Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Friday, March 29, 2019
EVENT: O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 Media Availability
DAVID RAGAN, No. 38 MDS Transport Ford Mustang – WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT TEXAS? “The track is a unique mile-and-a-half track. When you get here both corners are different and I give kudos to Eddie Gossage and all the guys out here for being a little bold when they re-did the track. It would have been easy to just repave it and keep both corners the same, but the arch that you get into turn one and the lack of banking in turn one is very unique for any mile-and-a-half. It’s almost like a Kentucky turns three and four, where it doesn’t have a lot of banking. It’s super-wide. You can run six or eight cars wide through there, but all the grip is on the bottom two-thirds of the track, but turns three and four is banked, got a lot of speed, a lot of g-forces through three and four, so both corners are a little different and they paved the race track with some good asphalt that has aged well. You look at the race track and it’s gray and it’s light and it’s only a few years old, so that’s encouraging for the next five to 10 years out here that the track is just gonna continue to get better.”
DO YOU LOOK AT BIG HOSS AT ALL? “Under cautions I’ll look at it some. I can’t look at it under green. I have a hard enough time keeping control of my car paying attention when I’m driving straight ahead, but under caution I do look up at the scoreboard. You look up where guys are running, how many laps we’ve got left, a replay or something. When you’re really lucky is when a bad wreck happens and you’re not in it, but they red flag the race and you have a perfect view of Big Hoss or the TV at Charlotte or even Bristol. You can sit there and watch what everybody else is watching, so that makes for a good red flag.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE NEW SCHEDULE AND WHAT STRUCK YOU FIRST? “There are a lot of changes and I think sometimes in our sport we’ve been reluctant to change. I think we have been scared to make big decisions sometimes and those can be hard and certainly in the big business of motorsports, but I think change was inevitable that we had to get there and I think it’s great. It gives new opportunities for fans to come to races that maybe they haven’t been able to come to in their certain market or make a road trip that they haven’t been able to make for other reasons. Now I know there are some others fans that are hurt for that same reason, but it’s good to have a good mixture. I love keeping some of the core dates the same. Obviously, the Coca-Cola 600, the Labor Day Weekend at Darlington. I’m glad they didn’t move that, the Daytona 500. But I think some of those marquee events stuck around in the same spot, but I love Daytona being the last race before the Playoffs start and I still like Homestead being involved in the regular season, but I do hate that the missed out on that last Playoff race.”
HOW MUCH HAVE WE LEARNED ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE AT ALL THESE TRACKS? HAS IT FELT REALLY DIFFERENT BEHIND THE WHEEL? “They have. I’ve learned a lot as a driver and our team has learned a lot because there are a lot of small differences at all these race tracks. Even though they may appear like we have the same car and they’re the same track, but Vegas and Texas and California, Phoenix, Martinsville, they’re all a lot different with a lot of different combinations and our teams are so smart now that we can change the platform a little bit, change the setup a little bit and it drastically changes the car. You want something different for every tire combination, asphalt combination, obviously a two-mile track versus a mile-and-a-half to a short track, so these first seven to 10 races were so important to learn off of and I think you’re gonna continue to see Penske and Joe Gibbs kind of stink up the show for a few more weeks until some of these other teams can get caught up because even when you learn something it takes two or three weeks to implement something that you’ve learned. Some teams can react faster than others, but whoever figures it out first they’re gonna dominate early and I think that’s what Penske and certainly the Joe Gibbs teams have done. They’ve figured out the sweet spot and know how to adjust on their cars and it has showed.”
HOW MUCH HAVE WE LEARNED ABOUT NEW STRATEGIES FOR QUAILFYING? “It has changed some and it all depends first on how your car is handling as an individual. If your car handles really good, you can afford to get tight to a car and draft that guy and there is potential to have a better lap time, but if your car doesn’t drive good, the dirtier air you’re in that hurts you through the corners and what you may gain down the straightaway you’re gonna have an opportunity to lose in the corner. So that’s something that we all have to kind of make decisions on the fly. In practice you have to kind of see what your car reacts the best. There are gonna be some guys that can be a couple seconds behind a car and not really catch much of a draft, but they’re still gonna be fast versus a guy that has to be a couple of car lengths behind someone in order to just make second round or make final round. So that’s different on the individual level, but I do think it just adds another element of thought, of strategy and excitement for us and the fans.”
