Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Quaker State 400 Advance – Kentucky Speedway
Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion, was back in the Kentucky Speedway infield media center for the second straight day after NASCAR Sprint Cup Series qualifying was canceled. Keselowski, who won last weekend in Daytona, will start second in tomorrow night’s Quaker State 400.
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – YOU’VE BEEN ON THE TRACK SINCE YESTERDAY AND SAW THE TRUCK RACE. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE TRACK AND HOW IT’S GOING TO PLAY OUT? “Not much has changed since yesterday, but I would say that I’ve been on track with the Cup cars and with the new aero package and all those things, and it’s been a bit of a joy to drive. The cars are challenging to drive like we thought they would be and like we hoped they would be. The mid-corner speed is way down. The straightaway speed is way up, so that’s a bit of a handful, but the good kind of handful that I think really challenges drivers to push it to the limits. My team is working on still maximizing the setup. Of course, we’re still highly anticipating the final practice session, which hopefully will come up here in the next hour or so or whenever this race blows out of here and we can kind of finish dialing in our car. It’s had decent speed so far, but maybe not exactly where we want to be. We’ve got a little more time to work on it, so we’re gonna go and do just that. I’m happy, of course, to be starting up front. You always want to earn it on the track during that weekend, but there is some sense of having earned it over the course of the season with points and so forth, and the success you’ve had on track, so either way it feels good to be starting up front. Hopefully, we can keep it up there all weekend long.”
HOW DO YOU APPROACH TONIGHT AND TOMORROW ON THIS NEW TRACK, AND WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON HOW TEAM PENSKE HAS PERFORMED SO FAR THIS YEAR? “I would say the approach is to take all of the Kentucky notes and run them through the shredder and start from scratch because what’s worked here in the past isn’t even close to what’s gonna work here this weekend. That’s been pretty obvious before we got on the track and then confirmation once we did get on the track. I think with this package being similar to Michigan and the repave kind of maybe more closely aligning this track to Michigan, a lot of what we’re doing is going off of those notes and what has worked for us there. So far, that’s been helpful for us. We had a lot of success with both Penske cars at Michigan. Joey won and I finished fourth, and both of us were, I thought, very, very competitive, so I think Team Penske as a whole is as strong as it has ever been, and I think we’re in a great position here to have a very strong stretch of races that hopefully we can finish up with at Homestead and get a championship.”
IT’S BEEN A TOUGH WEEK FOR THE COUNTRY. YOU WILL GO OUT AND PROVIDE SOMEWHAT OF A DISTRACTION FOR PEOPLE. HOW CONSCIOUS ARE YOU OF YOUR ROLE IN THAT PART OF THE ENTERTAINMENT ASPECT OF EVERYTHING THAT GOES ON? “I think it’s a balancing act. You don’t want to be, maybe the right term is unworldly, and ignore what’s going on. Of course, we all want to know what’s going on, and I’m as curious as anyone else, but I also understand that a lot of the attraction that our fans have to this sport and any sport is to help them get out of those moments or get out of that mental space. I think, for me, I try to balance that with trying to be cognizant on my own, but also understanding that in some ways I am an entertainer as a race car driver and a lot of the role that I think I serve in the community with what I do is to help brighten people’s day and make them smile. So those topics don’t really, of course, achieve that, so there’s maybe a fuzzy line, but certainly a balancing act between being conscientious of what’s going on but also conscientious of the position that we have as a sport in society.”
WERE YOU HAPPY WITH HOW DANIEL HEMRIC RACED LAST NIGHT OR WERE YOU HOPING HE WOULD HAVE PUSHED A LITTLE HARDER TO GET THAT FIRST WIN? “I thought he did a great job. He was right there and it just didn’t quite work out for him, but we’re just knocking on the door. If you knock on the door in this sport, success will come. I think the interesting thing about Daniel is he’s one of those guys that I think will be a better Cup racer than he is a Truck racer, just with his style, his technique, his demeanor, his enthusiasm and thoughtful approach. And sometimes we look at the Truck Series and the XFINITY Series and we compare them to maybe the collegiate level sports. If I was to do that I would say that Daniel is one of those guys that remind me of like a Tom Brady. He might not have the glorious collegiate numbers, but he’s the type of guy that has amazing potential at the Cup level. Making moves that he’s making and doing the things that he’s doing show to me that he’s capable of being an elite-level guy at the top of this sport, and sometimes that doesn’t always get a lot of highlights or a lot of praise in the second or third tier of this sport, but I see that in him and I’m really proud of him.”
