Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS)
Friday, March 8, 2019
EVENT: NASCAR Xfinity Series Driver Availability (Austin Cindric)
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 22 Money Lion Ford Mustang – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW DIFFERENT THE RESTARTS ARE HERE? “It’s simply because of where the start-finish line is located and where the track widens out and it stays wide all of the way through turns one and two and on a relatively flat corner to begin with, so there’s driveable real estate on the bottom in turn one and two, so it’s very enticing to try it.”
OTHER THAN THAT, WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES OF THIS TRACK? “I think the biggest challenge as we go through practice and through the race, one, for us, it gets tighter throughout a run, so it’s preparing for that, but also trying to connect both corners because one and two are very flat corners with roughly maybe one or two lanes that you can try, and then you have a big banked corner with a downhill and back up the hill that is pretty singular in our race as far as lanes go, and it’s very tough between the crew chief and the driver to figure out the best compromise between those two different banking levels.”
YOU GOT IN THE CAR FOR BRAD WHEN HE WASN’T FEELING WELL A COUPLE WEEKS AGO. WHAT HAS THE DOWNLOAD BEEN ON THAT? “For me, it’s back to work. Yeah, I got to do it once and now it’s back to the job. We’re trying to race for a championship this year and it’s cool to at least know that if there is a situation like that again that I’ll be able to be used and try to be helpful the best I can. Obviously, they had a great weekend and it was really fun to be able to stay for the race and watch that happen and that whole process. It’s such a different package in the Cup Series, but, like I said I’m back to my real job and having fun with it.”
HOW HARD WILL IT BE TO WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP? “It’ll be tough. Ever since going to the Playoff format it’s tough. I think your only goal is to get to the Championship 4 and from there you have a shot. As far as dominating races and winning races, for me, that’s all great for the first two rounds of the Playoffs because that means you’ve got Playoff points. I feel like for me in the regular season that’s my biggest goal is to try and rack up Playoff points because it is important. I’ve done two years of NASCAR racing with roughly no Playoff points, so I know how hard that is to make it to the Championship 4 in that situation, so racking up Playoff points is super-crucial for me, but making the Championship 4 gives you a shot.”
AUSTIN CINDRIC CONTINUED — THREE DIFFERENT WINNERS IN THE FIRST THREE RACES. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT’S HAPPENED? “You have three different race tracks, but obviously I think there is parity in the field this year. I think there are six or even eight cars that can contend for the Championship 4 this year, which I think is unique compared to the last couple of years in this series. There are some very competitive cars and some very good drivers and it’s gonna be fun.”
WHAT KIND OF A DRIVER WINS AT A TRACK LIKE PHOENIX? “It’s a short-track feel on a mile-long track and I think it’s tough to tell you what kind of driver makes it work, but this has been a place that I really like because I like going anywhere you can use the brake pedal. I’ve got two legs let me use them. It’s more of my nature to try to manipulate the car with my brakes and try to understand that and help yourself throughout a run, and obviously we have tire fall off here and really understanding what the car does throughout a stint and try to prepare for that.”
HOW TOUGH WAS LAST WEEKEND BEING A VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE? “Yeah, a lot of circumstances, a lot of battling back from the back and recover and get ourselves to a good point, but that’s racing. I mean, you get collected by a car that spins out and then you get collected by two more cars that spin out and after a long recovery, but what I can say about our race at Vegas is I’m very proud of my team and I think they got plenty of credit on the broadcast for it, for being prepared to fix the hood flaps on the car and even give us a shot to get back out there and really compete for something. Coming from the back at Vegas isn’t really the easiest feat because it is such a track position dependent race track, even though you do have such usable lanes. We probably weren’t as good as we wanted to be, but we were good enough to be in the top five. I sniffed the top five just before I got collected in the final restart there.”
AUSTIN CINDRIC CONTINUED — TWO TOP 10s IN THE FIRST THREE RACES. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED OR HAVEN’T LEARNED? “I think of the first three races, finishing at Daytona is probably the highlight for me just because it was a first for me to be able to make it all the way to the end of a race there. But, honestly, for me it’s trying to figure out what do I need to know for later on in this season. When I come back here to ISM Raceway and we’re trying to make it into the Championship 4 because I see ourselves in that position if we haven’t already won by that point, but it’s definitely a long year. It’s a marathon and trying to figure out what we can do between practices and races to really maximize our points in the regular season.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT TOMORROW’S RACE AND COULD THIS BE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUR FIRST CAREER WIN? “I think this is a great opportunity. I’ve made more starts here in NASCAR than any other race track, so as far as a notebook goes I’ve got a very big notebook and I understand what it takes to drive around the track. We obviously had a pretty good race here in the fall. I probably made ourselves too loose hoping for a long run, just trying to differentiate ourselves. I think we’ll probably be back in the window this weekend and really be able to hone in on that. Obviously, winning this weekend means beating Kyle Busch, which would be awesome, but we’ll see what it takes when we get there.”
WHAT ABOUT AUTO CLUB NEXT WEEK? DO YOU LIKE AUTO CLUB? “I do. I’m interested to go back there for a second time – a different experience and different circumstances. It’s a big, fast track. Who doesn’t like going fast?”
AUSTIN CINDRIC CONTINUED — HOW HAS IT BEEN JUST STAYING WITH ONE TEAM AFTER THREE RACES AND NOT BOUNCING AROUND LIKE LAST SEASON? “Between just spending time with the guys and having a routine and really being able to check boxes each week, I think the first couple races, the first two mile-and-a-half races I wish we probably could have executed a little better, but as far as being able to adapt and react I think that’s gonna be a strength of ours just between recovering from issues like we had at Vegas, one car spinning out taking us out and being able to recover from that and then another car spinning out and taking us out. Those things will all take care of themselves, but the fact that we’re able to make our cars better each time we touch the race track and get myself better every weekend, so I’m looking forward to seeing the fruits of that in the coming weeks.”
Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Friday, March 8, 2019
EVENT: Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Driver Availability (Joey Logano)
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang – WHAT KIND OF RACING WILL WE SEE WITH THIS ADDED DOWNFORCE? “I guess I’m unsure right now. I think a few years back when we had the bigger spoilers and the bigger splitters on the car, I know we’re a little more than that again. I guess I think of that a little bit. I guess it’s kind of hard to say. After the few laps that we’ve run so far, man, you can hustle the heck out of the car. I know I was huffing and puffing after a couple of qualifying laps at the time out there because you’re just driving the car so hard. I’ve never gone around this race track that fast before. It’s incredible, so I have not been around another car, behind another car, I can’t honestly tell you what I think it’s gonna be like until we get practicing tomorrow and we get around another car. We’ve just been in qualifying trim all day. Most cars have, almost all of them have. There are just a few of them that ran more laps than the others, but I haven’t been around another car to know yet. I’m just kind of unsure now at this point of what it will be like. We’ll see.”
DID YOU TEST THE CAR WITH ADDED DOWNFORCE? “I didn’t test the car out here, so this is my first laps with these rules and all that horsepower, which took me a second to get used to again. I was like, ‘Wow, this thing has got some good power,’ which was kind of fun. But, you know, like I said there’s just so much for us to learn still, whether it’s the 550 package or the 750 package it’s hard for us to really know exactly what we need right now and of what’s gonna go fast and what we need to race. We just don’t know, which makes this part of the season really fun and this west coast swing really challenging because you can’t really adjust your cars too much in the amount of time you have before you’ve got to get another car back out here, so it’s definitely been a challenge for all these race teams right now to be able to figure all that out, but it’s been a fun challenge and presents a great opportunity to figure it out first. Every time we show up to the race track I go, ‘What are we gonna do?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s gonna be like.’ We’ve just got to wait and see.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — HOW MUCH COMMUNICATION GOES ON BETWEEN YOU, BRAD AND RYAN? THEY WERE BOTH FAST IN PRACTICE. “They unloaded fast and really carried a lot of speed throughout practice. We’ve been looking at what they were doing and there’s not much time from when practice ends to when qualifying starts to be able to change really big items and change things in a quick enough time to get into tech. Yeah, there is a lot of time between practice and qualifying, but all the cars have to go through tech as you can see out the window over here, so you don’t have much time to do a lot of things. By the time you communicate about it, talk about it and try to make some decisions and give your team enough time to be able to put that in the race car, you’re out of time. There is only about 40 minutes or so that you have between – somewhere around 40 minutes – so we took what we can and kind of saw some balance differences and the opportunity to kind of look at a lot of their stuff, talk to them and try to make some decisions to get a little faster. We’re not that far off. We’re just a little bit, but it doesn’t take much and it’s nice when you have a teammate that’s the fastest car because you can look at it and say, ‘Alright, I know exactly what they’re doing,’ so it’s a nice advantage to have right now.”
HAS THE CHAMPIONSHIP AND BABY CHANGED YOU AS A PERSON AND DRIVER AND YOUR APPROACH TO THIS SEASON? “It’s changed me a lot as a person. It hasn’t changed me as a driver, really, at all. Your priorities change and the things that you want to do is different than what it was before, like I want to go home. This west coast swing I used to want to stay out here and do things in between the races, especially between Phoenix and California. There’s a lot we can do to help promote our sport on the west coast in the L.A. area, so I really liked doing that and I’m still gonna go out a little early for it, but I’m gonna go home. I’m gonna go home and see the little man and my wife and be able to spend a little time there. For me, my perspective has changed a little bit and what’s most important in life and all that, that’s changed a little bit, but when you get to the race track you have to be able to flip a switch when you get in that race car or when you walk into the garage and you’re just full-on race mode and focused in because to compete against the best you can’t have distractions.
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – “Not that they’re distractions, but you’ve got to be 100 percent focused on the job at that point, and then it’s also healthy to be able to go home and flip that switch back off and not be thinking about the race car all the time and I think that’s something that kind of helps keep you fresh when you get back to the race track, so I really worked on that a lot last year and it was pretty challenging because just like any new parent you get a little overwhelmed at times. It’s like, ‘I can’t do anything as good as I want to,’ so you just have to really compartmentalize exactly what you want to do. That was a challenge for me. I wouldn’t say I’ve got it figured out yet, but I’m closer than where I was last year, so that’s good.”
IS WHEEL SPIN AN ISSUE THIS YEAR WITH MORE POWER FOR THE RESTARTS? “Yeah, wheel spin wasn’t too big of a deal. It was a little bit at Atlanta, not much last week in Vegas. Wheel spin will probably come into play here, especially where the restart zone is and all that with the new off of turn two, the new turn four. That’s what it is. I call it the banked corner and the flat corner because I can’t get it right (laughing). I don’t think I can ever get it right, but it will change that part of it just going through the gears, the ratios, all that stuff is different than what we had the last week. This place is always fun for restarts because you’ve got that dogleg and cars get wide and you have such a wide entry into turn three where you can go way below the yellow line. Not that there’s much grip down there, but there’s room to do something when cars make mistakes or go up the race track you can get around and do stuff. I wouldn’t expect that piece to change at all. I think the racing is gonna be every bit as good as it was last year with the chance of it being better. That’s kind of my thought at this point. We’ll have to wait and see, but I do think restarts are still gonna be chaos here for the first couple of laps like we’ve seen in the past.”
