FORD PERFORMANCE NASCAR NOTES AND QUOTES
Date: Sunday June 18, 2017
Event: FireKeepers Casino 400 (Post-Race Quotes)
Series: Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series
Location: Michigan International Speedway (2.0-mile oval)
FORD FINISHING RESULTS
3rd Joey Logano
8th Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
12th Kurt Busch
14th Kevin Harvick
16th Brad Keselowski
17th Trevor Bayne
19th Darrell Wallace Jr.
25th Ryan Blaney
26th Clint Bowyer
28th Matt DiBenedetto
29th David Ragan
32nd Landon Cassill
37th Danica Patrick
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Fusion (Finished 3rd)
“Yeah, you have no idea how good this feels. It’s been a struggle the last month-and-a-half and it’s nice to come here to Michigan, maybe our best race track and be able to overcome a lot. I’m not sure we had a third-place car today but the team executed like they needed to get the Shell-Pennzoil Ford into the top-three. Proud of the effort. I wish I could have the last restart back. I think I could have gotten to second. I wasn’t able to stay attached to the 42. I had a good start but the whole bottom lane was able to stack up really good and push ahead and then Denny (Hamlin) slid up in front of us; just racing there. Turning the momentum a bit and bringing home a solid top-five and change things.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Fifth Third Ford Fusion (Finished 8th)
“We had a pit road penalty there for speeding late in the race and so we had some good restart with the Fifth Third Ford. It was a lot better than we were in practice. I guess that is the goal, to get it the best for the race, and that is what the guys did. We worked hard all day. It was a good day on pit road. We have a good baseline to come back with in August here at Michigan.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Fusion (Finished 14th)
“We were just too tight. Tight all day long and we could not get it loosened up enough to be able to challenge. It is too bad really. Just too tight.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion (Finished 16th)
“I don’t know. We just weren’t really where we needed to be. We had a few bright spots but we couldn’t get it there at the end.”
DARRELL WALLACE Jr., No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion (Finished 19th)
“It was a lot better than last week for sure. I just didn’t get all of it on restarts and what I thought was aggressive, going back to the Xfinity side I am one of the aggressive ones, but you have to be 10-times more aggressive here at least. It is a learning curve. It was a solid run all day. I knew we would run a lot better than where we started, it was just a matter of getting around those guys, getting track position and clean air. The restarts were wild at the end. We should have ended top-15 but I didn’t have my guard up enough. Top-20 is good. I am pumped up a lot about that. I didn’t speed on pit road and I am proud of that. It was all good.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 21 Omnicraft Ford Fusion (Finished 25th)
YOU USED STRATEGY TO GET POSITION, WAS IT REALISTIC TO GET THE LEAD? “It would have been tough. I think on short runs we could run second. We held second for a while then four tires ate us up. We couldn’t restart on the bottom. That didn’t bode well for us. I went into one and got super loose. I hate that it took a couple cars out off two. I got really free for some reason. It caught me off guard which made it look bad. We had a decent enough car to run up there once we got track position.”
“It was so hard to pass out there. The fastest cars couldn’t get to the front if they weren’t already there. We thought that was the right move, and the way it finished at the end we were up there with old tires. I think we needed to make that adjustment to be able to win the race.”
“I thought we did a good job of making adjustments to get us a little better. We got into spots but it just didn’t work out.”