CAN YOU DESCRIBE THIS PART OF THE SEASON? DO YOU LOOK FORWARD TO IT? “It’s a difficult part of the season, but an enjoyable part. I think some of the difficulty is it’s a wide variety of tracks, track types, track surfaces, challenges. It’s obviously the heat of summer, the hottest part of summer, so you look at that and that’s another part of the challenge, but I think it’s one of our strongest sections and that gives me a lot of enthusiasm going into it.”
WHAT IS YOUR IMPRESSION ABOUT THE TIRE COMPOUND BEING USED IN CUP? “I think the Cup Series is in a great position. The tire change seems to have been not only warranted but very successful. We haven’t seen any issues as of now. Of course, that can always change throughout a weekend, but I anticipate it will only get better. One of the key things is this rules package; the less downforce has been very, very helpful to reducing tire issues because the mid-corner speeds are down. It’s interesting going back and forth between the XFINITY car, where the mid-corner speed is almost 10 miles an hour higher than the Cup car, and the XFINITY cars are just killing the tires. So from a XFINITY perspective, I would say I’m very nervous about the race tonight and what you’re going to see and would expect a lot of failures of tires, but for the Cup race I think so far the signs have been very positive.”
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO DEVELOP CONFIDENCE IN YOUR NOTES AT A NEWLY REPAVED TRACK, AND DID THE OLD SURFACE TAKE A PHYSICAL TOLL ON YOU? “The race track was certainly more physical before with the bumps, but I didn’t think it was terribly out of line with the expectations I have of myself as a race car driver. Quite honestly, I thought there were some other places that were much more challenging, but to each his own. The challenge now is I think a little bit more mental because the groove is so narrow on a repaved track that you have to be perfect and not just perfect by yourself but perfect in traffic. The first lap of practice here I went to pass a slower car and I gave him too much room. I dipped a right side tire just slightly out of the groove and the car took off and I lightly brushed the wall. I think that’s a perfect example of how mentally demanding a repaved track is and maybe exchange for physical demand of where it was before. Maybe that’s what he was alluding to or you’re alluding to, but I would say that it takes time to get comfortable with the track. It’s a moving target. One of the interesting things about a track once it’s been repaved is even just sitting like it has right now for an hour or so with the rain and so forth the track is going to change dramatically, more so than at tracks that have had pavement around for a while. It seems the oils really seep up and you go back out there and the track is incredibly slick and you lose all of your confidence. Everything you’ve worked on doesn’t work anymore, so there’s a constant cycle of confidence, where you gain it and lose it, gain it and lose it, and a very taxing mental demand to tracks that have been repaved. Hopefully, this track will see the surface age a bit quicker than what we’ve seen at a lot of the other repaves.
“There has been a handful of tracks, maybe Pocono, Homestead and a few others that I might have left out that have used an aggregate in their asphalt where the track has aged very quickly and has kind of hit a sweet spot to where I think the racing has been phenomenal and the groove has widened out and the track is predictable. And I think that’s been key to seeing those tracks come together. Time will tell if Kentucky will be one of those tracks. Hopefully, that will be the case and when that happens we’ll build confidence and the racing will get even better.”
DOES THE RAIN CHANGE THINGS FOR YOU GUYS AS FAR AS THE TRACK GROOVE? “Yeah, it definitely will make the groove narrower. It’s kind of a shame because I know the track and Goodyear put a lot of work into bringing out the tire monster or whatever that machine is called to widen out the groove, which I think was certainly a great first step. Unfortunately, the tire that’s on the race car this weekend itself isn’t really helping by laying down rubber that we would need to keep seeing that grow wider and wider. So when the rain comes it’s gonna make the groove narrower. It’s gonna wash out a lot of the work that the track has done a great job of putting in, so it is what it is. We all deal with the same thing and we’ll get through it.”
