Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Sparks Energy 300 – Talladega Superspeedway
Saturday, May 6, 2017
Ford Finishing Results
1st – Aric Almirola
3rd – Joey Logano
13th – Darrell Wallace Jr.
26th – Cole Custer
29th – Ryan Reed
RYAN REED – No. 16 Lilly/American Diabetes Association Ford Mustang – “I’m fine. The racing is fun. We had a really fast car, so that made the racing a lot more fun for us, but with this low downforce you’re really at other people’s mercy on how they push you. Aric got careless there and he took the blame for it, but I think it being Saturday and him not racing here that often he was a little more careless. I don’t think if it was Dale Jr. or somebody he races with every week in front of him that he would have done that, so I wish he would have taken a little more time, especially that early on, and give us a little more respect because we do race in the series every week. We’re racing for a championship and he’s not, and feel like he owes us that respect, so I’m frustrated.”
IS IT FRUSTRATING TO HAVE A CUP GUY LIKE THAT IN THIS SERIES? “I’m not frustrated that he’s in the series because I support Cup guys racing against us. We learn from them and there are a lot of great things, and I actually think a lot of Aric. I have a lot of respect for him as a driver and as a person, but that just wasn’t cool. All he had to do was back off a little bit. He just got so aggressive with that push and then didn’t hit us square. He hit us off to the right side and when that happened the car was out from underneath me before I knew it.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 98 Fresh From Florida Ford Mustang – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – “It means so much. First, I want to thank God. And then I want to thank Fresh from Florida and everybody at this Biagi DenBeste race team. They let me run this thing seven or eight times a year and I have so much fun, especially at the speedway races. Doug Yates brings some awesome horsepower and our Ford Mustang was super-fast. I knew it right from the beginning of practice. We ran about 10 laps in practice and I said, ‘Put it on jack stands. We’re ready to go. This thing is fast.’ What an awesome day. I feel really bad about the 16. I got in the back of the 16 and tore up a lot of cars there, but I got a good push and I got in the back of him. I was trying to help him, trying to make the Fords work together and I hooked him, so I feel sorry about that. But an awesome job. I told the kids we were gonna get soaking wet again. They’ve talked about Daytona for a year and it’s just awesome to get this Fresh from Florida Ford Mustang into Victory Lane, so we’ll drink down a cold glass of orange juice and get ready to qualify.”
YOU TOOK FUEL ONLY ON THE LAST STOP. HOW MUCH DID THAT BALANCE CHANGE MAKE FOR YOU? “I think it made a difference. My car was able to go in places – I didn’t think the tires were that bad because we ran 35 or 40 laps single file and we lost the draft. That was actually a mistake on my part. My crew chief said they might be coming and I was like, ‘Man, no way.’ I thought we were really close to our fuel window, so I ran one lap and that actually hurt us and we lost the draft. But I knew our car was really fast and knew if we had one more shot at them that we’d get another chance, and I’ve got to thank Joey. Joey gave me a really good push, so it was great to see the Blue Ovals working together. I want to thank everybody at Smithfield Foods too. I feel so bad. So far I’ve won a Cup race and it’s been in a U.S. Air Force car, and I’ve won two XFINITY races and it’s been in a Fresh from Florida car. We’ve yet to get Smithfield Foods to Victory Lane, so we’ll have to work on that.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – PIT ROAD INTERVIEW — “Man we were so close, aggravating, but so much fun. I love racing here at Talladega in these XFINITY cars. The draft is so crazy and different. The runs come so quick and it’s hard to block them. You have to physically block them with your car and it’s really tight. We came through (Turns) 3 and 4, I thought I had a run and Aric was late to block and I was like, ‘This is could be where it all ends (laughs)’. (He) got there just in time and I just got into his rear and had to cross him over. Dang it! I had a good push there at the end with the 2 car and we just couldn’t stay attached like we needed to. If the caution came out sooner, we would have won the race. I’m glad they let us race to the end. Selfishly, I wish the caution came out, but for the fans I’m glad that it didn’t. We did everything that we could do.”
LOGANO PRESS CONFERENCE – DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING IN TERMS OF WHAT MOVES YOU COULD MAKE IN THE DRAFT FOR TOMORROW’S CUP RACE? “I think these XFINITY races and with this new drafting package it’s closer to what it’s like in the Cup Series. You don’t have that tandem push as much and it’s more of a pack like the Cup races are, so you get a little bit more experience for what tomorrow is gonna be like, which is good. I think the biggest thing is just working with your spotter and working on that lingo and working on where the runs come from and learning how to block those and being aggressive together. I think that’s the biggest thing. We only do this four times a year, so it’s hard to be really good at it, or at least it’s hard to me. Maybe I’m not that good. The more seat time I get, the better I feel about my chances for tomorrow.”
WAS IT MORE IMPORTANT TO RUN THIS RACE TODAY BECAUSE OF LIMITED PRACTICE YESTERDAY? “Yeah, I think so. I think it definitely is. Even if we would have had another run yesterday in practice, I don’t think there would have been a big group out there drafting anyways. All the crew chiefs on the Cup side get scared. They don’t want to go out there. Don’t let the drivers have fun because they all think we’re gonna crash probably because we have, so I get it, but we always want to have fun and play around out there a little bit. If we had more practice yesterday, it wouldn’t have affected us much. It would have been a very small group out there. Maybe the Fords would have got together and run out there and the Chevys and the Toyotas would have been in their own little group and there would have been no slicing and dicing or anything like that. I don’t think these speedway practices anymore are as crazy as they used to be because we all call in scared.”