HOW LONG WILL IT BE UNTIL YOU’RE RELATIVELY CONFIDENT THAT WHAT’S COMING OFF THE TRACK IS WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO NEED? “Probably not until we get to the track the second time. I think we won’t take off as far off, like even when you go to maybe a Texas for the first time, it won’t be as far off as when we went to Atlanta the first time, but when you go to Texas the second time you’re gonna pretty much have a really good idea of what you need, especially after you go through a race once and you realize, ‘OK, this is most important. I need this in my car.’
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – “As a driver you know what you’re looking for and as a crew chief and the engineers you’re all talking about the same thing, everyone is on the same page and you know what you’re building the car for and what you need most out of it. Right now, we all think we know. ‘This was important at Atlanta and this was important at Vegas.’ Is it gonna be important in Texas? Some of it yes. Some of it we don’t know, but, like I said, that’s a fun challenge right now. Anytime there are new rules there’s that challenge that comes along with it. It’s a fun piece that I enjoy and it really gets you thinking outside of your box you had before after the running the same rules for a few years. You get so refined and you think of these little changes and little changes and now you’re thinking more broad big things and that’s pretty fun.”
THERE HAS BEEN SOME SOCIAL MEDIA TALK THIS WEEK FROM FANS THAT MAYBE TEAM PENSKE IS PEAKING TOO SOON. WHAT DO YOU THINK? “Maybe we haven’t reached our peak. You can’t be peaking too soon if you didn’t get to your own peak. That’s my opinion. No, it’s so early in the season things are going to be changing week after week of who the dominant car is. What I will say is, yeah, we came out of the gates pretty strong and I’m super-proud of that, but I wouldn’t say we’re peaking too soon. No way. I wouldn’t want to think that way if we were.”
HOW CRAZY IS THE WIND OUT THERE? “The wind last week was a pretty big deal in Vegas. You have that wind that we had in practice that was blowing down the back straightaway into turn three. That was really upsetting our cars quite a bit. It’s the same for everybody, but it’s funny sometimes when you have a gust of wind and the car in front of you moves and then you move and then everyone slides up the race track together when there’s a gust of wind because you obviously can’t see it coming. It’s tough in practice because you’re setting up the car in conditions that aren’t gonna be there the next day and that’s just one of the variables. There’s the wind, the amount of rubber, the track temperature, that amount of cars that are on the race track – all of that stuff really plays in in practice when you’re thinking about what you’re gonna do for the race, so you’re trying to think of those variables while you’re tuning on your car. Last week, the entry to three was not our strong suit in practice and when the race started it was OK. We made some adjustments to fix it, but the wind was bigger than anything we adjusted to fix it. The wind went away on Sunday. Here, I thought it was gonna affect us more, but I don’t really feel it right now.
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – “There’s so much more grip than the last time we were here. I don’t think we’ve gotten to the point that we feel the small pieces of the wind yet.”
THERE WAS A REPORT THAT ROCKINGHAM HAS NEW OWNERS AND THEY’RE TRYING TO GET IT BACK TOGETHER. DO YOU FEEL THAT WOULD BE A VIABLE TRACK FOR NASCAR TO GO BACK TO ONE DAY? “Absolutely. I think Rockingham is one of the best race tracks there is with the surface the way it is, and I haven’t been there in a few years so I don’t know if over the winters if it has worn out more, but we’ve tested there. I tested there I can’t tell you how many times and how many laps I’ve made early in my career and it’s always so much fun because you had these huge swells that are in the center of the corner. The car would go up and down kind of like Atlanta and you had a surface that was so wore out and you could run the top, the bottom, there’s just no grip. Anywhere you looked there was no grip and that was fun. That was so much fun. It was hard to test because you’re saying was it the change or the tires wearing out. You could never figure out what was what, but the racing was so much fun and you had the cars that some would be fast in the short run, some were good on the long run, and I had a great time. I only raced an ARCA race and a Truck race there, but I loved it.”
THERE WAS TALK THAT THEY MIGHT RESURFACE THE TRACK. WHAT WOULD YOU THINK ABOUT THAT? “Don’t do it. Don’t resurface. I don’t know if that goes all the way to the new owners, but don’t repave it.”
IF THEY DO IT TAKES AWAY EVERYTHING, RIGHT? “Yeah, you’ve got to start all over. It’s cool the way it is.”
Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Friday, March 8, 2019
EVENT: Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Driver Availability (Michael McDowell)
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 Dockside Logistics Ford Mustang – HOW WAS YOUR FIRST PRACTICE? “It was fun. We had the horsepower back, but a lot more downforce and you had to really push yourself to go that fast. You’re just muscle memory and you’re used to having some lift points and brake points and you just really had to push yourself, at least I did to get that speed out of it. We’re going around here so fast right now. It was fun. I was joking with my crew chief, Drew Blickensderfer, the first run I felt pretty balanced and then I looked at the speed and saw that I needed to pick up like a half-second and I said, ‘Oh, it’s not balanced now.’ When you’ve got to push it that hard and take it to that next level it’s fun to see if you can do it and push yourself to that point.”
A LOT OF GRIP? “Yeah, there’s a ton of grip out there. Obviously, the downforce is a big part of that and cool temperatures this morning and cloud cover and all that it’s kind of like the perfect storm, but as we get rubber on the race track and as the sun sits on it during the day here, it will definitely get a little bit slick.”
