Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Auto Club 400 Qualifying – Auto Club Speedway
Friday, March 24, 2017
Ford Qualifying Results:
3rd – Brad Keselowski
7th – Kevin Harvick
15th – Kurt Busch
16th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
17th – Clint Bowyer
19th – Ryan Blaney
22nd – Danica Patrick
26th – Landon Cassill
27th – David Ragan
31st – Aric Almirola
35th – Joey Logano
36th – Trevor Bayne
38th – Matt DiBenedetto
KEVIN HARVICK – No. 4 Busch Ford Fusion – “It wasn’t bad at all. I don’t think I did a very good job of just relaying what I needed as far as what I was feeling. It was too tight there the second and third rounds. I thought it was OK after the second round and I had overdrove it, but the third round it just got a little bit tighter. I should have gone with my gut and loosened the car up, but that’s what happens sometimes when you run fast in the first round you get a little bit gun shy, but the car is driving really good and everything should be fine.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Wurth Ford Fusion – ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THAT? “No, not really. I hit the wall, which is really embarrassing, but I was trying to get all it had and just reached a little too far.”
WAS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE A GOOD RESULT AFTER A DOWNER OF A WEEK? “Yeah, it doesn’t hurt. I guess I didn’t really think of it that way. Sometimes you take the good days for granted. I guess maybe I probably did that today.”
WHAT IS THE MOOD OF THE GROUP AFTER THE PENALTY? “I don’t know if I really have a great read for it. Nobody likes this situation, but I don’t know. It’s one of those things you can’t really do anything about, so I guess you’ve got to move on.”
35 POINTS IS A PRETTY BIG DEAL. “I think it’s a huge deal, personally, but that’s the rule and you’ve got to abide by the rules.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Auto Club Ford Fusion – HOW FRUSTRATING IS IT TO NOT EVEN GET A CHANCE TO QUALIFY? “That happens. We’re a team. Obviously, everyone is trying to push it and trying to get every ounce of speed out of our cars as we can. I don’t even know what we didn’t make it through. We made it through, but by the time we got through and got strapped in and got the car ready to go on the track we just ran out of time. It’s no big deal. I feel like our Auto Club Fusion was really fast in race trim, and a good thing it is because it doesn’t really matter about qualifying trim at this point, so we’ll work on it a little bit tomorrow and we’ll get ready to pass cars. This is a wide race track, so you can pass cars. We’ll have our work cut out, but it’s nothing we can’t overcome.”
HOW WAS IT WAITING FOR THE CAR TO GET THROUGH INSPECTION? “It’s nerve-racking, that’s for sure. You want to get out there and qualify and see what your car’s got, but the fact of the matter is we’ll shotgun the field somewhere back there and pass some cars. It will be fun passing cars. The silver lining is we have a fast race car. It was good in race trim. It’s a wide race track. There’s plenty of room to pass cars, so we’ll run hard and suffer the penalty a little bit through the first stage, but hopefully by the second stage we can be up there getting some points and hopefully winning the race by the end.”
AT LEAST YOU GET TO START THE RACE ON NEW TIRES AS OPPOSED TO THOSE WHO HAVE TO START ON WORN TIRES FROM QUALIFYING. “There’s something to that, especially at a race track like this. These guys are running two laps in qualifying trim, which is a big deal that seems to wear tires more than race trim laps, and then also you have the ins and outs, so we say two laps but it’s really five or six laps. That part is nice. It doesn’t outweigh the fact of starting in the back, but I guess that’s the way to look at the silver lining.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – DO YOU THINK THE INSPECTION ISSUES AND BEING LATE TO THE TRACK HAMPERED YOUR QUALIFYING EFFORT? “No. I just think we missed it.” HOW DID YOU MISS IT? “We were a little too free in practice and we probably over-adjusted a little bit and got on the tight side. It’s something to learn from for the next time we come here. I think in race trim we’re going in a good direction so we’ll see how that goes.”
KURT BUSCH – No. 41 Haas Automation Ford Fusion – “We just have to find a little bit better balance. Our car is a little tight in the center part of the corner and a little too loose on the exit. We had the same thing last week on a mile race track in Phoenix and yet we were dead sideways going into qualifying today, whereas we were plowing tight last week. The moral of the story is we’re just coming from too far in to the spectrum and we’ve got to get closer to the middle. That way we can fine-tune it. Last week, we ended up 11th and here we are 15th, so what I’m getting at is we just have to get closer so we can fine-tune it.”
HOW AGGRESSIVE WILL YOU HAVE TO BE IN PRACTICE TOMORROW TO ACHIEVE THAT? “You’re not gonna learn much at 8:30 in the morning. That’s when we’re on track tomorrow morning for the first round of practice. The second round of practice is a little bit more realistic at 11:30 and we’ll have two sets of sticker tires and what I’d like to do is just do run one and run 25 laps and then do run two and run 25 laps and then see how the two compare.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Fastenal Ford Fusion – “I thought we got the car driving better than practice, which is a positive. I felt like we were a little bit closer time-wise, compared to the other cars than practice, so I think we closed on it. It didn’t take much to get to 12th and get to that next round, but I think I was a little too cautious in one and two and three and four, making sure I did what I could do to get it to turn. With the tailwind going in one, I just didn’t get after it enough. All in all, I thought it was a decent performance. It gives us a good starting spot for Sunday. I think we learned some stuff that will apply hopefully to our race trim package and hopefully get it dialed in tomorrow.”
