Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race – Bristol Motor Speedway
Sunday, August 21, 2016
CHRIS BUESCHER – No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford Fusion – “That was a lot of fun. It’s been a long time since we’ve come to the race track and enjoy it like that. We had awesome speed out of our Love’s Ford Fusion. I’m really proud of the team. This thing was good from the start of the weekend. We kept working our way up towards the end and got to the top five, and almost got one there at the end, but I love Bristol. I absolutely love this race track. What they did with the surface worked out really well and made for some really good racing.”
YOU’RE IN THE TOP 30 NOW. HOW DOES THAT FEEL? “I don’t know exactly where we’re at quite yet, but I know we had to get there. That’s Chase eligibility in one race out of the four we had to do it. Now, we have to hold onto it. I’m really proud of this team. Our Love’s Ford Fusion had great speed this weekend. We’re looking forward to the next handful of races. We’ve got some really good tracks for us coming up. We knew Bristol would be a good one for us. It took us a day later to do it, but we got ourselves a top-5 and had a blast out here. That was an awesome run.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Fastenal Ford Fusion – “It wasn’t from a lack of hard work and being lucky a few times. We really wanted to get this Bryan Clauson tribute car in victory lane. It just wasn’t meant to be today. We made our car a lot faster throughout the race and came from two laps down to get back on the lead lap. We missed some wrecks and gave it all we had. I thought we were matching the 4 car there lap for lap, but he got away from us and we had to restart sixth there on that last restart, but it was an honor to drive this car. All of the fans that came out this weekend. This place was pretty packed last night. Thanks to all the fans that were able to stay around. I thought the track was really good. You could run the bottom. You could run the top. We just wanted one more spot.”
WHAT DOES THIS DO FOR YOUR CONFIDENCE THE NEXT FEW RACES? “That’s all we can think about is getting ourselves a win. We’ve been OK at Michigan. We had a flat tire. We’ve been OK at Darlington and Richmond even, so we’ve got to keep our confidence in our ability to make sure we’re making all the good changes and not making mistakes, and staying with it throughout the race like we did right there. We really wanted to get that win this time at Bristol. We knew this was probably our best shot. We just struggled all weekend. It was a tough weekend from an emotional side and out here driving this race car and getting it fast, but thanks to all the hard work from my guys we were able to salvage a really good finish.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “It was eventful Bristol. It seems like at this race track there’s always something that happens. Whether it’s on the team side or the driver’s side it seems like that happens a lot at this race track. There was a point during the race at about lap 400 where we got to the lead with the Shell/Pennzoil Ford and we were fast. The race track was where we thought it would be and everything was kind of working as planned, and the next thing you know the 41 spun and we got some damage from that. We pitted for that and had a lugnut off the left-rear, so we came in to fix that, and then it rained and the track just changed. After it rained everything changed and the car wasn’t as fast. We got back up to 10th and I thought we were gonna drive to fifth on that last run because we were really fast the run before when the track was rubbered up, but once it cleaned up we just lost a little bit of speed.”
DO YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT THE WAY YOU RALLIED? “Yeah, we overcame a lot. I guess that’s the positive and the bright side of it. I just kind of look at all the fireworks going off in victory lane and think about that a little bit more.”
HOW DID YOU LIKE THE TRACK? “I think they added a groove in turns one and two for sure. Three and four it was somewhat better. Definitely on restarts it was better, and then it would kind of wear off and the cars would move up. It was surprising that at the end of the race there was still some left and there were a lot of cars running the bottom, so I guess that’s better if that’s what everybody is looking for. If everyone is looking at the bottom, I guess that’s better. I’m not a fan of it. I’d rather us all run the top like we used to. I thought it was really cool, but I thought it was pretty racy. You could pass cars and do things like normal, so Bristol is still cool. They couldn’t kill it. To me, this is the best race track we come to.”
WHAT DID YOU SEE WHEN KURT HAD HIS ISSUE? “I was on the top and he throttled up and really what happens is you can throttle up so early in the corner, but when he came off the grippy stuff he got loose and I tried to cross back over on the other side to get underneath him and he was sideways at that point and he got our door. He didn’t get our tires, so we got lucky there, but it still caused quite a bit of damage to our car. We’re still going really fast around this race track and it definitely affected us from there.”