HOW HAS THIS CHANGE AFFECTED YOU AND YOUR TEAM IN THE GARAGE? “We have space now to jack up our car, which is nice. The old garages you’d have to use a short jack because you’d be hitting the door of the guy next to you as you were trying to get your car up on scales, so just to be able to breathe a little bit and have all your equipment there and be able to work in a somewhat controlled environment is nice, and, for me personally, I was always worried about knocking a fender off getting in and getting out of your garage just because it was so tight. It’s nice to have the space and it’s amazing and it’s really cool what they’ve done here at ISM Raceway. It’s pretty cool.”
WHEN YOU COME BACK TO ARIZONA DO YOU DO ANYTHING SPECIAL THAT YOU DON’T DO ON A REGULAR WEEKEND? “Yeah, Mexican food. I don’t know if you guys know, but east coast Mexican food is really terrible, so being from the west coast and being from here that’s the one thing I look forward to the most is coming back and getting some good Mexican food because you just don’t get it in North Carolina.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL CONTINUED — CAN YOU TEST THE ADDED DOWNFORCE IN THE SIMULATOR BEFORE COMING TO THE TRACK? “Yeah, you can. Obviously, all the manufacturers have simulations and simulators, so I was able to spend some time this week getting prepared. But the thing about the simulator that you still can’t duplicate is it doesn’t hurt when you hit the wall, so you’re a lot more brave on the simulator than you are in real life. The corners come up a lot quicker than they seem like in the simulator, so it’s a very helpful tool, but nothing is quite like being on the race track in the race car.”
ARE THE FASTER SPEEDS DUE TO MORE DOWNFORCE OR THE NEW TIRE? “All the above. I think the downforce is a big part of it. It doesn’t matter if we’re at Martinsville, you still want more downforce. Teams fight all day long to try and gain that few pounds of downforce and we’ve stacked on a couple thousand, so we have a lot of downforce now and, like I said, it was fun. I had to really challenge yourself just to break through that. You don’t have to slow down, it’s gonna stick, so the entry speeds are pretty significant.”
WHAT’S DIFFERENT TO COME OUT WITH SO MUCH SPEED THIS YEAR? “We’ve had great speed, qualified well at Atlanta, qualified well at Vegas, got a car in the third round at both mile-and-a-halves, which is really impressive for our group and our organization. I think it’s a combination of a really good off season, expanding to three cars which allowed us to hire some great personnel, and then just building momentum from last year. At the end of last year we were starting to sneak into the low 20s and teens more consistently and we were able to carry that momentum into 2019, and obviously this rule package has worked to our favor for now. That’s the hardest part. The best teams are gonna develop the fastest, so we’ve just got to be able to keep up over this next stretch of 10 weeks as those guys are figuring things we. We’ve got to stay right on them.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL CONTINUED — WHAT IS IT ABOUT YOU AND DREW? YOUR CHEMISTRY SEEMS GOOD. “I have watched Drew from a distance for years and I’ve pursued him the last four, and I just knew that that’s the kind of guy I’m looking for personality-wise, fire, spark, leadership. He has all the things that I was looking for in a crew chief, so when the team decided to move Derrick Finley, my last crew chief into the competition role, that’s the first guy I asked for and it looked like it wasn’t gonna work out and fortunately things came together for us kind of last minute. He’s just got great leadership and he’s got a lot of fire and I like it. That’s what I was looking for.”
RYAN NEWMAN, No. 6 Oscar Mayer Bacon Ford Mustang – IS IT PHYSICALLY MORE DIFFICULT HERE WITH THIS PACKAGE? “I wouldn’t say physically more difficult, just reaction time is more important. I don’t know that it wears you out or harder to turn the wheel or anything like that, it’s just mentally I think you have to be prepared to react quicker if there is such a thing.”
WHAT’S THE TRANSITION BEEN LIKE FOR YOU AT ROUSH FENWAY? “If we can scratch out Vegas last week it’s been a good transition. Vegas was a struggle for us, but I think that everything is so new for me. Really, the first time that I’ve made the transition and didn’t have, I don’t know how to say it because I don’t want it to come across wrong, but to have a backbone that was existing. I’ve got a new crew chief, a bunch of new team members. The only person that came over with me was my spotter and Scott Graves has done a great job, but it’s all new to him too. He’s coming from a different organization. Even though he’s coming back, it’s different people and with the change in the cars, change in the package so to speak with the horsepower and everything else, there are so many new things that it’s probably more new than it ever was when I was a rookie. When I was a rookie we got to test a bunch and now I came here with zero laps and came off the truck and felt like I was flying and was eighth on the chart or 12th on my first run. I think it’s just a transition and with good people it will go it’ll go away.”
IF YOU COULD ADVOCATE FOR TESTING. “Nobody wants to advocate for testing, nobody that I know of.”
RYAN NEWMAN CONTINUED — SO THE TIME AND EXPENSE ISN’T WORTH IT? “Absolutely not. Testing is a waste of money.”
WHAT IS THE PROPER ETIQUETTE FOR CARS A LAP DOWN? “Just stay out of the way. If you know you’re in the way, do your best to stay out of the way. At some point you’re gonna be in the way, you just hope it doesn’t adversely affect somebody else’s race, but in the end that’s part of it. I had this conversation with a friend of mine last night, it’s been a part of short track racing, big track racing, road course racing, no matter what, there are series out there that have different cars in the same race and you have to work around them. It’s just a part of it. Everybody has to work around those cars, whether it’s the first, second, third or 20th-place car, so how you use them or how they affect your race is a part of racing.”
