Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Hellmann’s 500 – Talladega Superspeedway
Sunday, October 23, 2016
Ford Finishing Results
1st – Joey Logano
2nd – Brian Scott
5th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
8th – Aric Almirola
11th – Ryan Blaney
15th – Greg Biffle
17th – Trevor Bayne
21st – Landon Cassill
22nd – Chris Buescher
26th – Ryan Reed
31st – Bobby Labonte
38th – Brad Keselowski
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – YOU HAD A DOMINANT CAR. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END? “It looks like we lost an engine. I’m pretty confident I lost a rod or something in the lower end. That’s just the way it goes.”
COULD IT BE FROM GETTING TOO HOT FROM THE DEBRIS? “I don’t know. I’m not an engine guy, but the car was really strong and we definitely kept finding debris. I thought I got it cooled off and only got it slightly over, but I don’t know.”
DISHEARTENING WITH A CAR THAT DOMINANT? “Yeah, that’s racing.”
HOW DEVASTATED ARE YOU? “We just had a tremendous racing going, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
ANY WARNING? “No, it just went right away. That’s the way it goes.”
WHAT HAPPENED? “Something let go. I’m not sure exactly what, but it’s unfortunate. We had a really fast Miller Lite Ford and that kind of ended our day. It was a lot of fun to be leading at Talladega. I really like this track. It’s been good to us and there are a lot of great fans here today. We were doing the best we could to make a show of it and have some fun and lead some laps and just happy and proud to have a fast car.”
WHAT NOW THAT YOUR CHAMPIONSHIP HOPES ARE OVER? “Win more races.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – THAT WAS NO LAYUP TO HOLD OFF BRIAN SCOTT. “It’s never a layup here at Talladega. It’s always close. You never get a big lead. A good Shell/Pennzoil Ford. Todd made some good adjustments during the race and found some speed in the car, so that was pretty neat to see some of that. We got that track position and just hung onto it. I was able to stay on the bottom and try to run the bottom and keep everyone in line, and that worked out really well. Kevin did a good job with that, which ultimately got us all a great finish. It was fun racing there at the end. I was really confused. I didn’t know what lane to pick coming to the last restart, but I knew Kevin had a lot of experience in these situations and is great at speedway racing, so he did a good job of pushing me out and then had to defend the top lane with Brian Scott, so a couple of Fords out front here at Talladega is pretty cool.”
DEBRIS SEEMED TO BE PICKED UP WITH THE LEADER TODAY. WHEN YOU HAD IT HAPPEN HOW DID THE TEMPERATURE GO UP AND WERE YOU WORRIED? “I got nervous, but I can’t see the nose obviously. It wasn’t that bad. It picked up maybe 20 degrees or so, but we had a good enough cushion to be able to pick up a little bit of garbage and be OK. Everything worked out as planned, I guess.”
THE NEXT ROUND IS MARTINSVILLE, TEXAS AND PHOENIX. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT ROUND? “I feel good. If we can get through this round, it was going to be tough after what happened in Charlotte, so to be able to recover and win in a clutch moment like this to move us on feels really, really good.”
BRIAN SCOTT – No. 44 Goody’s Ford Fusion – “I just got to say thank you to Richard Petty Motorsports, Roush Yates Engines, Goody’s, everybody for being on board. I gave it everything I had. I mean, if I could have stuck my feet through the floorboard and ran to try and get a little more horsepower, I would have done it. Joey just did all the right moves up front. I’ve got to thank Denny Hamlin and everybody that worked with me and tried to push me up there. I probably wasn’t their first choice, but I gave them no choice but to work with me and I’m just proud of these guys. It was a soild day with no mistakes. We capitalized on every opportunity we had and brought home a good finish.” HOW HARD IS IT AS A ROOKIE TO EARN THAT RESPECT AND DID YOU EARN IT TODAY? “I hope so. I tried to work hard the whole race, to be smart and to work with people and to show that we had a fast car so people would work with us at the end. It looked like it worked. It’s hard when you have that yellow sticker on your bumper to get respect, but something about this blue Goody’s Ford – people like to push it and work with it and it turned out good for us.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Zest Ford Fusion – “Our Zest Ford was fast all weekend and qualified well. We lost some track position and it took us really all race to get it back, which was a struggle. We got in position there at the end. I really wanted to restart on the top. I thought if I could restart on the top we may have had a shot at winning the race, but being on the bottom our car wasn’t as good. I’m definitely thankful to get a top-5 out of it. It’s cool to see a Ford move on to the next round with Joey. It was a bummer for Brad, but, all in all, it was a really good weekend. We’ll try to keep gaining on it on these speedways.”
