Ford Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Toyota Owners 400 Qualifying (Richmond Raceway; Richmond, VA)
Friday, April 20, 2018
Ford Qualifying Results
3rd – Joey Logano
6th – Kurt Busch
10th – Kevin Harvick
12th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
13th – Ryan Blaney
15th – David Ragan
16th – Clint Bowyer
20th – Paul Menard
21st – Trevor Bayne
24th – Michael McDowell
25th – Aric Almirola
27th – Matt DiBenedetto
28th – Brad Keselowski
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Fifth Third Bank Ford Fusion – “We qualified good here last year and we struggled a little bit in practice with the fire-off speed and felt OK maybe on the long run. We definitely need to be better on the long run, but for qualifying we found the speed that we were looking for in qualifying trim. It was a bummer, I feel like we missed it just a little bit there in the last round. The first round we only had to make two laps, and saved a lap on our tires versus a lot of the other cars. I think that helped for second round, and then I think we just missed it a little bit there the last round and ended up 12th. But I thought it would have been awesome to stay in that seventh, eighth-place, but we’ll take 12th and it’s always nice to have good track position here. Now we’ll just see how it goes.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “This is the closest we’ve been all year long to a pole and with speed in the car. I think we learned some things. We kind of want to re-do today. If you knew what you knew when you started, you would be better, but it’s the same for everyone. I’m sure everyone could say the same thing. We ran well. We maintained speed round to round, which has been our weakness, so I’m glad we were able to maintain the speed from round to round. I kind of feel like I may have messed up a little bit in turn three. I have to look at the data and see if I lost it all there, but I felt like I lost a bit there.” THOUGHTS ON RUNNING TWO OR THREE LAPS EACH ROUND? “We committed to two laps. I was gonna run two no matter what just because you’re gonna start on this set of tires. Now the question is, ‘What would have three been? Would three have frustrated me more and start on a lap older tires or would I be on the pole?’ We will never know (laughing).”
KURT BUSCH, No. 41 Haas Automation/Monster Energy Ford Fusion – “That last round I overdrove it a little bit trying to gain a little bit of time. I thought the pole was gonna be a .70 and we had run 80s all through our sessions, and I overstepped the boundaries and ran a .90, so we ended up sixth. I thought that was a good run. I guess you can’t be upset when you’re going for it. You really try for it and you slip up and if you’re sixth, then that’s good. When you have low temperatures at short tracks outside and the track temps are low you can gain some times on that third lap, but the air-pressure build is so dramatic that it’s gonna be about the same lap time, so it’s like tire temp, tire pressures, track temp, you’ve got to gauge it all and we were off just a little bit.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Fusion – “We were just too tight all three rounds. We just got tighter every round that we ran and we were expecting it to get looser. It was quite a bit different than a lot of the things that we’ve done in the past, so we’ve just got to get our Delta right for the next race here from race to qualifying, but we’ve got a really good race car.”
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Ford Hall of Fans Ford Fusion – “You’ve got the 18 back there. Everybody whining about us not making tech back in California and now you’ve got some really good cars back there on two tires and things, so you’ve got to keep that in mind. This track has a tendency to go long runs. If it’s that first run, you might get busted if you were going out there and were to put a bunch of laps on your tires trying to go faster. We over-adjusted a little bit there. We looked in our notes and we were really good that first run with our Ford Hall of Fans car, and I asked him in the break what the notes said and he said it gets looser. I was like, “Eh, put a little wedge in it,’ and probably should have just left it alone because it was a little too tight rolling the center. It does get looser in and off about every run here. The gamble is how much of the center can you give up to try to make better for the entrance and exit, but we just went a little bit too far, but our old hot rod is pretty good. I was happy with it in practice and tomorrow night is a whole other animal.”