STENHOUSE SEEMS TO BE EXTRA AGGRESSIVE THIS YEAR. HAS THAT ALWAYS BEEN HIS STYLE OR ARE YOU RUBBING OFF ON HIM? “No, I don’t know that I’m rubbing off on anybody. I like being aggressive. The best time to win is now, so don’t hold anything back. From what I’ve seen, I haven’t seen anything he’s done wrong.”
HOW ARE YOU GUYS GETTING ALONG? “It’s been good. We’re learning each other. We’re learning everything about the cars and, for me, there’s a lot of changes in personnel and cars and manufacturers and the technology side of it, so there are lots of changes but all for the right reasons.”
IS IT GOOD TO HAVE HIM AS A RESOURCE SINCE HE’S BEEN THERE SO LONG? “I think he’s a good translator on the language because he’s been there pretty much his whole career, but he also came from where I came from, so we have a little bit of the same background albeit 10-15 years apart, but the same type of language and driving style and feel and things like that, which I think equates still and always will to four tires and a car that likes to go fast.”
DO YOU EVER GET THE ITCH TO GET IN OPEN WHEEL CARS? “I run the Silver Crown car as much as I can. I ran the Silver Crown car every year except for last year when it got rained out, so I love doing it. I’ve got to do it the right time and the right place and not take away from what we do here.
RYAN NEWMAN CONTINUED – “It’s not fair to these guys on the team and the sponsors and the owners that pay you a good chunk of change to go out and have just a little bit of fun.”
HAS RUNNING FOUR DIFFERENT PACKAGES THE FIRST FOUR RACES THROWN YOU GUYS FOR A LOOP? “I wouldn’t say that. Everybody has an opportunity just like they did in 2014 when the spoiler changed and again in ’15 or whenever it was, but I think it’s just the way it is. You always have to adapt. If it was 65 degrees and cloudy here today versus two years ago when it was 95 and sunny, that’s just as a big of change as the package is in some peoples’ eyes, so it’s just a matter of how you adapt and adjust to the situations and this package is just part of that.”
HOW HAVE THE RENOVATIONS HERE AFFECTED YOU AND THE TEAM? “We don’t get to go to our bus as easily anymore, that’s the biggest change, but overall it’s fine. Everything that is here that I’ve seen change is more so for the fans. I don’t look at it as the start-finish line moving, I just look at the race track and know that I’ve got to do my job 100 percent and hopefully that’s good enough.”
HAVE YOU DONE ANYTHING FUN ON THE WEST COAST? “I spent the week in Utah snowmobiling. It was cold. There was a foot of fresh snow Wednesday night into Thursday morning, so we rode pretty hard.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang – WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE RACING HERE? WHAT WILL WE BE TALKING ABOUT? “I really don’t know. I think it’s gonna be really, really interesting because the cars have so much grip. We are going so fast. We are going so much faster than we’ve gone here in the past, so I’m curious to see how the race is gonna play out with how fast we’re going, our mid-corner speed is high, our entry speed is high. I’m not sure, really. I have a lot of question marks and a lot of uncertainty on how the race is gonna play out.”
HAS THE PHILOSOPHY CHANGED FOR RESTARTS ON THIS TRACK AFTER THE LAST RACE? “No, I think we’ve always been pretty aggressive with using the dogleg and getting down on the apron to make passes on restarts.
ARIC ALMIROLA CONTINUED — That’s never really changed, so now I think is equally as important for track position as it’s ever been here at ISM Raceway and I think getting up through the gear box and doing a good job on a restart of going through the gears and getting a run on the cars in front of you you’re gonna take that run. If they’re on the race track, you’re gonna go to the apron and if they go to the apron to block, you’re gonna stay on the race track. You’ll see us four, five-wide through the dogleg, but then we’ve got to get back to at least two-wide by the time we get to turn one.”
YOU’VE HAD FOUR DIFFERENT AERO PACKAGES THE FIRST FOUR RACES. HAS IT THROWN YOU OFF? “It has been challenging. There’s definitely been a learning curve at each track. Daytona was kind of similar to what we’ve had in the past, but then going to Atlanta there was a lot that was just question marks and I feel like when the race finished at Atlanta it was like, ‘Alright, we have good foundation and have an idea.’ But then we went to Vegas and it was completely different from Atlanta and we left there going, ‘OK, we’ve got some good notes and we’re prepared to come back to Vegas.’ And then we should up here to Phoenix again and it’s kind of like a clean slate, a blank notebook and really nothing to go back on and just trying to change a lot of stuff as the weekend goes on to try to identify things and answer some questions.”
DO YOU EXPECT AUTO CLUB TO BE PRETTY CRAZY WITH HOW WIDE THAT TRACK IS? “I do. I expect Auto Club to be out of control. I really do. I think we’re gonna get huge drafts. I think cars are gonna get locked together. We’ll lock bumpers and there will be tandem drafting and I think especially on the restarts that will certainly come into play and that’s going to create huge runs for a couple cars in a big group when they’re catching a big draft. So I think that’s gonna be one of the biggest things to look out for when we go to Auto Club Speedway is just the restarts. They were always crazy, but they’re gonna be really crazy now.”
DOES THIS KIND OF RACING SUIT YOUR DRIVING STYLE? “I don’t know. Really, what plate racing is and what this kind of racing has become is really risk versus reward constantly. In the past if you had a better car and tried to make a move and it didn’t stick, you were probably just gonna give that one spot back and really no harm, no foul. Now, when you have a run if you go to try and pull off the move and you don’t make it, especially on a restart, you are going to pay a major penalty.
