Ford Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
STP 500 (Martinsville Speedway; Martinsville, VA)
Monday, March 26, 2018
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 6th
“At the start of the race we may have made some bad changes over the snow break and weren’t really good compared to where we were in practice. The team made some good adjustments and got to the end there and were probably a third-place car, but it was too little, too late to get back up there. I drove back up to sixth. I was catching up to fifth and wanted a top-five stat because it at least sounds a little better than sixth, but we’ve been kind of stuck there in sixth or seventh no matter where we’re at right now, so we’ve got to find a little bit more speed. I’m proud of the fight and proud of everyone that keeps building these good, solid, consistent cars. Pit road is always consistent, so that’s nice. We’ve just got to go a little faster.”
SURPRISED BY THE LONG GREEN FLAG RUNS TODAY? “It really didn’t surprise me too much. There’s a little more room on the race track now. The track is wider and it’s a lot of fun for us. It’s hard to pass each other because the top lane becomes just as good as the bottom lane and you can never get enough momentum off the bottom of the corner to get up there and pass somebody, so you just get stuck if someone is running the top lane, which is funny because it used to be like that on the bottom here and now the top becomes the strong lane, so there’s still plenty of rooting and gouging, but everyone must have been a little more gracious towards each other at this point of the season. It won’t be like that when we come back.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Libman Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 3rd
“It was a good showing for us, for sure. I think the track tightened up a good bit there towards the end and we just got a little bit behind. Congrats to Clint for winning that race. It was fun racing with him for a bit, but for us to come out of here and lead a bunch of laps, win a stage and run third here at Martinsville, where I usually run terrible, that says a lot about this team and the preparation that they did getting ready for this race. That’s nice to have, we just need to be a little bit better.”
HOW ARE YOU COMPARED TO YOUR PENSKE TEAMMATES? “I think any given week a certain car can be better than the others, it’s just kind of how it works. The good news is all of us are running well, which is what you want as an organization. I don’t think you can ever pinpoint a certain team or car as the best car there. I think we all run pretty well, so it’s just good to be at a team to where we’re pretty strong right now and we just need that little bit more to be in Victory Lane and hopefully we can get there.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Reese/Draw Tite Ford Fusion
Finishing Postion: 10th
“I tore up the car a little bit on the nose and bent up the splitter and the car wasn’t quite the same after that. I just made a mistake there.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 5th
“I didn’t mess it up today. We had a good car and saw how fast the SHR cars can be with the right driver in them here. This hasn’t been one of my better spots, but everything today went reasonably well and we were able to get Clint to Victory Lane and it was a good day for our Jimmy John’s/Busch Ford.”
HOW HAPPY ARE YOU FOR CLINT? “It’s been a long road for him and I’m really, really proud of him and Mike and everybody for sticking with it because you could see that they had potential and they could do things that were gonna be good, so they just needed to get that year under their belt and have it right.”
WALK US THROUGH WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE 11 ON TRACK EARLIER? “He was on the bottom and I knocked him out of the way.”
DID YOU BRAKE CHECK HIM INTENTIONALLY? “No, he hit me a couple times and I was just trying to make sure I had my car under control.”
DAVID RAGAN, No. 38 MDS Transport Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 25th
“We just started off way too slow. Our car wouldn’t roll the center and didn’t have good forward drive, so it made for a real long day. We raced hard and we just never caught any lucky breaks and we couldn’t make our car better, so we’ll definitely have to go back to the drawing board before the fall.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 A&W All-American Food Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 21st
“The long run was good, the short runs we struggle a little bit. We had a brake fan issue there that kept flipping the breaker, so I’m not sure if we got something stuck in it, but we didn’t have a whole lot of brakes left to challenge at the end. I don’t think it cost us a whole lot, maybe a couple spots, but every point matters. We still haven’t reached our potential, but we’re close to the Top 20, so not bad.”
