Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy Open – Charlotte Motor Speedway
Saturday, May 20, 2017
STAGE WINNERS CLINT BOWYER AND RYAN BLANEY
CLINT BOWYER – No. 14 Haas Automation Ford Fusion (STAGE 1 WINNER) – WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO YOU? “It’s big. This is a big night. A million bucks is a lot of money. We’ve got a shot at it. We’ve got a good car, our Haas Automation Ford is strong and I’m just proud to be a part of it. This is without a doubt, I think, the toughest Open. I think this is the third time I’ve had to run it and when you’ve got Blaney that qualifies really good, he’s always had speed, especially last week. Looking back at Kansas he was one of the cars to beat, so you had Chase in it too. It’s a tough crowd, so I’m proud to be in it.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion (STAGE 2 WINNER) – WAS THERE A DIFFERENT KIND OF PRESSURE TONIGHT TO GET INTO THE ALL-STAR RACE COMPARED TO A REGULAR WEEKEND? “Honestly, I think it’s more pressure to just get in it than the Open. Once you’re in it you’re just gonna race hard for a million bucks. I was probably more nervous trying to hold Chase off there than I will be all night trying to get up through the field. You want to have a chance to race for the money and the Open is our way to do it. I didn’t want to do anything to blow that. I think there was more pressure in the Open than the actual All-Star Race, but you never know.”
THE YOUNG GUYS PUT ON A GOOD SHOW IN THAT THIRD SEGMENT. ARE WE GOING TO SEE THAT FROM YOU IN THE MAIN EVENT? “Oh yeah. You’ve got to if you’re gonna have a shot at it. That was cool to watch Daniel, Erik and Chase go at it. That was pretty neat to see, but you can definitely expect a show tonight for sure.”
LANDON CASSILL — No. 34 MDS/#Checkit4Andretti Ford Fusion — “We took a chance and took two tires for the start of the final stage and wound up restarting in the lead. I kind of spun the tires on the restart, and it’s hard when you lose your momentum. We got hit from behind and spun. But this is the kind of race where you take chances like that. We would’ve loved to advance our MDS/#Checkit4Andretti Ford to the All-Star Race and thought that could give us a chance at a win. I’m proud of the team for the effort.”
DAVID RAGAN — No. 38 Dockside Logistics Ford Fusion — “Derrick (Finley) and our Dockside Logistics team made a lot of adjustments last night. We didn’t qualify well, but our car was better in the race. We learned a lot for the Coca-Cola 600. We’ve got a little better race car to bring next week. We know we can make some improvements. But we just didn’t have the overall grip and handle on the race car tonight. I was proud that we made the car better from where we started the weekend, but it just wasn’t quite good enough to run with those top five or six guys.”
Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy All-Star Race – Charlotte Motor Speedway
Saturday, May 20, 2017
Ford Finishing Results:
4th – Kurt Busch
6th – Kevin Harvick
8th – Joey Logano
9th – Brad Keselowski
11th – Ryan Blaney
13th – Clint Bowyer
14th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – YOU TRIED TWO TIRES AT THE END OF STAGE 2. “It’s really the only strategy we’ve got. You can’t pass anywhere. It’s not great track conditions, to be honest with you. It’s just on the bottom. We had to try something to get our average up or try to win a stage and that’s what we tried.” YOU STARTED WITH THE OPTION TIRES. HOW DID THAT WORK? “We got a few rows on the start and then things got jumbled up and we went back to where we started. That was kind of the end of it.”
CLINT BOWYER – No. 14 Haas Automation Ford Fusion – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE STRATEGY OF PUTTING TWO REGULAR TIRES ON WITH THE TWO OPTION TIRES? “It was a good try. Track position is key and you try to do something to get track position and you don’t have the upper hand. They’re better than you on that deal. I think if we would have had tires and started up front, we’d have been hard to handle tonight. We were a good car all night long, it’s just this format and the way the race is. You can’t complain about it because it is what it is. It’s the All-Star Race and everybody wants to be a part of it, it’s just unfortunate that your hands are tied.”
KEVIN HARVICK – No. 4 Busch Bucks Ford Fusion – “We just didn’t put it together there when we came down pit road. We got behind and at that point you don’t have enough laps to make it up.”
KURT BUSCH – No. 41 Monster Energy Ford Fusion – “You’ve got to do something special in the Monster Energy All-Star Race. We did everything at an A-minus tonight. The pit stops were good. The car was good. The restarts were good. The calls and adjustments were good. Nothing stood out as excellent. Brad starting on the pole with old tires, I could tell you the third-place car was gonna win it, so congrats to Kyle.” WHAT WAS IT LIKE OUT THERE? “We’re all running qualifying laps, so it’s gonna be tough to pass. We need the outside groove to come in a little bit quicker, but I thought it was a good race for adjustments, restarts, the excitement value from in the seat. I love the format. Monster did a great job with this traditional format. Having the option tire I thought was really neat for the crews to use and everybody used them before that last round, how about that.” WHAT’S THE BIGGEST THING YOU TAKE AWAY FROM TONIGHT FOR NEXT WEEK? “The fun factor was at an all-time high tonight and we did a great job through everything, I’d say at an A-minus level. We wanted to win tonight for our sponsor, Monster Energy. They put a ton into this and the excitement and the value of coming tonight, I thought the fans got their money’s worth. We were good on pit stops. We were good on restarts. We were good on setup and adjustments and picking which lane, we just didn’t do anything exceptional tonight. We still ran top-five all night, so that’s what we’ll take away. We had short-run speed tonight, but we have to switch all that for the long 600-mile endurance race next week. We wanted to put on a show tonight. We ran an A-minus and that’s not gonna win you a million bucks. Congrats to Kyle.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “We had to just shoot for the fence doing anything we can do to try to make our Shell/Pennzoil Ford a little faster. It was just slow. There are no better words for it. I feel like we kind of got screwed up as soon as practice started and we had issues with our brakes. We had a bad qualifying effort because of that, which set us towards the back. We didn’t practice our car either, and we couldn’t make it any better and it showed in the race. We weren’t very quick at all and we couldn’t pass cars and couldn’t move around the race track. We’ve got a little bit of work to do for next week. I’ve got faith in our people. We will definitely make improvements because there’s only one way to go after tonight, so we’ll keep working on this thing and see if we can find a little bit of speed for next weekend.” WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE OPTION TIRE? “I needed the option tire the whole time. It was actually pretty interesting that our car was noticeably faster with the option tire on it. It’s not night and day. It’s not like it’s a second, but it’s a couple tenths at least and it got us enough to get into the final 10 there for the 10-lap shootout. We needed one more set of them. We needed more sets than everybody else.”
