Ford Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Coca-Cola 600 (Charlotte Motor Speedway; Concord, NC)
Sunday, May 27, 2018
Ford Finishing Order:
4th – Brad Keselowski
8th – Kurt Busch
10th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
12th – Clint Bowyer
13th – Aric Almirola
14th – Paul Menard
17th – Matt Kenseth
18th – Michael McDowell
22nd – Joey Logano
25th – David Ragan
36th – Ryan Blaney
37th – Matt DiBenedetto
40th – Kevin Harvick
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Mobil 1/Busch Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: Retired after hitting the wall on Lap 83
ANY INDICATION WHY THE TIRE WENT DOWN? “No, we stood in the garage and looked at it and I can’t tell if we ran something over. There’s enough things that could have happened right there, but I’m just really proud of everybody on our Mobil 1/Busch Ford. The car was really, really fast. We came all the way through the pack and made it up into the top three there and sometimes those things happen. I can’t complain about anything that’s happened this year. We have to take the good with the bad. The guys did a great job in basically guessing at where the car needed to be today with all the penalties, no practice and starting in the back. To come out and have the fastest car again was quite an honor to drive and they’re doing a great job. It was just bad luck.”
WAS IT JUST A MATTER OF TIME UNTIL YOU GOT THE LEAD? “Traffic was pretty tough. Getting through traffic you had to really pick-and-choose your lanes, but our car could go in multiple lanes and we were able to really make ground the second half of those runs, so it was fun to come up through there.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 PPG Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: Retired on Lap 279 due to mechanical issue
“We had a cylinder let go maybe around lap 150 and we were just trying to limp it home. When they go that early you don’t expect it to last all race, but it lasted a lot longer than I thought and then it finally let go into one there. That stinks. I thought we had a really good car. I would have liked to see how the race would have progressed for us, but we won’t see that anymore. Hopefully, we can go out and have a good run at Pocono and then at Michigan.
WHAT ABOUT THE FIRE IN YOUR CAR AND HOW DIFFICULT WAS IT TO GET OUT? “It looks worse than what it is. It gets hot. You can’t see anything. That’s one of the biggest things is you can’t see where you’re going, but it looks a lot worse than what it is. The safety stuff keeps the fire away from us.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Stars Stripes and Lites Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 4th
“I thought the 78 was really strong, him and the 18 were probably pretty close. I don’t know, he had some kind of issues that kept holding him back, but they were just in another league. I ran as hard as I could tonight and the team did a great job the last few stops to put us in a position and that was just kind of what we had. We’ll go back to the drawing board and try to find some more speed. If we keep this execution that we had tonight, then we’ll get some wins, but we’ve got to have more speed.”
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Haas 30 Years of the VF1 Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 12th
“It’s frustrating. You come here and it’s a long race, and what a weird race. It was like we had track position and cars were way back and laps down and then all the wrecks opened the door for them to get the laps back. Then we lost track position on tires there and kind of halfway got it back, but it was just a frustrating weekend altogether, really.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 13th
“We just missed it. The first half of the race was pretty good for us and then we missed an opportunity to pit there when we kind of stayed out on older tires and we were one of the last couple cars on old tires, and we went from running in the top five or six to finishing that third stage in 17th and then that’s kind of the end of the night. That last run went green, so I hate it. We had extra tires laying in the pits, but they didn’t do us any good.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Fastenal Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 10th
“I’m real happy. I think we were a little concerned, even though the package wasn’t the same as the All-Star Race, I feel like we made some gains for the mile-and-a-half program this year. I felt like this is about where we were last year at this time, so for us to start the year off from where we did last year, I feel good that we’re headed in the right direction. It’s never as fast as you want. It was a tough battle for us out there. We were really good the first two stages and made an adjustment and was off for two runs – a full stage and had to fight back to get that track position. All in all, it was a good day to come back.”
MATT KENSETH, No. 6 Wyndham Rewards Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 17th
“It was a struggle all night for us. I guess we finished about where we qualified. I thought we were about a 20th to a 22nd-place car most of the night. We finished a little better than that, but maybe it’s a small step forward since Kansas. We still have some work to do. I feel like I’m trying to get up to speed as quick as I can. I’m still behind a little bit, so hopefully these next couple of weeks we’ll be able to get caught up and keep improving.”
KURT BUSCH, No. 41 Monster Energy Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 8th
“We just didn’t do anything spectacular tonight. We had one really good restart, but we were positioned for restarting fourth. We struggled on pit stops the first half of the race, but the second half they cleaned them up and we kept up with the track as best we could. We just didn’t have any short-run speed that was stellar. We didn’t have any long-run speed that was stellar. We kind of just did everything as a top-10 team would do and I’m glad we got eighth. We’ll have to keep fighting.”
DAVID RAGAN, No. 38 MDS Transport Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 25th
“I hit the wall in that third stage and that really set us back. I felt like we were battling for the lucky dog and running right around the top 20 and the car just started getting loose so we were ready to make an adjustment. I got loose into three, hit the wall and had to pit under green. I was a little disappointed that I let the car get out from under me like that and probably cost us a shot at a top 20, but we made little improvements on our car all night and we just have to clean our act up a little bit.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 Dockside Logistics Ford Fusion
Finishing Position: 18th
“It was good. We made the car better every stop, which is important, and obviously qualifying in the back kind of hurt us in that first stage, but I was able to get the lucky dog and just fight hard all night. I’m pretty happy with that. I feel like maybe we could have gotten a couple of spots better, but we’ll keep fighting hard.”
