Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes -Brad Keselowski Press Conference
Quaker State 400 – Kentucky Speedway
Saturday, July 9, 2016
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – TALK ABOUT THE DRAMA INVOLVED IN TONIGHT’S RACE. “That was something. We weren’t the best car tonight, that’s for sure. The 78 car was really good. I thought the 4 car looked really good. The 19, the 20, the 18 looked really good. We seemed to kind of hover right there in that fifth to eighth-place range and we came down pit road, I think fifth with 72 to go or 73 to go, and left pit road fifth. I thought, ‘Well, who knows how these things are gonna go,’ but then the 78 got the penalty, moved us into the outside line on the restart, which I think we saw all night was the preferred line. I was able to clear the two inside cars, I don’t remember who they were, and get into turn three behind Kevin. I was about half-a-car-width back, which I had a pretty good idea if I could stay within a half-a-car length of him that I could create an aero-wake behind his car and loosen him up a little bit without touching him and, sure enough, we went down in the corner and it looked like he got really loose and I was able to make the move and get by him. That’s kind of a product of this package, just how hard the cars are to drive with somebody behind you. That worked out beautifully. We had a great car on restarts to kind of complement that. Once I got to the lead there I was like, ‘OK, we’ll see how this all plays out.’ I kind of expected another restart and our car was really fading on long runs. It was losing grip kind of rapidly and with about 20 or 30 to go I was like, ‘I’m gonna be in trouble here.’ I was probably not gonna be able to hold off the 78 and the 20. That hadn’t been our strength and I think Paul Wolfe, my crew chief, he saw that and made the aggressive call to go to fuel mileage. I knew we were way short of being able to make it, so I got as aggressive as I could. Somehow, we made it and I’m not even really sure you can say we made it because we ran out with about two to go, and by running out I mean it stumbled really, really bad and I was able to somehow limp it around the last two laps and stay ahead of Carl and bring her home. That was something. This is a night I’m not gonna forget. Last year we came here and I thought we were the best car and didn’t catch a single break, didn’t execute, and those two things kept us out of victory lane, not just here but a lot of times last year, and this week we caught some breaks. We executed and we were able to win, so not the fastest car but it’s still a hell of a team effort to be proud of.”
WHAT ABOUT THE RACING TONIGHT IN GENERAL? “Anytime you have a repave the track gets a lot narrower. I think we saw that tonight. Tonight was one of those nights where I think everybody is challenged to define what great racing is. I would probably say that of course Kentucky last year was an incredible race. It would be tough to beat that, ever, on a mile-and-a-half race track, but I would also say that the cars, the new rules package makes them harder to drive and requires a lot more precision as a race car driver, and I can appreciate that about the race. We’re still facing and fighting the same dilemmas in our sport of the lead car having a significant advantage over other cars in the field, but that advantage seemed to go on maybe a 1-10 scale from an eight to a six or a seven here, which I think is good. But until the track widens out and gets multiple grooves, I honestly think this is the best race you’re gonna see on a repave.”
WHAT CHANGE WERE YOU REFERRING TO EARLIER IN THE RACE ON THE RADIO. WAS IT CIRCUMSTANCES OR TRYING TO GET CLEAN AIR? “I was referring to we needed to start the weekend over with a different car (laughing). That’s kind of what I meant because the changes that we were doing to the car we were just kind of maxed out. You had all these knobs in the car and adjustments you can do to it once the race starts and we had kind of turned them all and it was like, ‘Well, there’s nothing left to turn here,’ and all we were gonna do was make ourselves worse in one area. It’s like, ‘Let’s just leave it alone and finish the race out the best we can.’ That’s kind of where we were. Like I said, we weren’t the fastest car. We have a lot of work to do from a speed standpoint after tonight. That’s not what won us the race, so the 78 car, I think, was heads and tails above everyone else and there were probably a handful of others that were maybe a touch better than us as well, so we still have a lot of work to do when tonight was over.”
WHAT IMPACT DID THE LOWER DOWNFORCE PACKAGE HAVE ON THE RACE? “It won me the race. Without the lower lower downforce package today I don’t think I would have won the race. I would have never made the move I made on the 4 car and that would have been it. There were certainly moves you could make today that you couldn’t make before with respect to getting behind somebody and being able to alter the way that their car drove, and that’s a part of being a race car driver, that’s a part of this package.”
HOW MUCH DID THE TRACK BEING REPAVED PLAY INTO THE RACE ITSELF? “Dramatically. It played into everything this weekend. The line you ran on the race track was significantly different than the line you would normally run here. Normally, we would run in the middle of the race track because there’s a progressive hitch to the track, but that hitch never took the full rubber that it would need to grip up and to optimize the speed and dictated that the cars run on the bottom. I expect that will change over the next two or three seasons and the groove will move up tremendously back to where it was.”
WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE LIKE IN TURN THREE AND DID YOU ANTICIPATE THAT THERE WOULD BE ANOTHER CAUTION LATE? “I certainly anticipated another caution. I don’t think we had a stretch in the race that long before that one, to my knowledge, and, yeah, I anticipated a lot of problems in turn three. It’s designed that way. The track is specifically designed for turns one and two to be fast, somewhat easy to drive, and three and four designed to be slow and very, very difficult to drive. That’s one of the design features of this race track, and I think you saw that today. I think most of the accidents were in three and four because of how difficult that corner was, and that’s not a bad thing. That’s how it was meant to be and contributed to the race we saw today.”
CARL IMPLIED THAT YOU DID A GREAT JOB PLAYING IT PERFECTLY THE LAST LAP OR TWO AND SAID YOU MASHED THE GAS PERFECTLY. DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU WERE OUT OF GAS OR WAS THAT FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S BENEFIT? “If the question is, ‘Did I think I was out?’ Yes, I thought I was out, and I did not think I was gonna win the race based on what I felt in the car.”
DID THIS RACE PLAY OUT MORE LIKE A SHORT TRACK WHERE YOU HAD TO RACE THE RACE TRACK? “Tonight was a very disciplined race for sure. Maybe you can make an analogy to short-track racing, I’m not sure, but it took a lot of discipline to run this track tonight. If you got into turn three and four the least bit wrong, you wrecked. That’s just the way the race was, and I think that’s what we saw. There are arguments being made good or bad for that. I think it’s a good challenge. We’re professional race car drivers. It shouldn’t be easy. It wasn’t tonight. It was very, very difficult and you had to certainly be very smart.”
DO YOU RECALL A MORE TENSE TIME AND HOW DID YOU KEEP YOUR FOCUS? “It’s a pretty helpless feeling being out of gas and seeing guys behind you running you down, and knowing that you’re not at full speed, but there’s nothing you can do about it and freaking out isn’t gonna help anything, I can tell you that. That just makes it worse, so I guess that’s the way I look at it and approach it.”
DO YOU RECALL OTHER RACES LIKE THAT? “Oh yeah, a lot of them are that way. Daytona and Talladega feels that way because you know at any given point the cars behind you can always develop a run to pass you, so leading there at the last lap is not very fun.”
