Ford Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Gander Outdoors 400 (Dover International Speedway, Dover, DE.)
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Ford Finishing Results:
3rd – Joey Logano
5th – Kurt Busch
6th – Kevin Harvick
9th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
11th – Ryan Blaney
13th – Aric Almirola
14th – Brad Keselowski
16th – Paul Menard
20th – Matt Kenseeth
24th – David Ragan
25th – Michael McDowell
27th – Matt DiBenedetto
35th – Clint Bowyer
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Haas VF1/Rush Truck Centers Ford Fusion – “We broke and I hit the wall. I’m just really disappointed. I’m frustrated with our day, obviously, we had a very fast race car. I got tore up passing a lapper and then all of a sudden we had a loose wheel, I think it was a loose wheel, and then we went back out and broke something in the front end and it was two different things. When we pitted it was something in the rear, obviously, the right-rear, the left-rear was loose, it was all out of control, and then all of a sudden we went back out it was fine, so I took back off and then I think something in the left-front broke, it just went straight – whether I ran over something, I don’t know. I’m just sick for Aric. He had that race won. It was his win and unfortunately his teammate had trouble and took him out of it.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Outdoors Ford Fusion – IS THAT BEATING YOURSELF OR JUST UNLUCKY ON THAT PIT STOP? “Best I can tell a lugnut knocked it off.” DO YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT COMING BACK LIKE YOU DID? YOU HAVE A 68-POINT CUSHION? “I would have rather won.” WAS THAT CAR BETTER THAN WHAT YOU HAD IN THE SPRING? “I don’t know if it was better, but it was good.” HOW DID YOU GET THROUGH THAT WRECK AT THE END? “We were just lucky there and wound up dodging and weaving and being in the right place, so maybe that makes up for the bad luck on losing the race with an absolute dominant car.” HOW MUCH CAN YOU TAKE ABOUT WINNING THE FIRST TWO STAGES AND ADDING A COUPLE OF BONUS POINTS? “I don’t really care about points. I’d rather win.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Fusion – “We’ve had so many opportunities and been so close and had the car to win and been in position and I don’t know, it just seems to not come through. I don’t know. I’m frustrated and mad and angry. I don’t know. I could have been conservative and probably finish third or fourth like Kurt, it’s just track position is so tough and it’s so hard to pass here. On that restart I tried to at least go where they weren’t to the top and the 11 moved up to kind of block me and I just got really tight off of two and I bounced off the fence and got into Brad and tore up a lot of race cars along the back straightaway. I hate that for everybody that was involved, but it kind of killed our day too. I don’t know. I feel like we should be over there in Victory Lane celebrating, but we’re not.” WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENT? “I don’t know. Johnny is in a tough spot right there. I mean, they’re gonna do the opposite of whatever we do, so if we stay out, we’re a sitting duck on old tires and everybody is gonna come get tires behind us. We rolled down pit road and a few of them stay out and a few of them get two tires and the next thing you know we’re restarting sixth, so with only three laps to go it’s really challenging at this race track in particular with it being so hard to pass. That’s one of those situations where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I feel like Johnny made the right call. We had a great car. It was really firing off on the restarts really fast and to come get four tires on it and be on offense. We’ve talked about that a lot this year about putting ourselves in situations to be on offense and we were. We put ourselves in position and it didn’t work out. I think it would have been different had we started on the second row, starting sixth was really difficult.” WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND LOOKING AT VICTORY LANE AFTER THE RACE? “I want to be there. I want to be in Victory Lane. I feel like we’ve got a car capable of doing that.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 PPG Ford Fusion – “I thought we were OK all day. We were a seventh, eighth, ninth-place car and it was hard to pass. We lost some spots on that last pit stop and that put us in a bad spot and we got kind of wrecked there. It wasn’t very good, but I don’t know. There are a couple good tracks coming up for us, so hopefully we can do a little bit better there, but we survived it.”
KURT BUSCH, No. 41 Monster Energy/Haas Automation Ford Fusion – “It was a really good day for us with the stages. We were just a little bit tight most of the day and felt like it came to us towards the end. I was giving it all I had chasing down Almirola and the yellow comes out and from there it just changed the course of everything. It’s not even a ripple effect, it’s a tidal wave of things that happen. Once one yellow comes out that goes against what everybody thought was gonna happen, so Almirola could have won, we could have finished second. We ended up fifth. We have nothing to complain about.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “When you hit an axle that’s a big piece that can do some real, real damage. It could hurt the driver in all honesty, so I’m glad we got through that and fixed our damage and got a good finish. Right at the end there the two-tire call was good and on that restart we were able to make so many passes and then they crashed, so that set us up pretty good. I honestly thought I had a really good shot at winning it, but just came up a little short. I didn’t think the 9 could possibly win that race on old tires like that, but I think that red flag really helped him cool them off.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Wurth Ford Fusion – WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE LAST RESTART? “I thought we had a shot at a top three or four. I was pretty confident they would wreck, I was just hoping we were gonna be in front and I think I was about a foot from being in front of it.” WERE YOU SURPRISED NO ONE ELSE TOOK TWO TIRES THERE? “No.” WHO MADE THE CALL? “Me or Paul, I can’t remember.” HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE A DAY LIKE THIS? “I don’t know. Silly, but it is what it is.” YOU ARE 20 POINTS AHEAD OF THE CUTOFF. “I felt like we were gonna have a really great day for that, but we didn’t, so I feel really good about next week in Talladega. We’ll see what we can do there and see how it goes.”
JOEY LOGANO PRESS CONFERENCE
JOEY LOGANO: “Yeah, it really was. Just a crazy finish. It seemed like a pretty controlled race for most of us. Everyone was clicking off a lot of laps. We were able to score some good stage points, a second and a fourth in the two stages, so I was proud of that. That helped us a lot in our situation for going into Talladega. And then you think about there at the end, caution comes out, you make a big call with two tires, gain a spot, and then cars staying out and getting to the end like that, you know it’s going to be crazy. Obviously the crash right in front of me, had a good miss there, near miss, but it was a good miss, then as we headed to that last restart, I really thought Chase was a sitting duck. I didn’t think he could win on those older tires, but I guess that red flag cooled him off enough to where he took off and got that clean air, and the 11 couldn’t do anything with him, which was surprising. I was back there fighting the 20 trying to clear him. You know, proud of the points we scored today. It’s a big deal, and wish we could have won, but overall I call it a successful day.”
Q. Joey, can you just talk about how these first four playoff races have been pretty crazy and how that’s going to just set things up and the mindsets going forward?
JOEY LOGANO: “They get crazy at the end, that’s for sure. It seems like everything is controlled, everyone is doing good, and then there’s something that brings out a late caution, you know, and they’ve all been real cautions. They’ve just been timed out to where the end of the race, everyone sees that checkered flag and they know what it means to get themselves to the next round, and the 19 capitalized on that today. So congratulations to them. But yeah, that’s the way these races go, and I can promise you, Talladega will look fairly similar. It will be definitely a grudge match to the finish either way, whether there’s a caution or not. That’s going to be quite the battle. We’ve got to go there and have a solid day, and then we’ll be looking pretty good for Kansas. Just got to get through ‘Dega, which is probably the biggest concern of the playoffs for everybody.”