CHRIS BUESCHER – No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford Fusion – “It feels great to finish at one of these places. It’s what we wanted to do, just finish one of these things and come out with a decent finish. We were just jammed up there and the track wasn’t as racy as a lot of people were hoping, and we weren’t able to gain any speed. It was a good attempt and I’m proud of the effort that everybody put in. It felt good to be able to drive under the checkered flag at the end.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – “We had a strong Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion all day. I could have made better decisions in lane selection there toward the end but you never know how that’s going to work out. It’s too bad Brad didn’t get to finish. We tried to give him as much help as we could there when he was leading.”
BRIAN SCOTT PRESS CONFERENCE – “It was just a solid day for the No. 44 Goody’s Ford. We had a team meeting before the race. We knew that we were going to have to be perfect. We were going to have to have no mistakes on pit road, gonna have to have a fast Ford, keep good track position all day and try to make friends throughout the race so they would work with us at the end, and our game plan was really just executed really well. The guys did a great job on pit road. We had a really solid car. Roush Yates Engines were amazing today and we were able to show our speed to a lot of the field, and when it came down to the finish or the restart there at the end, lucky enough to have Denny Hamlin and some guys work with us to give us an opportunity at the win.”
WHAT DOES THIS FINISH MEAN TO YOU FOR THIS YEAR AND NEXT? “A good finish always helps. It helps with the team, it helps with the guys at the shop – the morale – just trying to get any bit of a bright spot in this year has been difficult and I think that this is by far the brightest spot that we’ve had in a really challenging year for Richard Petty Motorsports. I guess the results and what this does for us going forward is yet to be determined, but I’m just proud. The guys have worked hard all year. They’ve deserved a lot better finishes than we’ve given them, and I’m just proud to deliver a good, solid top-5 – to do my job behind the wheel to give us a shot at the win, just have a good day for Richard Petty Motorsports.”
ARE YOU SURPRISED GUYS DIDN’T GANG UP ON YOU AND HANG YOU OUT? “I was thankful to have Denny. I don’t know if playing golf with him occasionally helps or not, but, yeah, that’s always a fear of mine. When you have a yellow sticker on your bumper normally people avoid you like the plague. They go elsewhere, and there was a lot of opportunities where I felt guys tried to do it, but I had a great spotter in Stevie Reeves and was able to block and do the right things to keep our Goody’s Ford with good track position towards the front. I don’t know, maybe because this is an elimination race it changed the way Denny raced at the end, but he gave me a great push and gave me an opportunity to get a run at the 22. I just probably didn’t do everything I was supposed to to get a strong enough run or back away from him as much as I could have, and just couldn’t get to his quarter panel, but it was exciting there at the end. Yes, I did feel like at any moment somebody was gonna try to hang me.”
TEAM PENSKE PRESS CONFERENCE
TODD GORDON, Crew Chief – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “We had a misstep on that first pit stop with the jack, but fortunately we got a chance to get back and get it cleared up. It wasn’t a damaged race car and the guys did a great job to cycle us out and got us to the lead there later on a pit stop cycle, and Joey did a great job driving forward. I’m proud of everybody at Team Penske and the race cars they put forward. Obviously, Brad had a lot of speed today and we had it there at the end when we needed it. I’m just proud of everything there.”
ROGER PENSKE, Owner – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “I think it was really Ford won today. The way the cars ran there was no question that Roush Yates gave us some strong motors. I think we had great cars. We’ve had them here the last few races, but the way the guys worked together. You saw many laps they ran one, two, three, just grinding down laps was kind of our plan. I see Gibbs had a plan in the back, we had a plan in the front because we knew we had to run up front in order to get ourselves in the next round, and it was really tough on Brad. I mean, he really had a good car and led 90 laps and was probably as dominating as I’ve ever seen anyone here. He could just drive right up to the front and I think the things that these crew chiefs passed together they were able to make a few changes on Joey’s and he came right up when it was time to go. As Todd said, it was a real team effort and certainly the guys back at the shop that put these cars together are amazing. The pit crews didn’t make any mistakes. No speeding on pit lane because you can see track position today was at a premium and I think I never saw our guys back probably more than four or five spots from the front. That made a difference when we got to the end.”
