Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Hisense 300 – Charlotte Motor Speedway
Saturday, May 27, 2017
Ford Finishing Order:
1st – Ryan Blaney
2nd – Kevin Harvick
6th – Brad Keselowski
7th – Cole Custer
11th – Ryan Reed
21st – Casey Mears
28th – Darrell Wallace Jr.
KEVIN HARVICK – No. 41 Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford Mustang – HOW DID YOU VIEW THE LAST RESTART? “It was a tough decision for our Hunt Brothers Ford team. I knew that we had the 22 behind us if we were on the top and he pushed me a little bit and then kind of laid off there getting into one. The 12 had the best car on the restart getting going. He’s the one who helped us get the lead and I knew I was gonna have my hands full, but he just beat me there at the end and we wound up getting second.”
RYAN REED – No. 16 Lilly/American Diabetes Association Ford Mustang – “We had a top-10 car and I got in the fence with about 40 to go just trying to get a couple more spots there at the end and tagged the fence. That hurt the handling pretty good, so if I don’t make that mistake we have an easy top-10 day. Really, even with the car wrecked, we were still battling for a top-10, so to finish 11th with a wrecked car isn’t a terrible day. I’m happy with the progress. That’s the best car I’ve ever had at Charlotte Motor Speedway, so we’re headed in the right direction.”
COLE CUSTER – No. 00 Haas Automation Ford Mustang – “We had an awesome Haas Automation Mustang. I had one bad restart there. All of my other ones seemed to be pretty decent and we were in the top-5. I thought we were a fourth or fifth-place car, but on that one I fell back to 11th and picked the wrong lane going into three and four. I just can’t thank everybody enough. We had an awesome Haas Automation Mustang today and it’s all about my team, I’m just the steering wheel holder. Everybody at Ford Performance has been a big help. We’ve used a lot of their tools to come here and I think we have a good car to come back with.”
YOU GOT POINTS IN EVERY STAGE TODAY, SO A GOOD DAY FROM THAT PERSPECTIVE. “Yeah, that’s nice. That was big. We’re walking away with a nice points day and really happy with it. I wish we could have ended up top-5, but I’m really happy and think we can build on this week to week and run that good.”
PRESS CONFERENCE
KEVIN HARVICK – No. 41 Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford Mustang – “I knew I was in a pickle there with the 22 behind on the outside and I knew the 12 had the best car taking off. He’s actually the one who helped us get the lead, pushing us to the lead, so I didn’t really know what to do. He just wound up beating us there on the restart and that’s pretty much it. I’m just really proud of everybody on our Hunt Brothers Ford. I feel like we were better than the last time we came out and led a bunch of laps and were in contention all day and just didn’t finish it off there over the last few laps.”
COULD YOU FEEL ANY DIFFERENCE WITH THE STICKY STUFF ON THE TRACK AND SHOULD THEY ADD MORE FOR TOMORROW? “It’s hard to tell. I think the middle and top would definitely go on the restarts through one and two. It doesn’t feel like there’s a lot through the middle of three and four. The top would get rolling after 15-20 laps through three and four, but there was definitely options.”
IF YOU COULD DO IT OVER WOULD YOU STILL TAKE THE TOP? “That was our choice and it is what it is. If you get the bottom and you get the 22 and the 12 hooked up, you might get beat worse. It’s half-dozen one way or the other.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT CHRISTOPHER BELL’S PERFORMANCE? “There’s a lot of these guys that are gonna be really good. I think obviously when you look at Blaney and Christopher, and you could just keep going on and on. Bubba Wallace was up there today. The sport is in good hands and I think as you look at the experience these guys are getting at a young age, they’re gonna be well-seasoned by the time they’re about 25. It’s just one of those deals where you’re seeing Blaney win these races and, really, that’s what the rest of them have to do is win these races in order to really get the experience they need to win on Sunday.”
THOUGHTS ON DOVER NEXT WEEK. “We’re gonna have the same mindset that we would pretty much every week and that’s just go there and try to get your car handling as good as you can and look through everything and prepare during the week just like you would every week. There’s really nothing different.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE UPPER LANE FOR TOMORROW? “I think the same thing I said earlier about the track. It’s good on the restarts to go through the middle of one and two. You can get through three and four okay, but I think as you run longer the middle and the top get better and better through one and two. I could run the very top in three and four and make pretty good time, so it seems like it’s better through one and two, for me it was anyway, than it was in three and four.”
