I love about my team. It’s like, ‘We’re second. We’re gonna go again.’ It’s sometimes a last-ditch effort. Most of the times it never works, but we try hard and that makes us feel better so we keep pushing at it. Overall, the Shell/Pennzoil Ford was really fast. We showed that with winning the first two rounds, but we just didn’t win the most important one at the end. A front row starting spot is nice for a 600-mile race. We can get a good pit stall because we’re gonna be in the pits a lot. I’m excited about the speed we have in the car. It’s continued from week to week from the All-Star Race, so we’ll see what we’ve got.”
THE TIRE GAVE UP BUT YOU STILL WENT FASTER AS THE SUN WENT DOWN. “Yeah, isn’t that pretty cool? The track changes so much here at Charlotte, and this tire is what we’ve all been asking for. This tire gives up like we’ve been asking, but it was still interesting because we’d still go a little bit faster every round as the track would cool down, but the tires are wearing down so it’s all about how hard you can push the car with something you keep thinking about inside the car. You’re saying, ‘How hard can I go,’ and what the adjustments need to be. If you’re going faster, the car is gonna travel more. Are we gonna hit the race track? All of those things you have to weigh out before you go back on the race track, so it was a fun qualifying session for that reason.”
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion – “We’re in 10th again and like I said a couple of weeks ago we’re kind of disappointed with 10th. That’s a refreshing thing to be disappointed with and all of our teammates – third, sixth and 10th – that’s a pretty good day for Roush Fenway Racing. That’s kind of back to where we were in 2011, ’12 when things were looking up for us. We’re glad to be headed the right direction. We just missed the balance a little bit in my car. It has speed in it and it definitely had enough speed to be a pole car today if we just hit the balance right. We maybe over-adjusted a little bit and expected too much out of the race track with cool temps. We were just overall too tight and didn’t have enough adjustment in the car. We got it too free in trying, but it’s a really good day for our AdvoCare Ford. We can see the front from there and hopefully we can work our way to it.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Cheez-It Ford Fusion – “That last lap I messed up a little bit. I didn’t get to the bottom getting into three. I don’t know what happened, but like the guys said it’s good to be disappointed with sixth. I think we had a chance at the front row for sure. I beat them in one and two, I promise. I think I beat the 78 and the 22 in one and two, but I didn’t turn to the bottom in three and four and gave up some speed down there.”
YOU WERE FAST HERE A YEAR AGO, BUT EVEN FASTER THIS YEAR. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? “Our cars are way better this year. We’re not there yet, which kind of shows, but we’re a lot closer. Now the important thing is 30-lap speed. We’ve got one-lap speed. Now we just need to translate that into 30-lap speed and that’s gonna really be the key for us.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Fastenal Ford Fusion – PRESS CONFERENCE – YOU MUST BE ENCOURAGED ABOUT TODAY. “No doubt. Being in the top four in every session there was really big for us. We’ve been fast at times in qualifying, but never put every round together and stayed that consistent, so I’m really proud of the team for the adjustments that they made throughout the qualifying session there. We just missed it a little bit, but we know where to go work on it to get it better. Now our job is to get it better on Saturday for a long 600 miles and make sure that we’ve got some adjustability in it. It’s something that I feel like we’ve struggled with. If I could point out one thing that we’ve struggled with this year it’s making the car better throughout the race. That’s one thing we’ve been talking about all week and will continue to talk about and try to figure out come Saturday’s practices and getting ready for Sunday.”
RICKY STENHHOUSE JR. CONTINUED – WHAT’S THE MAIN AREA OF IMPROVEMENT THAT YOU GUYS AT ROUSH FENWAY HAVE PICKED UP ON THIS YEAR SO FAR? “I feel like it’s everything, but I think we’ve gotten better with our mechanical grip, our aero department. I feel like our simulation has gotten better. The engineers that we’ve brought in and the leadership that we have in each department has been better. The way the shop is run. We changed everything this off-season and I feel like so far everything is for the better and we’re trending in the right direction. We still have a long ways to go, but I’m definitely encouraged with how everything has been so far this year. We’re still not exactly where we need to be, but everybody is continuing to work. I think a lot of things this off-season that changed and then seeing it pay off early in the season kept everybody motivated to work harder and work harder together, and I think that’s the big thing at Roush Fenway. With our Fastenal extension this week was another boost of confidence in the shop with all the team as well.”