ARIC ALMIROLA CONTINUED – “If you don’t make the move that you want to make and it doesn’t stick, you’re looking at paying a five, six, seven spot penalty. So I think that that’s similar to restrictor plate racing when you’re trying to be aggressive and make a move and make things happen there’s always that risk versus reward.”
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE AND WHY? “I would say the longstanding favorite movie would probably be Dumb and Dumber. I’m a really big Jim Carrey fan. I love silly slapstick humor and so I’ve always been a fan of that since I was a little kid. I’ve watched Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber and all of those movies, so I would say over the long haul if there was one movie that I could only watch forever to the end of time it would probably be that one.”
THERE ARE THREE CARS THAT WERE 2.5 SECONDS OR MORE OFF THE PACE IN PRACTICE. WHAT IS THE ETIQUETTE FOR DRIVERS A LAP OR MORE DOWN? “Have you been listening to our radios the last couple of weeks? It has been a hot topic. That’s the one thing as racers when we all grew up racing in go kart racing at the very novice level one of the very first things you learn is what the flags mean. You learn that the green flag means go. You learn that the red flag means stop. The yellow flag is caution. Well, there’s that blue flag with the orange stripe and we all learn about that flag when we’re a little kid and that flag means that the leaders are coming and to move out of the way – move out of the racing groove. Well now, it should be even easier. You have spotters telling you, like you don’t even need the blue and orange striped flag. You have a spotter telling you, ‘Hey, the leaders are catching you again and the guy that’s catching you has been running the bottom the last five laps.’ Give him that lane. ‘Hey, the guy that’s catching you has been running the top the last five laps as he’s catching you. Give him the top lane.’ I think that’s just a really simple driver etiquette that we all learn at a very young age and we get really frustrated, and I realize that they’re here with just as much equal right to the race track, but it’s just a common courtesy, especially when there are guys battling for position on the race track in the top 10, top five, for the lead and those guys are multiple, multiple laps down and not really going to change their position one way or the other. It’s really just a common courtesy.”
ARIC ALMIROLA CONTINUED — DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF AMONG THE ELITE? “Yeah, I think when you look at Stewart-Haas Racing as an organization we’re certainly as an organization one of the elite organizations, so I would put myself in that category being the fact I’m part of that team, and certainly feel like we can compete to win races on any given weekend. We showed last year in our first year together that we came oh so close to making it to the Championship 4 and we finished fifth in the points, so I would certainly say that quantifies for being in the elite group of teams and drivers.”
WHAT HAS CONTRIBUTED TO YOUR INCREASED FINISHES HERE THE LAST FEW YEARS? “I think some of it is circumstantial, but I think some of it is just continuing to get better here. Now this trip and this race is certainly gonna be a lot different than what we’ve had in the past, so I don’ t know that the past will really play into this weekend, but really feel good about where we’re headed as a team and as an organization. This is one of those weekends where we’re going in again, like the last couple weeks, with a clean slate and really no notebook and we’re really learning on the fly. We didn’t unload with the speed that we were hoping for, so we’re kind of making a lot of adjustments and trying to check a lot of boxes to figure out where the speed is.”
WHAT’S THE PERCEPTION OF NASCAR INTERNATIONALLY AND HOW DO PEOPLE IN CUBA VIEW THE SPORT? “First of all, Cubans don’t have a lot of access to TV and or the internet, but they are aware. They’re certainly aware and they love their cars. You have to remember that free trade with the country of Cuba stopped in the sixties, so they live and die and survive on the use of their cars, so they’re very, very good at improvising and being mechanics and they make a lot of money with their cars using them as taxis and using them as delivery service vehicles. Cubans really, really, really cherish their cars. They get passed down from generation to generation to generation, so I think they love the automotive industry, they love race cars and I think Henry Ford honestly said it best when he said the day a race was created was when two cars rolled off the assembly line. That’s the way human nature is. We all want to compete and we all want to race and see who has the fastest car and all those things, so Cubans are no different.”
ARIC ALMIROLA CONTINUED — HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO GROW THE SPORT GLOBALLY? “I think it’s important. I think that’s what every sport wants is more people, more eyes on your sport and grow the demographic, and I think NASCAR is no different. They’ve made that push and tried to evolve in to a more international sport. They’ve got NASCAR hot and heavy down in Mexico and they’ve got NASCAR in Canada, and they do have an international presence, so I think for every sport you look at what every sport does, they try to grow their awareness internationally and NASCAR is on that same page.”
DANIEL SUAREZ, No. 41 Ruckus Ford Mustang – HOW IS NASCAR VIEWED IN MEXICO? “For sure it’s growing and it’s growing a lot. In the last five to seven years it has been getting much better and bigger. Back when I started racing 15 years ago, NASCAR in Mexico was not an option. We didn’t have ovals and we didn’t have a lot of opportunities to become a racer in the oval world in NASCAR. Now it is way different and there are way more opportunities. NASCAR has done an amazing job building those young drivers not just in Mexico, but they have another series to develop young drivers of 12, 13, 14 years old and all these drivers are good enough to one day make it to the United States and do exactly what I’m doing right now. It feels really good to be able to help these kids and to five them advice and to help them in many different ways. I live by myself in Charlotte and I’ve had several drivers from Mexico come and stay in the house and doing testing in K&N Series and different series, so it feels really good to support some of these kids. When I came here seven or eight years ago I didn’t have that person, so I hope that I can be able to help drivers from all these places so they can eventually have a career here in the United States like I do.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS TO GROW THE SPORT OVERSEAS? “People don’t really realize this but we have a lot of fans of this sport in all Latin America. I get an opportunity to race in Brazil every single year and NASCAR in Brazil is big and I guarantee you a lot of people don’t know that. I remember I went to a race and some fans showed up with a Daniel Suarez shirt in Brazil. That’s pretty impressive for me, so there is definitely a lot of opportunities down there. There are a lot of fans from Colombia and Argentina that follow the sport extremely close and I wish there was more stuff down there because there are a lot of people that follow this sport and follow myself as well. Hopefully one day we get an opportunity to do something because we owe those fans.”