HOW DO YOU VIEW HAVING ONLY ONE CAR IN THE FINAL EIGHT WHILE OTHERS HAVE MORE? “They have more to lose than I do, I guess (laughing). They’ve got four (Gibbs). It’s gonna be tough as we get into the next round. We go to Texas. We certainly have Phoenix and Martinsville – three different tracks. We feel good about how we run there and you’re gonna have to execute. To me, every one that’s in this Chase from the standpoint – Truex was a real threat to everyone and the fact that he’s not in and Brad isn’t, you take a couple real guys that could win and I think that it’s a level playing field. We’ve got some Toyotas. We’ve got some Chevys and we’ve got a Ford, so we’re satisfied where we are and I think we need to get through what happened last year at Martinsville and get some good success there so we can move on, hopefully, to the next round.”
TODD GORDON CONTINUED – IS IT DETRIMENTAL THAT YOU’RE THE LONE FORD LEFT? “I don’t think so. I think the great part about Team Penske is we really operate as one team with multiple cars and the effort is no less because it’s one and not two. I think when you watch, if you looked at last year once Brad got bumped out last year they came back and were on a tear, so there’s no let down in Paul and Brad and the whole Miller Lite team. They’ll focus forward on making speed, which will challenge us and help us build a better notebook. Actually, I think in ways it’s not a negative and may be a positive because we’re that much more open to each other. It was a tough weekend to come here because we were both out of the top 8 and we both needed something to be successful and we kind of knew what it was and we worked together, but going forward it’s all about just wins and success. The whole team will continue the path that they’ve been on.”
ROGER PENSKE CONTINUED – HOW DID YOU START TODAY? THINKING ONLY ONE WOULD GO THROUGH OR A WAY TO GET BOTH THROUGH? “Obviously, when you looked at the statistics it was gonna be difficult to get two. Something had to happen to Truex and it happened early. If Brad would have won and Joey would have finished up second or third I think we would have gotten both cars in, but you never know. We just had to race. The one thing that we sat around the table and talked about the race weekend and we said, ‘We’ve got to race every single lap,’ and I think we showed you that that’s what we did. We didn’t hang back. We ran every single lap. As far as thinking about one car, the good news is you don’t have four people that you’re trying to work with as you go into the Chase. We can put all of our efforts on one car and Joey and of course Brad is one of the biggest supporters of Joey, so I think this will pay dividends for us.”
DID YOU HOLD YOUR BREATH THE FINAL FEW LAPS? “It’s like we do every time we’re in the lead with only a few laps to go and anything can happen. I certainly didn’t like to see Bowman shooting down across the start-finish line there, but, look, Harvick, we owe him a huge vote of thanks – Joey does – for the big shove and certainly Scott on the restart before because it got us out in front and once we got in front they didn’t really have any speed to catch us. I thought it was gonna probably be more of a jumbled-up mess than it was. I think it was pretty calm when you think about those two restarts.”
TODD GORDON CONTINUED – “To build off of that I’ll even go back to the two restarts earlier. Ryan Blaney did a great job of giving us a push and helping us to secure the lead again. He did a great job and it was kind like one Ford and helping the whole cause and understanding what he could do to help. I think he and Brian Scott did a great job and Kevin worked with us through a long run of keeping guys with discipline that we could get ourselves out there.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “It feels really good. This morning you kind of wake up and you’re like, ‘What’s gonna happen?’ This is the first time in this Chase format that I’ve come into Talladega without a win to be locked into the next round. The feeling of the weekend is definitely a lot different when you’re not locked into the next one. It felt really good to be able to go out there and work under the pressure that was on us this week and ultimately be able to succeed and come home with the victory. What a special win. Winning here at Talladega is always special and it’s a lot of fun. You never know you’ve got it. Even when you’re coming off of turn four you don’t know if you’ve got it because so many things can happen before the start-finish line, so it’s nice to be able to move on to the next round That was a great feeling for about 20 minutes and now we’re thinking about Martinsville already and how we’re gonna go out there and try to get ourselves to Homestead to win this championship.”
