Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Date: Friday, March 3, 2017
Event: Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500
Series: Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series
Location: Atlanta Motor Speedway (1.5-mile oval)
Todd Gordon, crew chief for Joey Logano’s No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion, took a moment to talk to Ford Performance about Atlanta Motor Speedway and how the new aero package is affecting the cars on the track, and what that means come Sunday afternoon.
TODD GORDON (crew chief, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion) – TALK ABOUT THE DOWNFORCE, OR LACK OF, HERE AT ATLANTA. “I think the great part is that as we continue to take downforce off the race cars, we make it so the cars don’t drive as well and you get to see drivers drive. They aren’t just riding in a car that is locked on the race track. As we continue to do that, we try everything we can mechanically to regain some aero and keep our mechanical grip or gain more mechanical grip but the long and short is that everybody hates their race car more. You have to be the guy that hates your race car the least to be successful here. I love what is going on with it. I think it opens all our playbooks up with how we work on race cars, how drivers drive them and the interaction there is important.”
WILL IT TRANSLATE TO EXCITING RACING? “I think so. I definitely do. I think the less aero dependant we make our race cars the less the leader has the advantage. When we had huge spoilers, all you had to do was get track position. You created a wake. It is no different than a boat. There is a wake and it gets wider the farther back it gets. The car when we had big spoilers could make a big wake and really dirty up the air for all the cars behind them. As we made the spoilers smaller, the wake gets smaller. At a place like this where you can run from the wall down to the yellow line, you can run away from the wake and that allows the cars to be more competitive. The car that is behind the leader won’t be at the disadvantage it would have been before or will be even at some other places.”
