Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Kobalt 400 Qualifying – Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Friday, March 10, 2017
Ford Qualifying Results:
1st – Brad Keselowski
3rd – Ryan Blaney
6th – Joey Logano
13th – Clint Bowyer
17th – Kurt Busch
19th – Kevin Harvick
20th – Trevor Bayne
27th – Landon Cassill
28th – Danica Patrick
29th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
30th – Aric Almirola
31st – Matt DiBenedetto
32nd – David Ragan
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – POLE-WINNING INTERVIEW — “We’re off to a good start for sure with the Miller Lite Ford. It feels good to get an early-season pole to go with our win. With the way the segments play out and stages and all this stuff, you really need to start up front to have a shot at winning as you go down the line of those stages. This helps a ton and I’m grateful for the speed we had in the Miller Lite Ford, and I’m ready for the race on Sunday. I love Vegas.” WAS THE STRATEGY TO GO OUT EARLY AND LET EVERYONE TAKE A SHOT AT YOU? “Honestly, I thought I might screw it up and I wanted to get another shot, so I figured if I went out early, I could. That was not really the most elaborate of strategies, but it worked.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – “I thought we made good improvements from practice and that was nice. The first round we weren’t great. The second round we got really good (P1). They made good adjustment on that one. The third round I thought we had it through one and two and then we got held up by traffic in three and four.. I think we were close. We showed speed in our car. We go to work tomorrow and see what we have in the race. Starting third isn’t bad. We’ll try to improve on that.” DID THE 78 BEING OUT THERE HAMPER YOUR LAST QUALIFYING LAP? “Maybe a little bit but I don’t want to make excuses. Just have to thank this whole Wood Brothers team. We had great speed in practice. We were a little too tight in the last round.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Pennzoil Ford Fusion – IF YOU HAD TO DO IT OVER AGAIN WHICH END OF THE TRACK WOULD YOU TRY TO NAVIGATE? “I’m pretty sure down in one and two. I probably lost most of my speed down there. I had a good entry and a good one-third and then I got to the bump and started getting tight and it stayed tight all the way off. It was probably the best three and four I had in all of qualifying, which I’m sure I still probably got beat a little bit down there. It’s amazing how close the field is though. I think we were about a half-tenth off from the pole, so congrats to Brad and Team Penske. That’s great. All three of us are in the top six, so I’m proud of that. You always want to be number one, but it’s a good start for the Pennzoil Ford today.” WHAT IS THE BIGGEST THING YOU WILL FOCUS ON SUNDAY? “There is a lot here at Vegas, for sure. I think everyone talks about the bumps a lot down in one and two, trying to get that, trying to get your car to be able to move around the race track. You’re going to have to be able to move around to be able to pass cars. You’ve got to be good at the top and the bottom, so we’ll have a practice tomorrow to work on that a little bit and hopefully get that tuned in right.”
CLINT BOWYER – No. 14 Haas Automation Ford Fusion – “I’m happy with that. It’s not near where we need to be with this kind of equipment, but, for right now, I got a gain on this and I can see the front from there. Last week, we started way too far back. It took a long time to get to the front when we needed to be, so I’ll take this and we’ll keep gaining on this qualifying effort.” HOW DID IT GO? “It’s really, really close. It’s amazing. As fast as you’re going and all the things that happen inside that race car it can come down to such a close margin, but I’m happy with that. Qualifying has never been my strong suit. Last week, we drove up through and it just took way too long to get up there and get in position. Our pit road selection was bad, so, hopefully, this is a step in the right direction for myself and us as a race team will just keep gaining on this. It’s all about confidence in qualifying. You’ve got to have that confidence that that thing is gonna stick, and to be honest with you it’s been a while since I had one that would go in there and stick.” WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO ON SUNDAY TO GET TO THE FRONT? “Just continue to improve. I’m not worried about our starting position. I’ll take that. We’ll be just fine and have a little fun.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI POLE-WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – “It was really fast. Somebody told me we hit 207 miles an hour. That’s getting it around this place. This is a tough place to get around, though, especially the lower downforce package, which essentially makes the cars more difficult to drive and they are, they’re a handful. Getting through turns one and two, skating around quite a bit, especially over those big bumps, and then three and four had a real big slide and moment off that corner. I said, ‘I think that’s about all I had.’ Honestly, I didn’t think it was gonna be enough, but I’m glad it held on the way it did and thankful to kind of keep the momentum going with coming off the win last week and now a great qualifying effort and locking ourselves into the Clash next year. What a wave of momentum. It’s something we’re very proud of and hoping to continue with a win come Sunday.”
