Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
AAA Texas 500 (Texas Motor Speedway)
Friday, November 2, 2018
FORD QUALIFYING RESULTS
1st Ryan Blaney
2nd Clint Bowyer
3rd Kevin Harvick
4th Aric Almirola
5th Brad Keselowski
7th Kurt Busch
8th Joey Logano
11th Paul Menard
15th Trevor Bayne
17th Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
27th David Ragan
29th Michael McDowell
31st Matt DiBenedetto
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Accella/Carlisle Ford Fusion – QUALIFIED 1ST
“It felt really fast. That is what you get with this night time qualifying. High speeds. That is really what you get. That is cool doing under the lights qualifying. Speeds pick up and it has been cool here today. We have had a really good Ford all day and it is nice to back it up in qualifying. It doesn’t mean a lot if you are fastest in practice and blow it in qualifying. It was cool to be solid all day. Really big thanks to this whole group for giving me a really great race car and I am excited to see how it is in race trim tomorrow,”
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Rush Truck Centers Ford Fusion – QUALIFIED 2ND
“That felt fast. After you come off of Martinsville, that little short track and head out here to this place, it just feels crazy fast. I am really proud of my guys. Our Rush Truck Centers Ford was good all day long. I am proud of all the guys and proud of the shop for bringing four fast hot rods again. For the better part of the day we were four of the best six or seven cars. That is the speed part. Now we have to make them live and be good on the long run. If we can do that, maybe we can keep ourselves in this thing.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Fusion – QUALIFIED 3RD
WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU NEED TO IMPROVE FOR SUNDAY? “I don’t think we need to improve anywhere. I think we did good and everyone on our Mobil 1 Ford did a good job and we have a good starting spot.” HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK THE TRACK WILL CHANGE? “With the new asphalt it really won’t change a whole lot. It has a ton of grip and you just have to kind of keep your car working good. I think as you go, it will be pretty much the same as you go through the afternoon practices.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Fusion – QUALIFIED 4TH
“That was a good effort. A good recovery. This place is so track position sensitive. Anything you can do to get one more spot is just a better way to start. I am proud of the effort of all the guys. This is a really fast hot rod. We have the Smithfield Spirals Ham Ford Fusion looking awesome and it is really fast. I am looking forward to Sunday.”
KURT BUSCH, No. 41 State Water Heaters Ford Fusion – QUALIFIED 7TH
“I thought we had a really good shot at the pole. It felt like I drove the line I needed to. We were just tighter than expected today. We went and loosened it up heading into this section but ended up a little too tight. We just scrubbed too much speed with too much wheel in it. We will go from seventh and see what we can do from there.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 AAA Insurance Ford Fusion – QUALIFIED 8TH
“The second run was so good and I tried to get a little more in one because I didn’t feel I got enough last run. I overdrove it the first out so bad that we came back in to cool it back off. At that point your tires are warm, your pressure is hard to get right where it needs to be. I just kind of screwed up a little bit but that is okay. We qualified eighth and we will fight from there. I think our car is good. I wish we were starting a little better and wish we were on the inside too. We had what it takes, I just didn’t get it.”
CLINT BOWYER POST-QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Rush Truck Centers Ford Fusion — DID YOU MAKE ANY CHANGES BETWEEN THE ROUNDS WITH THE CAR? “As a team we probably didn’t make as much as I did as a driver. I finally decided to haul it off in there and have the courage to do so. It is so hard to sit here and explain to somebody what that lap feels like and the adjustments you have to make. You have to be committed. You can’t just feel it out. We had two stabs at it and I knew those weren’t good enough. We did free up a little bit but it was more so me just making sure that I hit my marks. One and two is so difficult since the repave and the reconfiguration of one and two. For me, it is really hard to figure out where I am at. I know that sounds elementary and not very smart but it is such a wide entrance to that corner and you get off there with crazy momentum and all of a sudden you look over and see the apex. Now you have to pull on the wheel pretty hard and get that thing yanked down there pretty aggressively. It isn’t long before you have to be back to the gas to rip it down the back straightaway. Three and four is way faster. Not much brake at all, if any. Not off the throttle much at all. You are pretty much holding it wide open. It is a really fast lap after leaving Martinsville of all places.”
WILL YOU HAVE A SIMILAR FEELING AT ALL NEXT WEEK AT PHOENIX, EVEN THOUGH THE TRACK IS THE SAME, BUT WITH THE CHANGE OF WHERE THE START FINISH LINE IS? “I don’t think so because it isn’t really a reconfiguration. The only thing that has changed is just where the rag drops. I think where you will see that really play out is on restarts and finishes. How it comes down to that last lap pass for a position to maybe put yourself in the playoffs or something. You kind of just have to make it out of that corner. You just have to kind of have forward momentum to make it across the line. That, in my opinion, can bring on some wild, wild things I think over the next few years there.”
YOUR BEST QUALIFYING POSITION AT TEXAS IN YOUR CAREER AND IT COMES ON A WEEKEND YOU NEED A STRONG RUN. HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM? “You can’t ever give up. You leave Martinsville bummed out and dejected. We won there in the spring. That is the thing about this sport, it doesn’t matter what you did in the spring, it matters what you showed up with on Friday and how you do in practice and the rest of the weekend and how you race that race, that weekend. That is all that matters. I think that was proof once again, for about the 1,000th time to myself at Martinsville last weekend that you just can’t always expect the same results doing the same things. That was literally the same car and same exact everything and it didn’t produced. We are down and out and dug a big hole. But if you look at our playoffs, it kind of seems like it has always been that way for me. I guess I am thick headed or something. I always have to do it the hard way. We started the playoffs in a good position and rolled into Vegas and had trouble, dug ourselves a hole and had trouble. We went to the Roval and dug deep and got ourselves out of the hole and put ourselves in the next round. You go to my go-to track. It has always been Dover. I wasn’t worried about it and knew it would be a good round for us and it was until the end of the race when we had the loose wheel. That one little mishap made it so we almost didn’t get out of that round. We went to Talladega and thank God we had four dominant cars and put ourselves right back in it. Just because we had a bad day at Martinsville, my head is not at doomsday or defcon 5. We don’t have to just win this race to get in. We just need to take car of business, not lose stage points, march forward and close that gap. If we can do that this weekend I will feel confident going into Phoenix. Obviously the easy answer is to just win the damn thing and roll on to the dance.”
DOES IT MEAN ANYTHING THAT SHR HAS TWO OF THE TOP FOUR? “Yeah, it means something to all of us and everyone involved at Stewart-Haas Racing. That army of people that are back at the shop working tirelessly day in and day out. Those people, it is unbelievable the people that are in the Stewart-Haas camp. I am not saying other teams are not racers, but I have been with about all of them now and I have never seen a group of just sheer racers. What I mean by that is when you have down time you see them with their kids racing late models or a dirt car somewhere or they are racing on their weekends. Some of our shop guys. It is amazing how many true die-hard, hardcore racers there are at SHR. For me, I think that speaks volumes about our performance. When we do get behind, if we do, they close the gap in a short amount of time. Their attention to detail and willingness to work all across the board, everybody involved pushes one another to be better. I think we have closed the gap drastically from last year to this year. It was my first year last year when we really only had one car running good each week. We could have a good run and would back it up with a couple bad ones. We were spraying it all over the place. This year we are there with all four cars every week.”
