RYAN BLANEY POLE WINNER PRESS CONFERENCE
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Accella/Carlisle Ford Fusion — YOU SAID EARLIER YOU MADE GOOD CHANGES TO THE CAR, CAN YOU GIVE MORE DETAILS TO THAT? “We just kept loosening the car up to make it turn better. That was kind of what we have done every round here in the past. We seem to get tighter round to round. We kept freeing it up and I messed up round two pretty bad. I got really greedy in one and drove it in there too deep, so we freed it up even more and I backed my entry up and that helped. Yeah, just trying to help it turn. That was really all we worked on all day, just getting it a little looser.”
YOU RAN THE SECOND FASTEST LAP HERE EVER. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? “I would have liked to gone 201 mph to be honest with you. I mean, it is super fast, that is a product of it being night time and a little colder outside and a good handling race car. Honestly we go to a lot of tracks now that are pretty close like Michigan where you go faster than that. Here it is super fast today. It doesn’t really feel like it, you are just trying your best to hit your line. You won’t see much of that stuff next year, so enjoy it now.”
HOW WAS THE ATLANTA TEST? “I thought it went pretty decent. Myself, Menard, Erik Jones and Chastain was in the 42 car. We had a few races, 20 lappers. I thought there were good and bad things you take away, just like everything else. I like how we weren’t just riding around wide open. YOu might be able to do that for two laps in race trip and then you start slipping and sliding and really have to drive it. One thing I noticed is we were running all over the race track. We were way up top in one and two and up top in three and four. Maybe that opened a few more lanes there. In the past, one and two has been open but you were bottom feeding three and four pretty bad. It was cool to run the middle and top and have it benefit you. I thought it went well. Atlanta is its own beast pretty much. We don’t go to many places like that. From the Charlotte test the week before and the Atlanta test, I think some people have said good things and found things. I think what is really interesting, and it will come into play at other tracks, at certain tracks, trimming your car out is going to be pretty important. How much drag you want to knock out of it, but from the downforce loss, when you get to the race you are going to have to dial up some grip in your car. You can run a pretty good lap for three or four laps and then you start really getting loose. Maybe you give up a little time at the beginning if your car is stuck more but it pays off in the end. I think when we go to all these different 1.5 mile tracks where you can raise the back of the car up and get more spoiler in the air. It won’t just be trimming them out and being as little draggy as you can get ‘em. There will be certain tracks for that. I thought that was pretty interesting. We messed with that a lot. A lot of teams will be doing that.”
HOW MUCH HAS THIS PLACE CHANGED SINCE APRIL? “A little bit. Turns three and four have always been kind of wavy bumps, not really harsh but they kind of go in ripples there. The tunnel bump in one and two I don’t really feel. I don’t think that has changed. Four is getting a little rougher, which is good. That is what it needs. There are some small changes from the April race, which is good. That means it is aging.”
BACK TO ATLANTA, IT LOOKED LIKE YOU COULD PASS THERE WHEN YOU WERE RACING EACH OTHER: “Yeah, sometimes you would let cars go. That is something I noticed with Atlanta, a lot of guys would run the bottom in three and four and people would talk about searching for the paint there, getting really low into three. We got laps on our tires with this package and you would get massive arcs into turn three. We weren’t really searching for the paint. You had to run the track a lot different. That was something huge. You could get massive arcs into three and that opens up all sorts of lines to be run through there. That was really encouraging. That was probably half and half of letting guys go and getting in traffic. But the turn three entrance has really opened up with this package which is a very good thing.”