HOW MUCH TIME DID YOU DEVOTE TO QUALIFYING SETUP IN PRACTICE? “We started off in qualifying trim for a couple reasons. We wanted to make sure we got a good qualifying spot, which that paid off. But I would say 98 percent of the cars were in qualifying trim today. We all kind of had the same idea, but another thing was we can transfer one set of tires to the race and this being a race where we have 12 sets of tires, I believe, we do about 12 to 13 pit stops, so now we can transfer a set of stickers to the race. That will give us an extra set of tires come Sunday. If we would have done a race run today, and then jumped over and tried to do qualifying, we might not have had that extra set of tires, so that’s another reason why we stayed in qualifying trim. We did five runs today and they were all qualifying runs.”
DOES THAT CONCERN YOU AS FAR AS TIME TO DEVOTE TO YOUR RACE PACKAGE? “There are a couple ways to do it. Some people like to go out in race runs and build their qualifying package off their race runs. There are teams like the 48 that do qualifying runs every Friday and no race runs, and then build a race package off their qualifying setup. I think the 18 was really the only top car that did go out and do race runs today, so I would say one car has a head start on us. I don’t feel too concerned about it. I was really happy with the way today went. I think today qualifying third and starting a 600-mile race on the second row in a really good pit box when you’re stopping 12 or 13 times is definitely a big advantage.”
THIS IS YOUR BEST QUALIYFING EFFORT SINCE KANSAS IN 2013. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? “It feels good. We’ve had some solid qualifying efforts this year. The speed has been in the car. Our average starting position is way up so far this year, and that’s been good for us. I’m really happy about that. We’re going in the right direction. It was cool to see we had a lot of Fords in the Top 10 in that final round. That was awesome to see as well. We’re continuing to be better. We want to qualify first every week if we can. That’s always the goal although sometimes it doesn’t work out that way, but that’s the mindset going into every qualifying session and this year we’re just a lot closer.”
HOW HAS YOUR PERFORMANCE AFFECTED YOU IN YOUR CONFIDENCE? “The last couple of years was rough. I still felt like I could do it, but we weren’t getting it done on the race track, so then obviously you kind of wonder what you need to get the job done. Luckily for me, everybody at Roush Fenway never really talked about giving up on me. Everybody believed in my ability to get the job done and we kept working on our process and our program to get the job done with getting better race cars and I felt like I was really in the shop and really engaged with the guys to get our cars better and still am. I think all of us drivers at Roush Fenway have been a lot more hands-on so far this year versus the last couple years, which has been paying off as well because the 17 team can’t do it by ourselves. That’s been a key role, but definitely this year has built back the confidence that I feel like I belong here and know what I’m doing.”
JOEY LOGANO PRESS CONFERENCE – WHAT’S IT GOING TO TAKE TO BE THERE ON SUNDAY AFTER 600 MILES? “A lot. This is a great start for us. You look at 600 miles and you may say qualifying doesn’t matter much, but we’re gonna spend a lot of time on pit road in this race, so the pit stall is gonna mean a lot for us. We’ll have a good one. We won’t have as good of a one as if we were able to get the pole, but we’ll get the second-best stall in our opinion. Overall, our car has speed. It’s transferred over from last weekend, at least in qualifying trim. We’ll see what happens when we get back here on Saturday and get back in race trim, but overall our Shell/Pennzoil Ford is so fast. It’s still a race track we feel Todd and I have a hold on and an understanding what we need to do to go fast. We just came up a little bit short the last round. It was kind of tough after you’ve won the first two rounds. You feel like you’ve won it twice and you really want to get it the third time, but, unfortunately, just came up a little bit short. It is what it is.”