ARE YOU IN BETTER POSITION THIS YEAR THAN LAST BECAUSE NOBODY IS MAD AT YOU? “I hope so. I guess. Really, in all honestly, you’re back to a wash when you move on to the next round. I feel like this team has a lot of momentum. I think we had a lot of momentum at this point last year, but I think we have an equal amount. If you look at Charlotte, yeah, we had a tire go out, but we had a fast race car there. We finished third last weekend and a win this weekend. We’re going to a race track that we’ve proved to have speed before. We haven’t won there yet, but we’ve had speed there – speed that’s capable of winning, so I feel good about our chances. I feel good about where we’re at in this thing to be able to move on. Yeah, we’ve got speed. We’ve got momentum. We’ve got confidence, so let’s go.”
DOES IT BOTHER YOU THAT THREE OF THE GUYS IN THE CHASE CRUISED AROUND IN THE BACK ALL DAY? “I don’t care what other people do. In all honesty I have to worry about what I did. They had their strategies to get through. We knew that our strategy was to go out there and lead laps and win. That’s how we race. We’ve said that the last couple of years when we’ve come in here with a win, and we’re gonna race the same way because we know that works for us. Who’s to say if we came in here with a 20-something-point cushion how we would race. I don’t know. I think I’d go out there and try to race for a win too, but it doesn’t bother me. It’s strategy. Everybody has their own. I guess it worked out for them and ours worked out for us, so everybody is happy.”
WERE YOU COGNIZANT OF THAT AND DID YOU KNOW DENNY MIGHT HAVE A HARD TIME MAKING A MOVE WITH NO TEAMMATE HELP, AND KYLE SAID THAT STRATEGY WOULDN’T WORK NEXT YEAR WITH THIS BEING THE SECOND RACE IN THE ROUND. DO YOU AGREE? “It is true. It’s definitely gonna change up the way this race is played out, so I think that’s a good thing and to kind of go into the next race and kind of know what you have to do kind of makes you feel a little bit better. I think coming into there and knowing what you have to do is kind of nerve-racking, but for me I knew my situation. I studied the points and looked at it and knew who I had to beat and what would happen if a certain driver won and what I had to do. It seemed like right after the first pit stop everything changed up. We were coming down pit road and we took the jack with us. I’m like, ‘Oh boy, this isn’t going the way we planned,’ and then the next thing you know the 78 blew up and you’re like, ‘Well, that’s gonna help us some,’ and that was a caution we needed to stay on the lead lap after making an extra pit stop. So I don’t want to say that all worked out, but it kind of helped us along and it made me feel a little bit better about our chances to get to the next round. But there’s a lot going through your mind, a lot more than just going out there and thinking about winning. You’re thinking about, ‘OK, where is this guys at? What situation am I in?’ And you try to make your decisions based off of that, which is not the way I’m used to racing, but I kind of had to at certain points.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — HOW WAS IT GOING TO PLAY OUT WITH YOU, BRAD AND RYAN RUNNING ONE-TWO-THREE? “It was close. I felt bad for Brad because I think he had the fastest car. There were times that if he did get shuffled out he drove back to the lead and it was like, ‘Wow.’ And for a long time I could drive up to fifth and I’d just get stuck. It’s like, ‘I can’t get any further forward.’ He had a very good car and unfortunately got some garbage which made his motor retire. That’s a tough one, but in the case of us racing at the end we’re gonna race like we normally do. We’re gonna help each other as much as we can and we’re gonna race each other because it’s a race. I think we didn’t really even have to talk much about it because we knew our situations.”