DO YOU THINK BY NOT HITTING ONE AND TWO PERFECTLY AND NOT CARRYING ALL THE SPEED OFF TURN TWO ACTUALLY HELPED YOU WITH THE LAP? “That’s a very astute question, my friend. I don’t know what the answer is, I’ll have to look through a lot of data and the smart guys like my engineers and crew chief will probably point some of that stuff out to me, but, yeah, everytime I looked at the track the cars that were fast in one and two weren’t in three and four. We were the opposite. We were really good in three and four. Matt Yocum asked me what the key was here and I told him you’re gonna have to have a good one and two. That’s the most important corner and, boy, did I lie to him. I can promise you it wasn’t meant to be a lie, but we’ll take it either way.”
THE FIRST FOUR TIMES HERE YOU WEREN’T AS COMPETITIVE. THEN SOMETHING CLICKED. WHY DID YOU GET GOOD AT THESE KIND OF TRACKS? “When we came here in ’09 it was one of my first races. I think it was my third career start and qualified well and I wrecked on the first lap. That wasn’t a very bright moment in my history here, and then 2010 and ’11 we just weren’t competitive at all. In 2012, we were leading and we broke a part. In 2013, we were pretty competitive. I think we finished third or fourth, so quite honestly in 2012 I thought this track started to click for me. We started to hit on a few things that I was really looking for, and it’s hard to explain but I think there are certain tracks that you go to as a driver where things just kind of happen immediately and you understand the track and you’re really good there. And then there are some tracks, and Vegas was this way for me, where it takes three or four times and specifically it takes having a good car and going, ‘Oh, that’s how it should be here.’ And then being able to kind of almost copy-cat and parrot off of that, where you come back the next time and when you’re not good you say, ‘Well, when we were good here…’ My third or fourth time here, this is what the car felt like and you go back to that and you get kind of a trend, so to speak, and you learn the track’s nuances of what you really need, and that’s one of the difficult things about being a rookie in any capacity, but especially in motorsports is not having that database to work off of, so, for us, I think we found some things we really liked here about three or four years ago and we’ve been able to kind of roll with that.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON SUNDAY, GOING FOR THREE WINS IN FOUR YEAR HERE? “I think starting up front is never a bad thing, but with this format it’s perhaps more important than ever. That’s by no mistake. The intention of this format was to create more moments that meant more. I don’t know if that really made a lot of sense, but qualifying has always mattered, but now it matter more than ever because it gives you a prime opportunity to win that first stage and collect those points both for the season and for the playoffs. I think it’s critical. It makes us put more emphasis on it. I think we can win all three stages. I think there has only been one team to do so and that’s been in the Truck race at Atlanta, but winning all three stages is a max points day and with this format you can earn more points than ever in a race and distance yourself more than ever from your competition and that’s certainly what we’re looking to try to accomplish.”
WERE YOU ABLE TO TAKE ANY OF LAST WEEK’S SETUP AND APPLY IT TO THIS WEEK? “That’s a great question for Paul. I know there was a lot of things that he learned and that I liked where we were last week, and I don’t think we’re too far off of where we were in Atlanta, but every time I ask those questions I get the, ‘Oh, we’re really close, but….’ and then he lists off 25 things and I go, ‘Oh, that doesn’t sound all that close,’ but he goes, ‘No, it’s really close.’ So it’s the same, but different.”
THE STAGE SETUP IS A BIT LONGER HERE IN TERMS OF LAPS. WHAT’S THE APPROACH? “I think our approach is to do whatever we have to do to win the stage, and you have to be flexible. It reminds me of that saying, and I don’t want to sound cheesy and cliché, but the Mike Tyson saying, ‘Everybody has a plan until they get in the ring with me.’ That’s how racing is. Everybody has a plan before the race starts until they drop the green, and that’s because things happen. You have yellows that throw you off your preferred strategy and you have to be flexible. You have to adapt and overcome, so we’re gonna do everything we can to win both stages and win the race, and I don’t know if there’s really one set strategy to do so that I would have confidence in, but I know that we’re gonna have to have a lot of speed to be able to stay up front. There’s a lot of great competition. I would expect the 4 car to climb back up through the field and be right there on our bumper. I know my teammate is gonna be really good, and my other teammate, Ryan Blaney, he was really good too in qualifying, so it’s really stiff competition out there and we’re gonna have to just dig all day.”
