Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Brickyard 400 Advance – Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Friday, July 22, 2016
Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion, is 17th in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings going into Sunday’s race. He visited the infield media center at Indianapolis Motor Speedway this morning to talk about his position in the standings and the competitiveness of his team.
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – WHAT ABOUT THIS WEEKEND AND YOUR EXPECTATIONS? “It’s a really tight race between a handful of us right now, and it’s all up for grabs. I’ve said it a lot of times before, I don’t really focus a lot on the points stuff, I just want to go out and run the best that we can and try to get as many top 10s, top 5s and try to win the races and that stuff will figure itself out. We don’t really pay attention to anybody else. I just kind of want to focus on my team and where we’re at, and go try to have a good run. We had a really good run here last year. I think we ran 12th and ran towards the front all day long. It’s a completely different rules package and everything, but I’m hopeful that we’ll be good. We were able to test here for a couple of days last week, which I think helped us learn a lot, so hopefully we can carry that over to today.”
DOES IT HAVE ADDITIONAL MEANING TO BE HERE IN INDY? “This place definitely has a lot of meaning. I remember coming here as a kid and watching here with my day, and it was really neat to see how big this race track was, and then you get older and you learn more history about it and what it actually means and how long it’s been around and the greats that have been on it. It was really special to get onto the race track when I first started here in 2012 in an XFINITY car, so that was really special to me to be able to race here. One of the coolest things, I don’t remember how old I was – 10 or 11 or something like that – but back when they did single-car qualifying I was walking with my dad on pit road and it was like three cars until he went out and you’re all the way in turn one. Well, you watch off of turn four and it was Robby Gordon’s car because it was bright orange, and you see a little dot, a little spec, and then 12 seconds later he comes hauling butt by you and you’re like, ‘How in the heck is he doing to make that corner?’ And he does. That was just remarkable to me. That’s like the first fond memory I had of this place, so it’s cool to be a part of it and actually figure out that you do make the corners. It’s pretty incredible.”
YOU AND CHASE HANG OUT A LOT. HOW IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP? “We see each other a bunch during the week when he’s home. He’s in Georgia a lot. I don’t know if he was talking about New Hampshire, but I made him dinner at New Hampshire. I cooked out on the grill, so that was the least I could do for our little get-together. He and I are cool. We talked an hour after the race was over and I think that’s the good thing about having friends at the race track. If you do get into something with them, which it’s going to happen eventually, you can work it out and talk about it and be good after that. He and I are good friends and that didn’t really alter anything.”
WHERE IS YOUR TEAM RIGHT NOW? ARE YOU GUYS MISSING SOMETHING OR DO YOU JUST NEED TO CATCH A COUPLE OF BREAKS? “I don’t think we’re missing anything. I think our team is doing really well. They’ve been doing great for the past couple of months. The last two races at New Hampshire and Kentucky I’ve made big mistakes, wrecking at Kentucky and then we just cracked the Top 10 in New Hampshire and I sped on pit road during green-flag stops. That’s two mistakes that are unacceptable on my part, so I’ve got to clean that up, but our team is doing really well and communicating well. We have fast race cars, it’s just a matter of kind of putting a whole race together. That’s the tough part about these Cup races is trying to put a whole race together and get progressively better throughout 400 or 500 miles. That’s something that I think is going well, it’s just my end has got to get a little bit better.”
