Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Daytona 500 – Daytona International Speedway
NASCAR FRIDAY PRACTICE
Friday, February 24, 2017
Jeremy Bullins, crew chief for Ryan Blaney and the No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion, spoke with Ford Performance regarding the teams decision to move to a backup car for the 500 after damage to the 21 in last night’s Duel.
JEREMY BULLINS, crew chief, No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – JUST CONFIRMING THAT YOU WENT TO A BACKUP CAR AND THE REASONS WHY: “Yes. The car suffered damage on both sides. If it had just been one side we could have fixed it but we would have spent most of our time getting ready for the 500 fixing the damage. Our backup car is a brand new car and we felt like that our best odds to getting back to the front of this thing was to use that car.”
RYAN (BLANEY) HAD A VERY FAST CAR LAST NIGHT: “He had a lot of speed. He used a little bit of strategy to get the lead. We got passed on a restart and were hanging on to second and almost cleared the leader back. We felt we had a car good enough to win and it was disappointing to tear it up, but that’s part of the deal.”
HOW IS THE BACKUP CAR? “It’s a brand new car. It’s built to the same spec as the other one. We’re not worried about it at all.”
HOW DOES GOING TO THE BACKUP CHANGE YOUR PLAN FOR FRIDAY? “It really doesn’t. If we would have made it through last night we would have changed motors and done a lot of work for tomorrow to get ready and run a few laps (tomorrow). We’ll spend today putting that engine in the backup car and getting everything ready to go, all the 500 stuff and go racing on Sunday.”
THE 21 CAR ALWAYS SEEM TO COME ALIVE AT DAYTONA: “There’s just a tradition of putting a lot of effort in having fast cars. With Team Penske alliance we have access to all their stuff, so we have really good cars. These guys take a lot of pride in the finishing touches and trying to get every little bit out of it that we can. We worked really hard getting every bit of speed out of it and it showed last night.”
