Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Bad Boy Off Road 300 – New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Ford Finishing Order:
4th – Brad Keselowski
11th – Joey Logano
12th – Ryan Blaney
17th – Aric Almirola
24th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
29th – Landon Cassill
30th – Chris Buescher
31st – Brian Scott
33rd – Greg Biffle
37th – Jeffrey Earnhardt
38th – Trevor Bayne
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 6 AdvoCare Ford Fusion – “I thought I had a tire go down. I don’t know what else it could have been. I hadn’t been loose into three all day and all of a sudden it just jumped out. We had some right side damage on that run and I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know at this point. The right rear looks up, but it just got really loose in and I backed it into the wall. It was a hard hit.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – “It was just a really great finish to kind of just a so-so day. It takes a team effort to do that as well and that’s part of this sport and my guys did a great job.” HOW DID YOU DRIVE THROUGH THERE? “It was just a good call there towards the end to put tires on and then just being smooth and keeping it in one piece driving through traffic.” IF I SAID IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RACE YOU WOULD FINISH FOURTH WOULD YOU HAVE THOUGHT THAT WAS POSSIBLE? “Yes because I believe in my team. The Miller Lite team worked really hard on our Ford all day long. We weren’t near as fast as we wanted to be, but great execution on pit road, great execution with the pit calls and then the last few restarts went our way with being in the right lane on the restarts, which is so, so important on these double-file restarts, but also just staying out of trouble. We’re not as fast as we want to be. We almost went a lap down at one point, but we kept our head down and got through it.” THOUGHTS ON DOVER? “It feels good to go to Dover and be able to sleep easy knowing that if you have a part failure or get caught up in a wreck or any of those silly things that can happen that aren’t you fault, you don’t have to worry about them so that’s good, but we still have some work to do to get a little faster.” TALK ABOUT YOUR RACE. “We dug hard to dig out of the hole. We weren’t as fast as we wanted to be, but we ran a smart race. My guys made good calls and we stayed with it and didn’t have any issues. Sometimes that’s important too.” A BUNCH OF GUYS HAD DAYS LIKE YOU AND CAME BACK TO FINISH IN THE TOP 15. DOES THAT UNDERSCORE HOW TOUGH THIS CHASE IS? “I think it underscores how the double-file restarts can jumble anything up, along with the wavearounds and free passes and you’re never really out of a race until it’s over.” I THINK YOU’RE CLEAR BY 35 POINTS. “That’s good. I was doing the math, so that means I’m locked. If I understand math, Kyle and I are locked in.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “It was a hard fight to say the least with the Shell/Pennzoil Ford. We took off awful, just like we did in the spring race too, it’s crazy. We went down a lap and fought all day and then finally got the lucky dog but not with many laps to make it up. We made our car better, but didn’t have enough time to get ourselves back up to where I thought we were speed-wise at the end. I’m proud of the never-quit-attitude. We’re resilient. We just need to start a little bit faster. We can’t lose that many spots at the beginning of the race and expect to battle back every time. We did what we had to do. We almost got a top 10 out of something that we ran around 20th all day, so at least we got something out of it. We just need to go faster than that.” WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST ISSUE FOR YOU? “All of the above at the beginning of the race. Long run speed mainly. It wouldn’t hang on very long. It takes off fast and is able to pass cars on the short run, but we had so many long runs that we weren’t really able to show that. If it was a short-run race, we would be sitting here saying something completely different and probably would have finished in the top five, but with the way the race went with those long runs we lost so much track position that we couldn’t get it back.” WERE YOU STARTING TO GET ANXIOUS TRYING TO GET YOUR LAP BACK? “It’s aggravating. The wavearound. You’re in the lucky dog spot for the longest time and then you try the wavearound and you don’t get that. Eventually, you battle and get back on the lead lap. It was a hard-fought day. We just had to fight really hard. You just have to put yourself in position and hope for a caution and that’s pretty much what happens. We finally got one, it just took all day.”
CHRIS BUESCHER – No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford Fusion – “We’re just trying to get speed out of all of our cars. It was a tough day. We tried really hard with our Love’s Fusion. We put a lot of effort into it and we’ll just keep digging and trying to get it better. We just have to keep plugging along.” YOU NEED TO WIN AT DOVER TO ADVANCE. “Yeah, that’s pretty much our situation. Dover is a really good race track. I like that place a lot. We had a good finish for us there earlier this season, so we’ll go there and see what we can do to get a win and try to move on to the second round of the Chase. We’re in it and to be a part of the Chase is a pretty big deal this year.” YOU SAID THE OTHER DAY THAT THIS IS ABOUT YOUR TEAM AND TRYING TO IMPROVE IT FROM WHERE IT IS TODAY. “Yeah. We’re trying to get everything better. It’s about improving our cars at Front Row Motorsports and getting them to where we can consistently run better. We’ve had a handful of really bright spots this year and we just have to be a little more consistent with those. How those will come we don’t know yet. If we had the answer, we would already be ahead of that.”