HOW MUCH DOES SATURDAY CARRY INTO THIS WEEK AND WHERE ON THE FINAL LAP DID YOU MISS IT THAT COST YOU THE POLE? “I think the confidence is high. Our momentum is going. We’re rolling again. It feels like last year. I think maybe some of these rule changes have fallen into our hands as a team, maybe it’s fallen into my hands as a driver and what it takes, I don’t know, but overall it’s working so we’re not gonna complain about that. Where did I miss it? I got a little bit tight landing in one, and a little bit free off. It wasn’t much and then three and four I thought was a pretty good corner, so I would say most of it was down in one and two – probably at landing and through the center is where I lost most of my momentum. It’s not much. Half-a-tenth of a second doesn’t take long.”
WHY DIDN’T SPEEDS PICK UP FROM PRACTICE? “I felt like I was going faster, that’s all I know. That’s interesting. I guess I would say that maybe he was up in the second lane in practice and there wasn’t much rubber in the second lane, and we ran a whole XFINITY practice and cars were all the way up to the wall rubbering in the whole race track, so maybe that took some of that advantage away that he was in the second lane. At the beginning of qualifying it definitely cooled off from practice. I went faster than I did in practice, I know that, but I thought it was interesting because the tire was a lot of fun. There is a lot of tire fall-off with this tire and we saw it last weekend. The cars are dropping off in speed. This is what we want. This is what we’re asking for and Goodyear has delivered this weekend, so we’re really excited about that. Qualifying was really interesting because the sun is going down and it’s going faster, and your tire wear is growing so it was just a fun little guessing match on how hard you can push your car and what’s gonna happen with travels and all that while you’re out there. It was a lot to think about when you went through to qualify this time.”
HOW IS YOUR XFINITY CAR AND WILL IT HELP FOR SUNDAY? “My XFINITY car is not very good. That’s really the only way to put it right now. I hope it gets better. We’ve got a couple days to think about it and talk about it, so that’s good. Maybe we’ll come up with something. It’s no secret we’ve been struggling over there with speed in that race car, so I think we’re making small gains. It’s not great yet, but if all scenarios play out right we can race for a win. To transfer notes it’s less and less as the Cup cars take downforce off their cars. As you take drag off and downforce the Cup cars just tend to drive more different. Yes, you can take some things but the cars have become more different than they used to be.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — WHAT HAVE YOU FORD GUYS FOUND OF LATE? “There’s never one thing in this sport that is just, ‘Boom,’ faster. It’s a bunch of little things that are added up. I can’t speak for Roush Fenway on what makes their cars go fast. I don’t live in their shop, but for us I know it’s just constant hard work, it’s constant finding a little gain here and a little gain there. If it’s a little bit of aero, if it’s a little bit of something in the suspension, if it’s maybe a little bit of motor. It all adds up slowly but surely, but it does seem like maybe the rules change has kind of helped us a little bit, and that’s one thing that is constant for everybody across the field and how you adapt to those changes is crucial. We see this all the time that the first one to figure something out has an advantage for a short amount of time because they catch up really, really quick. We’ve got to capitalize while we feel like we’ve got some good speed in our cars right now.”
YOU SAID THE GOODYEAR TIRE SEEMED BETTER AS THE SESSION WENT ON. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT? “The tire wasn’t better, we went faster. The tire wore more, but the track cooled down, so we actually went faster. Maybe I screwed up. I usually say something I shouldn’t say, so that was probably what happened. What I meant to say is the tires are wearing a lot, but the track was cooling down so we actually went faster – which maybe I meant better by saying that. There’s a lot of tire wear, but the tires did not get better, the track got better.”
BUT YOU WERE MORE COMFORTABLE? “It was basically the same. We went fairly close to the same speed in all three rounds – within a tenth-and-a-half or two-tenths, so it wasn’t huge like we would have seen if it was hot the whole time. You would have seen big fall-off.”