WOULD YOU RECOMMEND DRAGGING A JACK AS GOOD RACE STRATEGY? HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN? “No. I don’t know how it happened. I know when you’re trying to bust off 10-and-a-half-second pit stops that you push things as much as you can. I know speedway cars are a little bit different. I don’t know if that had something to do with the fact of raised ride heights when you come to these speedways, but I didn’t even know it for the longest time. I went out on the race track and with the raised heights you don’t really realize that the jack is still under there until you get to the corner and the car compresses a little bit. My crew chief, Todd, said, ‘Hey, you’ve got the jack with you,’ and I’m looking around in the mirror and I didn’t really see it. I looked to the left of me and I saw the jack post like at my head and I was like, ‘I don’t need that.’ So I tried to shake it off and couldn’t do that and we had to come back down pit road. It may be a blessing that we didn’t lose it because you run that thing over and it could have done a lot of damage to our race car. Like I said, we got the caution and it was ultimately OK, but we’re gonna have to buy a new jack next week, but it’s nice to know we have a world record of fastest jack underneath a race car. Either way, I was proud of the way my team recovered. They came back through at the end and had some good pit stops, which ultimately gave us the lead, so my team did a good job at being able to recover from that little mishap.”
ARE YOU ANY DIFFERENT FROM THIS POINT LAST YEAR WHERE YOU WERE FLYING THROUGH THE ROUNDS BUT DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE THAT YOU HAD LURKING AHEAD TO THE NEXT WEEK TO NOW WHEN YOU HAD TO WIN OR BE VERY GOOD AND EVERYTHING IS NOT SO CRYSTAL CLEAR? “As a person you always grow, or you hope to grow every day, hope to rest your head at bed every night and say, ‘I learned this today and I’m gonna be better tomorrow.’ I feel like I’m better today than I was yesterday and I feel like I should be. That’s the only way you become better and the way you stay successful because you’ll get caught-up and passed before you know it. I learned some valuable lessons last year. I learned a whole new level that I didn’t know I had, which was really cool and now I know how to reach that level mentally inside our race car to really make things happen and be a great leader for my team. There are a lot of things like that that I took out of last year that I feel like, I don’t think of anything as a waste of a season. You always learn something from something, so today, yeah, this weekend I went through a different situation being a do-or-die spot, but in all honestly I kind of thought back to a couple years ago when we were in Homestead and that’s a do-or-die spot. We were down there racing for a championship and I thought, ‘Well, this is just like Homestead a couple years ago.’ I learned a lot from that weekend and how I would handle it if I got put in that situation again and that was today. It’s fun to be able to succeed under that. Hopefully, we can take some of the things that we learn about yourself personally as much as anything and about your race team to be able to move on and go to Homestead.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — ELIMINATE THE WHOLE THING WITH KENSETH. YOU WON ALL THREE RACES IN THIS ROUND A YEAR AGO. DO YOU FEEL MORE UNDER THE RADAR THIS YEAR? “I think we’re a little bit more under the radar than we were last year. We didn’t win three races in a row, but I think we’ve had three really good race cars in this round. At Charlotte I think we had a car we could have won with. It was really good. It’s easy to say that when you crash out, but I thought it was a car that I could have won with or at least give them a run for it. At Kansas we had a good enough race car to finish third, and then to come here and win. We’ve got momentum. We have speed and we have a lot of confidence for that reason because we know we can do it. We know we can go to these next couple of races that are good race tracks for us – all three of them are – so we know we just have to go out there and fight and do what we know how to do. We don’t need to change anything, we just have to keep the intensity up and keep realizing that we like the pressure, we’re better under pressure and that’s kind of our motto this year, and that we can fight under those situations and we know how to do that. I look forward to those moments. I looked forward to this weekend.”
DO YOU FEEL IT’S AN ADVANTAGE TO HAVE BRAD’S HELP AND ANY DOUBT IN YOUR MIND HE AND THAT TEAM WILL DO ANYTHING THEY CAN TO HELP YOU DOWN THE STRETCH? “I think Team Penske does a good job of being a team. It’s in our name. We better. This is a shot for the championship on the 50th Anniversary. The Indy Car guys did it. We know that. We’ve got a shot with the XFINITY car and the owner’s championship and we’ve still got a shot here in the Cup car, so we’re gonna keep working hard at that. But Brad and I have always been great teammates. We’ve worked well together. The two teams work really well together. We’ve shown that on speedways here at Talladega before, and I think that model will keep being shown throughout the next few races and trying to push through to get Roger a second championship. We’ll keep working on that, but he also has a lot to race for still. You can still finish up there in points throughout the end of the season and he’s got a fast car, so knowing Brad he’s still gonna want to win. I don’t blame him, but I think they will also help us along just like they were when they weren’t in these rounds.”
