Ford Performance NXS Notes and Quotes
Food City 300 – Bristol Motor Speedway
Friday, August 19, 2016
Ford Finishing Results:
7th – Darrell Wallace Jr.
12th – Brad Keselowski
13th – Gray Gaulding
35th – Ryan Reed
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – THAT HAS TO BE A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT. “Yeah. What can you say? I guess it happens. We weren’t as fast as we wanted to be all weekend, but we had a lot of heart and fought as hard as we could. I was kind of playing jam car on the 18 and 42. They were really good and probably had the speed to win today. I was doing all I could to hold them back and just ran out there at the end. I guess we had enough gas, but running under yellow it doesn’t pick it up so it ran out and once it runs out these cars don’t have all of the fuel-injection stuff and it just stops. I guess that’s the story.”
WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE 18 BATTLING FOR THE LEAD? “He was really good. Kyle is of course real good at this track and he was quite a bit faster. I was just trying to hold him off anyway I could. He got a good run on the bottom and the bottom groove was just a little bit faster in one and two than it was in three and four. He knew that and made a really smart move and got up next to me, but I had a big run on exit and he wasn’t quite clear. I knew he needed to come up because three and four, like I said, the bottom groove wasn’t as good. He knew he needed to come up and there just wasn’t enough room. I was already there and it clipped him in the right-rear. I don’t really know what happened from there, but it was tough. We were battling really hard and definitely didn’t want to see it end that way.”
DARRELL WALLACE JR. – No. 6 LoudMouth Exhaust Ford Mustang – “That wasn’t very pretty, but at the end of the day it is Bristol. It was just a mistake on my end. We talk about getting in a zone and getting so focused, and we were clicking off some really good laps there. You’re just trying to get so much out of the car and I just got a little too high going down the straightaway and the wall sucked us in and kept us up in the loose stuff. That really put us behind, but it was good to rebound to a top-10 finish. We haven’t seen that in a while, so that’s pretty good. I can’t thank my team enough for sticking behind us. We really needed this. I’m down on myself, but I think it’s a confidence-booster for our team and whole organization because we’ve been really struggling. I want to say the bad luck is over with and now it’s just a matter of cleaning up the act on my part.”
