Ford Performance NXS Notes and Quotes
Alsco 300 – Kentucky Speedway
Ford Finishing Results:
5th – Darrell Wallace Jr.
8th – Ryan Blaney
10th – Brad Keselowski
29th – Ryan Reed
DARRELL WALLACE JR. – No. 6 EcoBoost Ford Mustang – YOU GOT TO FIFTH ON THAT LAST RESTART. “It’s a good night for us, but we’ve got to be better. We finished fifth, so that was a good rebound from when we showed up here at Kentucky. We were way off in left field, so we worked hard all night long. There were no mistakes on pit road. I kept sliding through, so I need to work on that. The mistakes are on me, but my guys are awesome. They did a great job, but we’ve got to be better. Fifth is good, but we’re getting close to Chase time, so we need to start winning.
DO YOU LIKE BEING IN THOSE POSITIONS WHERE YOU CAN BE AGGRESSIVE ON THOSE RESTARTS AND JUST GO FOR IT? “Yeah. It’s good. It’s showcasing that we’re making improvements and that’s all we can ask for right now. We’re still in building stages. Don’t get me wrong, we had a pretty good Ford EcoBoost Mustang and just need a little bit more. We’re usually about seventh to eighth and we picked it up two spots, so the credit goes to all of my guys and my pit crew for no mistakes and coming away with a solid somewhat clean race. My right-front over there is a little damaged. Me and Keselowski got together, but hopefully no hard feelings there.”
WHAT DOES RFR NEED TO DO AS AN ORGANIZATION TO GET YOU INTO VICTORY LANE? “Just look at what we’ve been doing this last month or two. They’ve been really hitting on some stuff on the Cup side and it’s kind of trickling down to the XFINITY shop, so we just have to keep taking notes and keep trying things. I say we need to win because it’s getting close to Chase time, but we still have some time to tweak and tune some stuff. We’ll go to Loudon next week and we’ll go have some fun.”
WHAT WAS IT LIKE GOING FOUR-WIDE THERE ON THE RESTART? “I didn’t know we were four-wide until Freddy said, ‘Clear of four-wide.’ It’s cool that we all made it through here at Kentucky. It was an awesome job with the repave by the whole Kentucky staff. It was fun racing, but couldn’t really do much passing. It will be better when we come back.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 12 Snap-On Ford Mustang – YOU MADE SOME BOLD MOVES DOWN THE STRETCH TO TRY AND GET SOME TRACK POSITION. “That’s really all you can do. It’s really hard to pass. I thought we were our best at one point of the race late and we got to the tail end of the top three and we couldn’t pass anybody. It was too tight, so restarts were really, really key to try and make positions. The 20 ran us down on the apron and that wasn’t very cool, but whatever. Props to everybody on this team. Greg Erwin and the guys did a great job. It’s just a group we got together at the last minute and they did a great job getting the car together and spent so much time working on it. I can’t thank Snap-On and Ford and Discount Tire enough for what they do. It’s unfortunate, but we’ll get ‘em next time.”
WHAT HAPPENED THE LAST FEW RUNS? “We got better and better. The last two runs is where I thought we were the best. We’d lose so much ground early in the run and then we would just kind of gain it all back and were kind of stuck there, but restarts were a different story. They did a good job of getting me to where I needed to be and, luckily, learned a lot of stuff for tomorrow night.”
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FOR TOMORROW NIGHT? “I can’t tell you that.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – “We just didn’t have enough speed to get the cars better than everyone else. Once we got settled out we were probably good enough to run right behind them speed on the race track-wise, but we just had nothing on restarts and got passed by everybody down the straightaway through the gears. That kind of hurt Ryan and I both there at the end. I hate that both of us had to deal with that and get tore up as well, but we’ve got to be better.”
