Ford Performance MENCS Notes and Quotes
Tales of the Turtles 400 – Chicagoland Speedway
Sunday, September 17, 2017
FORD CUP FINISHING RESULTS
3rd — Kevin Harvick
6th — Brad Keselowski
7th — Joey Logano
11th — Ryan Blaney
13th — Clint Bowyer
18th — Danica Patrick
19th — Kurt Busch
20th — Landon Cassill
22nd — Trevor Bayne
24th — Aric Almirola
25th — Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
29th — David Ragan
31st — Matt DiBenedetto
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Fusion — “Our focus was to make sure that we didn’t make any mistakes today and everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing worked hard to work on that gap between those cars, but we’ve known about that gap and feel like we’ve closed that up and we knew that not making mistakes was gonna go a long way. We saw the 78 made mistakes today, but they had a fast enough car to recover from that. The 18 didn’t recover from his mistakes. I just have to thank everybody from Jimmy John’s, Busch, Ford, Mobil 1, Outback, Hunt Brothers, Morton Buildings and Textron Off Road for all they do for putting us on the race track.
WERE YOU MORE STRATEGIC ABOUT TODAY? “We just had to execute and take what they’ll give you and not finish any worse than that. I think we did that today. I felt like the 24 and the 78 were a little better than us and we finished right where we should have.”
WHAT MORE DID YOU NEED TODAY? “Well, we haven’t finished well here the last couple of years just by not putting ourselves in position to do what we needed to do from my standpoint. I crashed the car and had a mishap on pit road last year. Everyone did a great job today. That is what we have to do to compete for the championship. I know we can do that as a team because we have done that before and executed whether our backs have been against the wall or we have been off, we have always figured a way out. That is the plan. We will keep doing that. Today we made it happen.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO GET OUT OF HERE WITH A THIRD PLACE FINISH AND GET SOME POSITIVE MOMENTUM? “Well, there are a lot more people that will go through round to round on points than by winning. You have to think about points and stage points throughout the whole race. We almost maximized everything throughout the weekend. They did a great job.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion
“Yeah, we can be happy with sixth. We scored a bunch of stage points and had a solid day up front. One more of these races either Loudon or Dover and we should be good to advance to the next round. I think we can pull that off. We are still looking for a little speed but execution today was really, really strong. Great day on pit road, great restarts. All that stuff was what you look for, we just need to marry that up with some speed and we can win any of these races.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion
“We executed well. We ran in the top-10 the whole race and had no issues, nothing crazy, just not fast enough to compete for the win. We made gains the last few weeks to get closer but we have just caught up to our teammates. That is where we are at now, the same as our teammates but not good enough to go up there and win. I thought I would run seventh today and I ran seventh. We just have to go faster, that is all.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion
“We started off not great, got into it with a lap car. That put us behind and got us a lap down. We spent a long time trying to get a lap back and finally did and were able to go racing. We went the wrong way on our last adjustment and that hurt us unfortunately. We can’t hang our heads about that. A lot of other cars had problems today. It stinks we didn’t get any stage points, but maybe next week.”
