Ford Performance MENCS Notes and Quotes
Apache Warrior 400 – Dover International Speedway
Friday, September 29, 2017
FORD QUALIFYING RESULTS
9th Kevin Harvick
11th Ryan Blaney
13th Kurt Busch
14th Aric Almirola
15th Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
16th Brad Keselowski
18th Joey Logano
19th Clint Bowyer
20th Trevor Bayne
28th David Ragan
24th Danica Patrick
31st Landon Cassill
40th Matt DiBenedetto
*bold represents Playoff-eligible drivers
KEVIN HARVICK – No. 4 Busch Beer Ford Fusion – HOW WAS QUALIFYING? “We have a good Busch Ford Fusion. From practice to qualifying we just got a bit tighter compared to what we were in practice. I never just did catch up with the balance. The car has been good. It was good in race trim and good in qualifying trim. Hopefully we can have a good day on Sunday.”
YOU HAVE A ‘FREEBIE’ OF SORTS ON SUNDAY KNOWING THAT YOU’LL MOVE TO ROUND 2 OF THE PLAYOFFS. WHAT’S THE APPROACH FOR SUNDAY? “We have a cushion but you still want to go out and do the best that you can. This is a constant progress of success and you want to go out and push and do all the things that need to do to try and get the most out of the day.”
HOW HECTIC AND IMPORTANT ARE RESTARTS ON SUNDAY? “For sure. It’s tricky because you pit and sometimes you don’t pit. And if you don’t pit and stay out under caution you pick up all the rubber on the track. Then it gets really slippery and when everyone get aggressive on the restart it gets pretty narrow back there. Restarts can definitely cause a mess; been on both sides of it.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – HOW WAS QUALIFYING? “Yeah, we were decent in qualifying. I missed Turn 3 and went way up the race track. I think we have decent speed. I just didn’t get through that corner very well and that hurt us all around. I think that we’ll have decent speed for Sunday. I thought we were okay in race trim. It’s just a matter of fine-tuning for Sunday.”
IS IT TOO EARLY TO TELL THE BALANCE OF YOUR CAR FOR SUNDAY? “Yeah. That’s what we have to work on tomorrow.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Fastenal Ford Fusion — ARE YOU GAINING ON YOUR CAR TODAY? “Yeah. We felt really good heading into the qualifying session and said if we could qualify about 14th we’d be sitting close enough to where we wanted to be. We were able to do that and qualify 15th. We just needed a little bit more in our Fastenal Ford to get it to the third round. Really happy with the gains we made today. I think we learned some stuff. We didn’t do any race trim today. We’re going to do a lot more tomorrow. I look forward in getting up tomorrow and getting in this thing and making a lot of laps around Dover. I always enjoy Dover. I can’t wait to get after it tomorrow.”
WHAT WILL YOU NEED FROM YOUR CAR ON SUNDAY THAT WILL HELP YOU GET TO THE FRONT? “Restarts are pretty key here at Dover in trying to keep your track position. We want something that fires off okay when we first get out on the track tomorrow. You have to look at the long run as well. The race track is going to continue to build rubber and get darker. The groove is going to widen around. You have to be able to run everywhere. I think the best cars are going to be able to run around the bottom. We’re going to make sure that we run all lanes tomorrow and get it dialed in.”