THE TWO BEER CARS ARE STARTING SIDE-BY-SIDE UP FRONT TOMORROW NIGHT. HOW STRONG ARE THE BEER WARS NOW? “It’s a good question. I’ve thought about it actually quite a bit over the time I’ve had the privilege of working with Miller and Miller Coors. It seems like the beer wars are maybe not as confrontational as they once were, and there tends to be a lot of crossover fans between the two, which I think is great, but I know that our fans really appreciate that those brands are a part of this sport. And it draws a direct lineage, I think, to their lifestyles and to see those brands in there, and they’re fans of our sport and they like what that stands for. I feel like it’s critical to have those brands in there and that they feed off each other. There is always going to be some bit of a rivalry, but it certainly seems to be less contentious than in times past. There’s almost a little bit of camaraderie, I feel, over it to be quite honest that there are two cars like that in here. I think it’s a good thing in general.”
WHEN YOU BEAT HIM DO YOU NOTICE IT? “A little bit. It’s not the first thing that comes to mind by any stretch of the imagination. What’s interesting is Miller won their first championship in 2012 and Budweiser I know has won a handful before, and despite that there was an era for at least 15 or 20 years where neither one of them had a championship. I think there was probably a period where since there was not that success that the beer cars started to become maybe not thought of as a performance car to drive, and now we’re seeing that change again, which I think is kind of cool.”
WHEN YOU CAME HERE ON THE OLD TRACK WERE YOU ALWAYS CHECKING TO SEE HOW THE 18 WAS DOING? YOU AND HE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FAST HERE, AND IS ALL THAT OUT NOW? “Kyle is good at a lot of tracks and he deserves the credit and the acknowledgment, I think, here as well as most every other race track. I make it a point not to focus on one car at any race track. There are 40 cars in the field nowadays and if you focus on beating one, you’re probably gonna finish 39th. I would much rather finish first and focus on beating all of them, but certainly, there is due respect that Kyle deserves for his success here and all other tracks.”
ON THE FINAL RESTART LAST WEEK IT LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE DRIVING THROUGH SNOW WITH ALL THE SPEEDY DRY. WHAT IS THAT LIKE? “Driving through speedy dry on those situations is never fun. Of course, we’d like to see it be cleaned all the way up. There is a balancing act of consideration to running 15 minutes of yellow flag to get the track perfect versus getting to green as quickly as possible and the track not being to its fullest form. I think when it comes to the speedway tracks the cars tend to have more grip than other tracks, and more capability so there seems to be a lower threshold of what’s acceptable in terms of the track being ready to go, and that’s why you see those clouds at those types of tracks and those situations at those type of tracks. But certainly it’s not 100 percent what you would want to drive through, and the grip is not 100 percent there, but it’s tolerable for me.”
CAN YOU SEE DRIVING THROUGH THAT STUFF? “No. That’s part of the challenge, right?”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON WHAT CHASE ELLIOTT AND RYAN BLANEY ARE DOING THIS YEAR? “I think both of them are doing a great job. I look at the 24 car and they’ve got great speed. Chase has done a great job. It seems like rookies a lot of times you get caught up in a lot of wrecks trying to find the limits, and I think Chase has done a great job of being competitive and being smart to run a 500 or 400-mile race and be there at the end. He deserves a lot of credit. Of course, that car is really fast. It’s been one of the fastest cars here this year and there’ something to be said for that as well, and I look at my teammate, Ryan Blaney, and he’s doing exactly what he needs to do. He’s right at the edge of being in the Chase. Of course, we’d like to see him get a win and that will come, I’m sure, sooner rather than later, but I look at him and he’s just running smart races. He’s with the Wood Brothers, who, of course, have the alliance with Team Penske, but they’re still the Wood Brothers and they still only have one car and there are some limitations that come with that, so a lot of respect for what Ryan is doing for that group. He’s really carried them to, I think, a whole other level in terms of being a consistent competitor to have quality finishes and quality runs.”