DANIEL SUAREZ CONTINUED — DO YOU EMBRACE THE ROLE AS AN AMBASSADOR FOR THE SPORT? “I do and I feel very proud doing that. Today, I’m the only driver in the Cup Series that can speak the language that all these people speak, so I feel a responsibility of doing that. If it’s not me, who is going to do it? So I feel that responsibility of trying to send a message to all these different countries to follow this sport. I’ve been very fortunate to get in touch with some of these people and to know they follow this sport. More and more Latinos are coming into the sport and it really brings a smile to my face. Hopefully, we can keep working in the direction we are going so far and we can bring more drivers and all people from Latin America into this sport.”
HOW HAVE THINGS GONE THIS YEAR AFTER THREE RACES? “It’s getting better. We’re learning a lot from each other. Billy Scott and the entire 41 group has been good and getting stronger as we go. Maybe last week we didn’t show that in the race, but we’re getting stronger. We had some issues on pit road. We didn’t have a good day on pit road, but that’s what happens sometimes. We have to make those mistakes in order to fix them. I feel that we’re gonna be in a good spot in probably a couple of months.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO WIN A RACE SOON? “It’s always good to win race and always good to put yourself in that position, but we have to be smart and we have to be patient. There are a lot of new things going on right now, a new car, new package, new engine package, a new team – everything is new for myself. Even the spotter who is talking to me every lap is new for me, so everything is new for me and I feel everyone in this group has the potential to do great things. We just have to be patient, not put too much pressure on ourselves because that’s very easy to do, especially someone like myself. I’m not very patient. I’m not here for being patient, I’m here for being a little aggressive, but sometimes it’s good to be patient too. I have to be smart about it, be aggressive when I have to and be patient when I have to. Right now, I feel like we have to keep working in the direction we’re going and things come our way.”
HOW HAVE THINGS CHANGE HERE AT ISM WITH THIS NEW PACKAGE? “It is different. Just like they say it’s a different technique. That’s exactly the word. We don’t have as much power as we used to at the big tracks and we have the same power and more downforce at tracks like here in Phoenix.
DANIEL SUAREZ CONTINUED – “It’s just one of those deals that we have to get used to everything. You have to get adapted to everything and learn from what we’ve got.”
DO YOU FEEL THAT FIRST WIN IS CLOSE? “I think we are gonna get there. I don’t know if it’s gonna be next month, but we’re gonna get there. The team is strong, I can tell you that. The team knows how to make cars go fast. I’ve been very impressed with many different things that they have done for me. They know how to make the car go faster. It’s just a matter of knowing each other, working together, working that chemistry and to put the results on the race track. I feel like we have everything that it takes to do it, we just have to be patient and work in the right direction.”
SOME SAY YOUR SPIRIT IS BACK. IS THAT FAIR? “It is for sure. I will tell you that I came to this country to win races. I came to this country to be competitive and to win championships and I didn’t feel like I had what I needed to to do that last year. We were just missing different stuff. At one point every single driver in the Cup Series is competitive. If they’re not doing the right thing and the results aren’t coming frustration is going to come. That’s normal. That’s why we race on this level because we are competitive and because we are aggressive and extremely hard on ourselves. Last year, I started the season the way that I’m starting the season right now, but at one point of the season I didn’t feel like we had a direction and then the team came apart again and things started to go in the wrong direction. That’s in the past now. There’s nothing we can do about it. I feel very fortunate to be with an amazing team with Ford Performance. We’ve got a lot of support from a lot of people. As you said, the smile is back and hopefully we can bring even a bigger one in Victory Lane.”
Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Friday, March 8, 2019
EVENT: Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Qualifying
DAVID RAGAN, No. 38 Select Blinds Ford Mustang – YOUR TEAMMATE DOESN’T SEEM LIKE THE FIGHTING TYPE. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I didn’t see exactly what happened, but it’s a mess when everybody waits to five minutes. That’s just part of it. I felt like I messed up Kurt Busch a little bit into one. I didn’t have a lot of room in front of me, so I was trying to back up a little bit and I thought he was done and he ran another lap and a half, and we actually were side-by-side coming to the checkered flag. I messed up his lap and he messed up my lap, but when you have a bunch of knucklehead drivers sit out there and wait for four minutes left and 30 cars still have to run, that’s what you have.”
HOW FRUSTRATING IS THAT? “It’s frustrating if you wind up on the wrong side of it, but maybe that’s what NASCAR needs to do for Sundays. They need to make a time limit and that will all make us race hard.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 Dockside Logistics Ford Mustang – WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN YOU AND SUAREZ? “It was kind of chaotic out there. We all waited until the very last second to go out trying to do the best track you can and so when you do that you’re gonna have traffic with people finishing their lap and starting their lap. I understand while Daniel is upset. I’d be upset too. I definitely messed up his lap, but then he tried to crash us. When he came over I wasn’t that excited about him trying to crash us on the race track. I made a mistake, an honest mistake, but trying to crash somebody is a different story. That’s all. It’s just racing.”
DO YOU THINK NASCAR WILL BE UPSET? “I don’t so why they would be upset. We were just talking it out.”