RYAN BLANEY PRESS CONFERENCE
BRIAN WILSON, Crew Chief – No. 12 Snap-on Ford Mustang – “There was a little bit of strategy there at the end with the restarts. Obviously, that was key for Blaney to be able to get by Harvick there. He obviously was tough. The 2 car had really good long-run speed, so I felt like it was critical to get past him early on, but as far as just strategy and pit calls go, it was pretty straightforward. The only tough thing is there was a couple calls there where we only had 20 or so laps on our tires and didn’t know if everyone else was going to come, but with the limited amount of tires it seemed like that played out pretty well. Overall, the handling was pretty strong all day, so we didn’t have to work on it a whole lot.”
WHAT’S THE BIGGEST THING YOU DO TO COMMUNICATE WITH RYAN TO PUSH HIM? “It’s kind of a tough situation where you know you’re not gonna pit anymore, you’ve used all your tires, so there’s not a whole lot of work that can be done. It’s more like you said, just communication with him. More than anything it was just reminding him early in the race that we were stronger than these guys, where we were stronger than them, and just trying to focus on those type of things. He keeps his mind focused on it and he can just focus on getting the business done at the end there.”
THE 12 TEAM HAS BEEN ON A ROLL SINCE LAST YEAR. WHAT’S THE REASON, ESPECIALLY SINCE THE 22 HAS STRUGGLED A BIT? “It’s a bit of a tough question because I was part of the 22 group and I’ve worked really hard to try to figure out what we needed on that 22 group, but I think just in general talking about the 12 we’ve got a group of guys that are primarily based at the shop, so they don’t have the week in and week out schedule. To some extent, you get to cherry pick and we’ve seen that the past 10 years with different cars that will be part-time where if you can just cherry pick this track or that track and then just work on one car for that race track, we get to pay attention to all of the little details that sometimes cars that are running every week don’t have the time to necessarily pay attention to. So some of it is that, but we’ve just got a really special group of guys. They all really focus on paying attention to the details of making sure everything is 100 percent right.”
HOW NERVE-RACKING IS IT FOR YOU AT THE END? “My wife was in victory lane, the first time she’s ever been there, and I was telling her that when something like that happens it’s just relief. It’s funny because there are some wins where you don’t expect to, you don’t have the best car and you’re just purely excited about it, but when you’ve got a really strong car like that, you’re always kind of on the box worrying about, ‘how are we gonna screw this up?’ ‘What’s gonna happen?’ How are you gonna get behind and then are we gonna have enough to get back, so at the end of the race you’re watching him make that amazing move to get to the lead and it’s more you just a case of all your tension falls away.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 12 Snap-on Ford Mustang – PRESS CONFERENCE – “Back then it wasn’t the XFINITY Series in ’06, but that was pretty neat for my dad to win here. I remember watching that race and that was a heck of a race and I hope this was a great race to watch. It was fun to be a part of. We had a really awesome race car all day, having to start in the back and to be fourth by that first segment end was pretty impressive. I thought our car was really good at the time. We made it a little bit better when we got the lead there and was able to kind of control the race that we wanted to and we lost the lead there on the last pit stop. I thought we had a good pit stop, I just kind of got boxed in and didn’t really angle out very well and that was on me. But, luckily, we were able to get back on the front row and give us a shot. It was so hard starting third and when you only have a couple laps to try to get to the front row that was really tough. I thought we were gonna run out of laps to try to make it happen. We were getting really good restarts all day once we finally got the pace picked up like it should be, and we were able to shove Kevin in front there and get to second, and just gave us a shot and an opportunity to get by him at the end there on the last restart. Props to everybody at the Penske group. It’s been a lot of fun to be a part of it over the past four years and watching it improve and develop. To be honest with you, the XFINITY program wasn’t where it should be this past year and they’ve put so much hard work into it in the offseason and I think we’ve finished second three times now and it was nice to finally break through and get back to victory lane with those guys. They deserve it. They work their butts off and it’s definitely cool to win at a track my father did. It’s pretty cool.”
DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU RAN A RACE WITH A LOT OF CUP DRIVERS IN IT AND HOW MUCH YOU LEARNED TO HELP YOU GET ALONG? CHRISTOPHER BELL HAD A GOOD DAY TODAY IN HIS DEBUT. “I remember my first XFINITY start in 2012. We were with Tommy Baldwin’s team and we ran really good that race. We ran up towards the front all race and there were a bunch of Cup guys in that and I got to race with a handful of them that whole race, but, honestly, my first time running with a bunch of Cup guys competitively the whole race was the November race at Texas in 2012 when I just got signed with the Penske group. Kyle Busch was in that race, Harvick was in it, I was in the 22 car at the time and there was a handful of others. I think Kasey Kahne was in it and I raced with Kevin and Kyle, really, the whole race. That was pretty cool for me to learn off of them and even in all the Truck stuff I personally enjoyed it when I was a truck regular – when they would come down and race and compete in those races, just because you learn so much from them, whether it’s restarts, long run stuff, moving around the race track and utilizing air. That just teaches you so much. I didn’t get to race around Christopher very much today, but it seemed like he did a really good job. I saw he got turned earlier, which wasn’t his fault, but it was pretty impressive for him to run up front and run as good as he did and finish that well. I loved when I was just getting started to run with the Cup guys. You just learn so much from watching them and the little things that they do.”
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FOR TODAY THAT WILL HELP TOMORROW? “I thought we learned a good bit. It probably won’t be as warm even at the start of our race than it was right there, but it got shaded a little bit towards at some parts of that race and definitely towards the end we were able to kind of figure out what our car was gonna do. So there are always things you can apply and I was pretty proud to see the middle and top lane kind of come in a little bit. That was promising. I didn’t run much of it. I ran the middle of one and two most of the day, but I saw some other guys running the top of both ends. Hopefully, we’ll be able to run up there tomorrow in our Cup cars and widen it out, but we’ll think about it tonight and in our meeting tomorrow morning we’ll make changes and a lot of it will be based not only on how this XFINITY car drove, but the changes we made of what did certain things. We look at that as much as how the race track was or how the car was driving, just trying to figure out some changes and see if it will help out on that side in similar situations.”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED – DID YOU NOT TRY THE HIGH SIDE BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T SURE THERE WAS ANY GRIP UP THERE? “Our car was so good in the middle. I ventured up there a little bit at the end of that second segment. We were out front and we were able to kind of play around, but I was never really confident in it. I was kind of loose, so I really didn’t want to go up there and make a mistake and smack the fence, so it was just my car was running so good in the middle in one and two I just stuck there, so I don’t have a huge feel for what that stuff is. I saw Harvick run up there a good bit. He might be able to be a better judge of it, but it wouldn’t hurt my feelings to maybe see a little bit more applied. The bad thing is I noticed rolling around slow is everybody runs the bottom, middle, and all the marbles and everything goes up in that substance and sticks to it because it’s so tacky up there, and then it’s hard to get it cleaned off. So I don’t know what we have to do to try to help that out for tomorrow, but I don’t think it would be a bad thing to apply a little bit more. I don’t think that would be bad.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE PATIENCE YOU NEED TO HAVE TO GET BACK TO THE FRONT AFTER STARTING IN THE BACK? “I have a lot better patience than what I did a couple of years ago. You learn that as you run a little bit more in NASCAR and all these series. When you have to start in the back or something goes wrong and you lose five or 10 spots, it’s just the patience aspect of it. We were super-patient working our way up through the field starting back, and it helps out when you have a really good car because you know you can be patient and you don’t have to worry about the leader coming or something like that and you have to push hard. When you have a great car like that you don’t want to make a mistake when you’re trying to come up through the field of hurting it or damaging it. That’s the last thing you want to do, so that’s definitely come a long way in the past couple years from where I used to be. That’s A, from getting a stern talking to for the most part and B, trying to tell myself to be more patient.”
THIS WEEKEND IS SPECIAL FOR ROGER PENSKE. HOW DOES IT FEEL TO WIN FOR HIM? “It means a ton. Anytime you can win for Mr. Penske is huge. That’s super-special to me. He’s given me my opportunity. It was a combination of Brad’s truck team and Mr. Penske giving me a shot in 2012 and I’ve been really lucky to drive great race cars for him, so you want to do the best job you can for him, especially on this weekend, where he has the Indy 500. That’s such a huge race for them and he’s been so dominant in that race. To deliver for him early, hopefully that will put him in a good mood for tomorrow and get those guys going.”