ARIC ALMIROLA WINNER’S PRESS CONFERENCE
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 98 Fresh from Florida Ford Mustang – “It was a good day. I knew yesterday. I told John yesterday 10 laps into practice I was like, ‘Put this thing on jack stands and let’s get it ready to race.’ Our Fresh from Florida Ford Mustang was so fast and I could just make moves that I wasn’t able to make at other speedway races and even though we’ve had good speedway cars in the past, something felt really special about this one yesterday and I knew right away. Today, we qualified 23rd and I wasn’t worried one bit. I knew when they dropped the green flag that we were gonna be able to go up to the front and we did. We drove right up to the front, led some laps, won the first stage, got back up to the front in the second stage and I got really, really depressed and disappointed when we had that mix-up getting onto pit road and we lost the draft. I thought, ‘Man, there goes our shot to win this race,’ and when that caution came out I knew that was our opportunity to go win this race. John made the call to come put four tires on it and fill it up with fuel and I knew that was gonna give me the opportunity to put my car in some really tight situations and I was gonna be able to make a lot more aggressive moves with sticker tires and we were able to do that and my car drove really great at the end. I was able to maneuver my car pretty much wherever I wanted it and we were able to keep our Ford Mustang out front. It was a great day. We got these guys back to Victory Lane again. Fred and Bill and Lori, they let me drive their car a dozen times a year and I have so much fun doing this. It’s such a stress relief, if you will, because driving the Cup car there’s so much pressure and so much going on, so to come drive this car it makes me feel like a kid again when I used to go to the race track just to have fun and there was a lot less pressure on the line and you just had to answer to your grandfather if you ran bad. That’s what it feels like now. It’s so much fun to race with these guys and they bring a great race car to the track everytime we show up to race. It was a great day.”
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU SPEND MAKING MOVES IN THE XFINITY RACE TO KNOW WHAT YOU CAN AND CAN’T DO IN THE CUP RACE? “Not much. I think it does give you more confidence in yourself and your ability and it is 300 miles of practice, so to speak, of looking in your mirror and timing runs, but the cars drive so much different. The restrictor plate difference between the cars, the aero difference between the cars with the NASCAR rules, there’s so much difference that, honestly, there’s not a lot I did today that I can really take and use for tomorrow other than the 300 miles of practice of just constantly looking in my mirror. We spend probably 70 to 80 percent of the lap that we run looking in the mirror, not actually looking where we’re going, so that’s the most challenging thing to get used to and get comfortable with is just you are totally focused on what’s going on behind you because what happens behind you affects how your car runs and the draft you get, the surges you get and when you can time it to use that to your advantage. So you focus so much on that and that is so different than anything else we do.”
IS THIS A VICTORY YOU CAN ACTUALLY ENJOY? YOUR OTHER TWO HAD ISSUES. “Yeah, this one was ours fair and square. We led a lot of laps. We won the first stage and we got up there at the end and there was no caution at the end. We were ahead at the caution or anything like that. We crossed the start-finish line first and those are the most gratifying to win. There’s discrepancy like Daytona, the caution and they’re trying to figure out who won the race, but this one there was no doubt. The 98 car passed the start-finish line before all the other cars, so that was a great way to win and Fresh from Florida, they support us so much in this XFINITY Series and we’re also running them on the Cup car and it’s great to have them back in Victory Lane. And like I said in Victory Lane, now the only sponsor we’re missing trying to get back to Victory Lane is Smithfield Foods. We’ve got to work on that in the Cup Series.”
WHAT WAS THE MILWAUKEE DEAL? “You can go back and review tape on that one. I’m not going to.”
DID YOU SEE THE CARS WRECKING BEHIND YOU ON THE LAST LAP AND WERE YOU WORRIED THE CAUTION WAS GOING TO COME OUT? “I was. I was really worried that the caution was going to come out, especially when the 22 just barely got a nose ahead getting into turn three. I was like, ‘Come on, please don’t throw that caution,’ because I wanted to at least have a shot for us to race back to the start-finish line. I did see the cars wrecking behind us. Like I said, you’re constantly looking in the rearview mirror, so I was looking in the mirror and I saw cars spinning out and dart out of my mirror, so I knew they probably wrecked and it really actually changes the way the cars draft behind you because when that much commotion happens behind those cars it drags them back off of my car. So I knew I had to make sure I didn’t get too big of a gap coming back to the front straightaway because I figured the 1 car would have laid back and tried to get a big run coming back to the start-finish line, so I was aware and I was glad NASCAR let us race back.”
FRED BIAGI, Co-Owner – “It was great. The car was good. All day long Aric is badass. He’s amazing on these superspeedways, so John set the car up good and Aric did the rest, so it was exciting. My knees are still shaking though from the last 10 laps.”
BILL DENBESTE, Co-Owner – “I’m proud to have Aric as a driver and John did a great job. We won Daytona and now Talladega, so it’s very rewarding.”
JOHN HANSON, Crew Chief – “First, Doug and everybody at Roush Yates with their horsepower that’s usually the key here. We never took this car to the wind tunnel. This is the same car we won with in July last year and it doesn’t qualify well. Obviously, we always qualify about 20th or 23rd, but it always races well. The guys at the shop build good race cars for us and it’s fun to be a part of it.”
FRED BIAGI CONTINUED – ANY PLANS TO RETURN FULL-TIME? “Sure, if we can scare up a little sponsorship, that would be end goal is to go run the full season and see how we can do.”
