Ford Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Can-Am 500 Advance (ISM Raceway, Avondale, AZ.)
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Clint Bowyer, driver of the No. 14 ITsavvy Ford Fusion, is in a must-win situation this weekend as he stands 51 points behind the final transfer position and a spot in the Championship Four. Bowyer, who finished sixth in the spring race at ISM Raceway, qualified 16th yesterday and spoke to Ford Performance before today’s practice about his situation.
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 ITsavvy Ford Fusion – YOU’RE STARTING 16TH TOMORROW. “I felt like we definitely improved from our practice. Unfortunately, our result didn’t show much for it, but I think the car responded to some of the things that we changed going into qualifying for the better. Here it’s all about those long runs and getting settled in and being good, having a good medium, middle ground balance between these drastically different corners. One and two is a lot different than three and four and you’ve got to have that balance, you’ve got to have a happy medium there. Today, Saturday’s practice always go a long ways toward getting a good balance to where you’re comfortable on both ends.”
THERE WILL BE DIFFERENT STRATEGIES TOMORROW WITH SOME GUYS WANTING STAGE POINTS, WHEREAS YOU ARE JUST LOOKING AT WINNING. WILL THAT OPEN UP SOME OPPORTUNITIES FROM A STRATEGY STANDPOINT? “Here’s the thing, though, at the end of the day stage points lead to good results. Everybody wants stage points because if you’re getting stage points, you’re running up front and you’ve got a shot at winning. That’s the way it is. If there’s some sort of opportunity that opens up and gives us an opportunity to go for a win, of course we’re gonna take it at all costs, but at the end of the day the reason people want stages points is because you’re running up front where you need to be running and in position to win the race.”
YOU WERE SIXTH IN THE SPRING HERE, SO DOES THAT BODE WELL FOR TOMORROW? “We had a good race in the spring. We didn’t qualify the best. We were good on our long runs and things like that. We need to get our car to be a top-five car here in practice today and I’ve always said if you can run in the top-five, you can have a shot at winning if something happens and presents itself, so it’s important for a lot of ways. Obviously, the Playoffs haven’t really gone as smoothly as we wanted to, hasn’t gone as smoothly as our season has pretty much gone. At the end of the day, we’ve been a fifth or sixth-place car all year long. We’ve been a fifth or sixth-place team against the best of the best, so if we don’t finish around there, it’s because of some mishaps in the Playoffs and things like that. At the end of the day, I’m proud of our year and proud of the work that we’ve put into this year. It’s been a great year for Ford. It’s been a great year for Stewart-Haas Racing. It’s been a great year for the 14 car getting back in Victory Lane for all of us. It was a long time coming for Mike and all the guys on the 14 team. To get back to their winning ways and certainly for me as a driver that hadn’t been in Victory Lane in a while it was gratifying to get in Victory Lane a couple times this year and knocked on the door a few other times, too. Again, going back to the Playoffs, which you get in this and you’re under those constraints of just three-race rounds you’ve got to go for it. And sometimes when you go for it things go your way and sometimes they don’t and a drastic measure one way or the other kind of changes the picture points-wise quite a bit. Now that you’re in the final eight like this you go for broke and put all the cards on the table and a mishap last week really set us behind as far as the grand picture of the points are concerned, but it’s not really the situation you’re in anyway. We were in a do-or-die situation and we went for it and came up short, but we’ve got one race to go here to try to put it all together and if we don’t, we’ll go to Homestead and try to win that race and cap off a good year.”