DID YOU SETTLE ANYTHING OUT THERE? “What I told Daniel, everybody makes mistakes. That’s just part of it. Not every qualifying session is gonna go how you want it. It’s not how we wanted it to go. It hurt us as well. It’s not the race. We’ve got 300-and-some-odd laps to figure it out on Sunday.”
WHY WOULD THAT BRING IT TO SUCH A HIGH LEVEL? “When you mess up somebody’s lap I understand their frustrated. When you try to hurt somebody and damage hundreds of thousands of dollars of race cars, that’s taking it to a whole other level.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL CONTINUED — DO YOU HAVE A HISTORY AT ALL? “No, we were at a hockey game last night. Don’t read too much into it. It’s emotions. That’s just the way it is.”
YOU WERE AT THE HOCKEY GAME LAST NIGHT? “Yeah, we were all hanging out.”
DANIEL SUAREZ, No. 41 Ruckus Ford Mustang – WHAT HAPPENED OUT THERE? “As a race car driver you always have respect for the other drivers, especially here in Phoenix when we all know that the second lap is a good one. Your first one you’re just putting temperature on everything. I was opening my second lap and he was in my way in corner one and two. I assumed he was gonna get out of my way in corner three and four and he didn’t. He was in my way for the entire second lap and then he messed up my opening for the third lap, so he pretty much messed up the whole qualifying.”
ARE YOU MAD AT HIM OR DID YOU SETTLE IT OUT THERE? “I’m obviously mad because track position is the situation in racing today. I don’t really care about starting in the front or the back, but what is very important is the pit stall selection, which we’re gonna be bad, but I have a very strong race car. We showed that in practice and we’re gonna be able to overcome that tomorrow.”
WERE YOU GOING TO JUST TALK OR WERE YOU READY TO SCRAP LIKE YOU DID? “I’m ready for whatever. I’m not concerned for anything.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Sunny D Ford Mustang – “We struggled all day. We didn’t have the speed that we needed. We found a little bit at the end of practice that I thought could make us close. We were kind of optimistic after the first round. We got some clean track there and put a good lap on our Sunny D Ford down and when we needed to go faster we just didn’t have the balance that we needed to go that much faster like those guys did. We’ll go to work tomorrow and get it going in race trim and see if we can’t find a little bit more front turn. That’s kind of where we lacked, just rolling speed across the center of the corner. We’ll go back and work hard tomorrow during practice and see if we can’t make our car better.”
PAUL MENARD, No. 21 Menards/Quaker State Ford Mustang – “We had plenty of speed to get into the final round. We missed the balance a little bit and adjusted on it between rounds. I messed up into turn three and messed up my last two laps because it killed the current lap and I didn’t get off turn four very well. That hurt us. We missed it by a half-a-tenth and definitely were tracking way better than that and I just missed turn three.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang – “We missed the balance right there in practice and couldn’t get the grip in the car and the balance that we needed to go put down the lap we needed to to get to that top 12. It’s frustrating, but better than we were in practice. We were still off of where we needed to be, so I’m disappointed a little bit, but we typically don’t qualify that great here and typically race really well.”
COREY LAJOIE, No. 32 Schluter Systems Ford Mustang – “We’re 50 percent on our stage two qualifying. We made stage two at Atlanta and stage two here, so that’s an improvement for me as well as Go FAS. That shows the hard work they put in over the off season and we’ve got some good cars. Hopefully, we can roll that into Sunday.”
RYAN NEWMAN, No. 6 Oscar Mayer Ford Mustang – “We lost something from practice and we need to figure out what it was. Our Oscar Mayer Ford was definitely more competitive in practice on our mock qualifying run, so we’ll have to go back and look at what it was. I’m excited about having full horsepower and getting a chance to race here at ISM, where I’ve had success before. We’ll work on our Oscar Mayer Ford tomorrow and get it driving good and hopefully be able to improve on our starting spot.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Alliance Truck Parts Ford Mustang – “That was good, not as good as Ryan, but by far the best qualifying effort we’ve had this year, so we’ll take that.” ANY EXPLANATION? “No, I have no idea. I really don’t. When I got in the car this morning I had no impressions and it was pleasantly fast, so hopefully we keep that going.”
NASCAR EJECTED YOUR ENGINEER INSTEAD OF CREW CHIEF. DOES IT MATTER TO YOU? “I have no idea what’s going on there. Nobody has told me anything.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED — HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYBODY FIGHT IN QUALIFYING? “I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. What happened?”
IS IT THAT HAIRY TO GET OUT FOR QUALIFYING? “That’s the way the format is designed. You’ve got one of the ARCA cars out there that blew up at the end of practice and oiled it all down, so nobody wanted to get on the track too soon and it is what it is.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Mustang – “I think that’s a good day for us, actually. I don’t feel like I’m in any sort of rhythm driving the car starting in qualifying trim like we did and everything is just a lot different with all the speed, the markers are way different, brakes way different, everything that you do is way different. Obviously, I didn’t get a lot out of the car in practice and didn’t get it where we needed it to be and wound up running, I kept running in the first round because I didn’t really know where I needed to be and wound up putting an extra lap or two in those first two rounds on those set of tires, but in the end I think it went fine.”
HOW DIFFERENT IS THIS PACKAGE FOR YOU HERE? “We’ve won in every package, so this is more back to 2014 style of package with all the corner speed and the way that you have to drive the car.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang – “Twelfth isn’t what we were looking for, but our teammates are definitely really fast. The good news is we can see what they do and try to put that into what we’re doing, whether it’s driving or setup-wise, we just need to look and see what that is because Blaney’s got the speed.”