WHAT DID YOU DO TO STAY FOCUSED AFTER COMING OFF PIT ROAD THIRD ON THE FINAL STOP? “It comes back to the patience thing. I just tried to keep a calm head. I was pretty upset at myself when I didn’t get into my box very well and didn’t angle out. We knew the 39 was gonna come in. It’s not his fault. He has to come in and I just didn’t do a great job of getting angled out and I was mad at myself for a second, but something nowadays is I forget things pretty easy whereas I think in the past when you’re younger you dwell over them a lot more and just think about that. Now you have to move forward and figure out, ‘OK, how am I gonna get back to the front or at least the front row to give ourselves a shot.’ That was part of my plan of trying to work with Kevin. We were able to get a good restart and get to the front row and then eventually the last restart, but our plan, my plan personally went pretty good, surprisingly. Plans don’t really ever go your way. I think the second-to-last restart when we were third and Kevin got the lead and we got to second, that worked out pretty well for us. I was surprised that went our way and then the last one I figured if we could at least slow him up a little bit off of two we had him, but the middle of three and four was iffy on restarts and if we had position just by a nose into three I thought we could clear him and fortunately we were able to do that.”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED — WHY NO BIG BURNOUT AT THE END? “Everyone nowadays they go down and do big funky burnouts and tear their race cars up and burn the rear tires off of them and blow them out and ruin the motor. Back in the day they didn’t do that. They just kind of rolled down the frontstretch and turned around and waved to the fans and got the checkered flag and went to victory lane. They’d even pick up a couple crew members on the way. I couldn’t find any of my crew members or else I would have picked them up. That’s how they used to do it. Personally to me, that is cooler than doing a big, smoky burnout and tearing up your race car and hurting the motor. That was kind of pre-planned.”
YOU HAD A GOOD BATTLE WITH BUBBA DURING THE RACE. “Yeah, get him a sponsor. He passed me on a restart and drove away from me, and that was awesome.”
DOES THAT ADD INCENTIVE WHEN YOU SEE HIM NEXT TO YOU? “Not really. You just stay in the competitive zone no matter who is in what car, but that was pretty cool. He got to second there and I restarted on the top and I was able to clear everybody on the top. I cleared Denny and I cleared Kevin on the top, and he drove right up beside of me on the bottom through one and two and I was like, ‘Wow.’ That surprised me and then he cleared me, and then we raced him pretty hard after that. He had a good run going. I hate to see what happened to him. I guess he cut a tire or something, but he ran awesome. He’s been doing a great job in that car and I hope someone will step up and give him the shot he deserves. He works really hard and is a great race car driver. I’m not just saying that because he’s a good friend of mine. I’m personally saying that because I think he is one hell of a race car driver and does a great job at everything else. So that was pretty fun to race with him a good bit. Maybe it puts a little bit more competitive edge on it when it’s your buddy and there’s another younger person you want to beat, but it doesn’t change too much.”
WILL YOU REMIND HIM ABOUT THIS UNTIL NEXT TIME? “No, we don’t brag or anything like that. You support each other the best you can and that’s what this sport is all about – support and not putting anybody down. Like I said, he did a great job. He came to victory lane and that was really cool of him and that shows you what kind of guy he is.”
WHAT DOES YOUR DAD TELL YOU? “To me, personally, he’s the best race car driver ever. That’s how I’ve always looked at him and that’s how I’ve always thought of him, not only as my father but the way he drives car – and not only his driving ability, but his mindset towards things. I think he’s one of the smartest people I know, personally, in the race car, outside the race car, building parts, coming up with inventions and ideas. He always just supports me and it was cool to have him here today. That’s really special to me to have him at the race track through the good and bad times of getting a stern talking to or helpful support and it’s usually support. I’ve been lucky to have somebody like that to help me through these weekends to try to get myself better, whether it’s restarts or long runs or just communication. He’s been the best person, so in my mind I’ll never be half the race car driver is, personally. I think he’s the greatest one ever and that’s how I’ll always think of him.”
