Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Pocono 400 Qualifying – Pocono Raceway
Friday, June 9, 2017
Ford Qualifying Results:
4th – Ryan Blaney
5th – Kurt Busch
6th – Brad Keselowski
9th – Joey Logano
12th – Kevin Harvick
16th – Darrell Wallace Jr.
20th – Clint Bowyer
22nd – Trevor Bayne
23rd – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
24th – Danica Patrick
30th – Matt DiBenedetto
31st – David Ragan
34th – Landon Cassill
DARRELL WALLACE JR. – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – “That one will take a smile off your face. That’s just the competitive nature. I definitely wanted to make the third round, and I think we had enough speed in it, and it’s just me of knowing that you pick up speed every run. I knew that going into it. We talked about it right after we climbed out from the first run, but you get so fixated on those XFINITY cars and those things are all about momentum, so I was just kind of waiting for that thing to turn and get down to the bottom and get it all pointed, and I didn’t muscle it up. I just kind of got lazy with it. We picked up, but we should have picked up a lot more than what we did, but it’s a good starting spot. I don’t know what more I could ask for. It’s a great group of guys here. I see why Aric likes running this car because these guys are awesome. They’re a lot of fun to be around. They’re all pumped up to be here and that’s good. It’s a good showing for our Smithfield Ford. Hopefully, RP likes it. The King is over there smiling, I hope – maybe a little grin. A little fist bump like he gave me earlier would be good.”
HOW ARE YOU HANDLING ALL THIS ATTENTION? “It’s part of it. It’s a big moment for me and a big moment for the sport, so the media is gonna be there. That’s common sense. I enjoy it. I love talking to you guys. It’s a lot of fun unless it’s a bad day, then leave me alone.”
WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR SUNDAY? “I’d like to get through practice tomorrow and see how we can change our balance and get a little bit better for our Smithfield Ford, but Sunday is all about running a clean race – don’t make anybody mad, try to gain respect and earn respect and try to prove to everybody.”
WHAT IS THE GOAL FOR PRACTICE TOMORROW? “Tomorrow is all about getting in a rhythm. We’ll work on some race runs. I’m getting used to how the Cup Series works. You make a couple race runs and then you switch over to qualifying trim. For me, I just want to run laps all the time. I was just getting comfortable. We have 55 minutes tomorrow. We’ll find some speed. We’ll find some balance. I’ll find some skill sets and talk to some fellow competitors and see how I can improve myself.”
A GOOD DAY? “Yeah, absolutely. I honestly shocked myself with the speed that I was able to deliver to the plate. I may have shocked the team. I don’t know if they’ll tell me that. I may have shocked a couple people watching too. That’s fine. As long as I shocked myself that’s a good thing.”
DID YOU UNDERESTIMATE YOURSELF? “I underestimated myself for sure. I didn’t know how big of a jump this was gonna be and I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so pumped up today and smiling today is because we’ve been pretty damn good for my first start here. I’m pretty excited.”
HAVE YOU TALKED TO JIMMIE JOHNSON TODAY? “Yeah, I talked to him before practice. I’m gonna try and catch him here, but I’ll probably have to jump on a bike to catch him. But I’m gonna try to talk to him, talk to Harvick, Logano. I usually talk to Blaney. I just need to get some different opinions on what to do. They’re all gonna tell me to get out of the way, probably, but I’m just taking it all in. This is a big open notebook for me. I’m jotting down everything I can.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – “That was not bad. I missed the tunnel a little bit and probably cost us a tenth. I don’t know that we could have run a pole speed, but I thought we made good changes each round and we got better and better. I know the last round was a little bit slower, but that was me just missing the tunnel a little bit. That’s such a hard turn to do, especially in q-trim because you’re going so fast, but, overall, good speed by our Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford and I think in race trim we were fairly decent. We can see the front from there and we’ve only got a few spots to go, so we’ll see how Sunday goes.”
KURT BUSCH – No. 41 Haas Automation/Monster Energy Ford Fusion – “I feel like we managed the qualifying session the best we could with the three runs and making sure we weren’t tight or loose on our balance. When we made our first qualifying run today we were like 17th, so we made the right adjustments and we found the right middle ground and brought home a top-5 in qualifying trim.”
KEVIN HARVICK – No. 4 Busch Beer Ford Fusion – “I just overthought it there. I got tight off of two and didn’t think about time and got us behind there, and came in and tried to cool it off. That wasn’t the right thing to do. I should have just kept going.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – “We’ve got good speed. I want to just keep digging. We were on either side of it every run, but we had our best run at the end. It felt like I could have used two or three more runs and could have kept getting better.”