WHERE IS THE BALANCE BETWEEN ENTERTAINMENT AND COMPETITION? IS IT STARTING TO SKEW ONE WAY? “I think the balance between entertainment and competition is in a pretty good spot. I think we’re five years behind the curve on being more of an entertainment group. I think that we stuck to some of the rules and procedures that were a little outdated and a little boring for maybe five to 10 years too long, so I think in the last two to three years with some of the rules changes, the format changes, the qualifying procedures, all we’ve done in the last few years, I think those are all in the right direction to keep our fans engaged and to have a high entertainment value. I think we do have to be very careful not to cross that line. I don’t know where the line is, but I think we’re in a great area right now. I don’t think we’re too much on the carnival, WWE side, but I don’t think we are too strictly straightforward because sometimes straightforward competition can get pretty boring and we don’t want to have 20 cars here and 20,000 people sitting in the stands and 500,000 people watching on TV like some of the other series in the world have. That wouldn’t be good, so I think the mixture we have now is pretty good and I think that’s a moving target. I don’t think what’s good today is gonna be what’s perfect in a year or two down the road. I think the manufacturers, the TV partners, the team owners, we all have to collaborate to make sure that we keep a healthy form of competition, which the fast guys and the fast teams still win and I think you have to keep a healthy form of entertainment value too that makes people want to keep watching.”
DO YOU LOOK AT BRISTOL RACES AS BEING MORE EVEN THROUGH THE FIELD? “We’ve struggled a little bit on Sundays with our Front Row Motorsports team. I feel like Daytona and Atlanta we had great cars and had opportunities to run in the top 10 or 15 in both races and then we kind of fell off the wagon at Vegas, and we’ve just struggled to get our cars to drive better. I think the potential is still there, so for your question on what we need to do to capitalize these next few weeks, we need to get our cars to drive good. I think our engines are great. Our cars are built very good. They’re clean. They’re neat I think they have good potential, but I just think we’ve got to understand this downforce package ang what it takes to race good and for our car to drive good, but still have some pure speed to it. We can’t add all the downforce and get our car to drive good and take speed away, and there are cars that are able to not do that and still run fast, so I didn’t think our Martinsville went that great for us either. We missed it on a few things, which we’ve identified a few areas where we made mistakes with the chassis and some of the building aspects of our car. We’re gonna have some of that adjusted for Bristol, but Bristol has been a good track for me over the years for Front Row Motorsports. Yes, aero doesn’t come into play as much. It’s back to mechanical grip and that’s easier for a driver and a crew chief and an engineer to work through when you have one less element that’s so critical like the splitter control and attitude of a car here at Texas running 190 miles an hour.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang – HOW DO YOU FEEL HERE IN TERMS OF QUALIFYING AND BEING ON THE EDGE? “Last year we were definitely on the edge a lot more in terms of speed and grip in the car. Really, you only are on the edge of grip in turns one and two now. Now everybody goes through three and four pretty easy, so I feel like all the speed is in one and two. We’re loose down there. You’re not wide-open. You’re playing with the throttle trying to be wide-open, but you can’t. You still want to draft. You still don’t want to be first out, so it’ll be interesting to see what games and see who has the best strategy and trumps everybody else there in qualifying and leaving at the right amount of time to get two laps or one lap or whatever the case may be.”
HOW DO YOU HANDLE THE SPEEDS AT BRISTOL NEXT WEEK? “Driving-wise I saw people thinking it’s gonna be tough. If they think it’s gonna be tough, I feel like they should hit the gym more. I think we’ll be fine. I won’t fall out of the seat. I feel like I’ll be good. I feel like our cars are gonna be fast. I feel like we’re prepared to go there and hopefully win. That’s the mindset that we have going into Bristol. As far as tires and things like that go, it’s not up to me if they handle or not. Hopefully, everything car-wise holds up. I’ll be good.”
DO YOU CIRCLE THAT DATE ON YOUR CALENDAR? “Yeah, every year I would say we circle obviously the four speedway races and then both at Bristol.”
DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR MIND ABOUT BLOWING TIRES AT BRISTOL? “Yeah, we blew four last year. It’s a new race weekend. We just had issues. We had one of the fastest cars, but just kept blowing right-front tires for whatever reason. We have our thought process of why we did that, so we’ll make sure going back that we cover our bases on those.”
THOUGHTS ON THE NEW SCHEDULE OTHER THAN THE FACT WITH WATKINS GLEN BEING THE SAME WEEKEND MIGHT MAKE THE KNOXVILLE NATIONALS OUT OF THE QUESTION. “I honestly haven’t looked at it. I heard the highlights of it and it’s cool to have something different. We’ve kind of been stuck in the same rut for a while, so I do think a change up of the schedule will be fun. A couple off weekends in the summer will be fun to have and a doubleheader weekend, it’ll be cool to kind of see how everything plays out and then obviously what the schedule looks like going forward from there.”
YOU HAVE RUN BETTER AT SOME TRACKS YOU’VE STRUGGLED AT IN PAST YEARS. HOW MUCH CONFIDENCE DOES IT GIVE YOUR TEAM KNOWING YOU CAN RUN WELL? “I think for us the mile-and-a-half program is something that we look forward to right now, and I would say over the last four or five years we kind of dreaded going to the mile-and-a-halves. We were just OK. We weren’t great and right now I think our cars are good and they’re strong and fast on the mile-and-a-halves if we don’t make mistakes or put ourselves in a bad spot. That being said, we’re looking forward to Sunday. I think we’re gonna have a strong car and hopefully we can kind of build up the rest of our program and try to get all of them on the same level. You look at somebody like the 18, the Penske cars, they’re good at every race track you go to and that’s what you strive for. We’ve been hit-or-miss at different race tracks, so we’re gonna try and elevate our whole program, but definitely happy with where we’ve started the year on the mile-and-a-halves.”
ARE YOU HAPPY TO BE HERE AS OPPOSED TO MARTINSVILLE? “Yeah, I hate Martinsville. Actually, when we’ve had decent cars there we run just fine. Like 2017 running top 10 both races I felt really good and enjoyed Martinsville, but when you’re off just a little bit you struggle really bad. For us at least, every one in our camp was struggling with us. It wasn’t just, ‘Hey, Ryan’s really good or David’s really good or Michael.’ We were all struggling with the same issues and speed, so I think you leave there scratching your head if your teammate goes and wins the race or runs way better, but, right now, we can kind of look at our group and know that we all ran different setups and we all still struggled with speed, so we know that we’ve got something fundamentally wrong going back to Martinsville and maybe some of our short tracks.”
HOW DO YOU DEVELOP A THICK SKIN? “You’ve got to in this sport. I heard it a lot when I was in XFINITY my first year and we crashed a lot, and kind of put it out of my mind and went back to work. I won two championships and won a lot of races and contended for poles and we were winning races when you had Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Joey Logano, Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski all in the race at the same time. You didn’t have just one or two drivers from the Cup side down there and so that gave me confidence that I don’t really have to listen to what everybody else says and I can go on and do our job and so we’ve struggled in Cup. I know my ability to drive a car and when we have a good car and an opportunity to run well and gain good points and maybe even go for a win, I’m gonna continue to drive that aggressively.”
DO DRIVERS OVERLY CRITICIZE YOU? “Kyle Busch criticized me once and now everybody likes to blame me. Whoever it is, they like to have somebody to blame because I feel like in our sport most drivers it’s never their fault. I feel like that’s something that at least inside our circle at Roush Fenway Racing if I make a mistake I come back to the shop I tell Jack, ‘Hey, I made a mistake.’ That’s gone back to when I first started in this sport in 2010 and kind of feel like that’s something my dad instilled in me early on is if you make a mistake just own up to it and try not to let it happen again, so I feel like I do that. I feel like a lot of other drivers like to put blame on everybody else.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE UNFAIRLY BLAMED AS A SCAPEGOAT? “Yeah, I do, but I don’t care. Whatever makes them feel better. If they sleep better at night because they blamed me for something, then good for them.”
DOES THERE NEED TO BE SOMEBODY WITH A BLACK HAT AND POINT A FINGER AT? “Heck, Dale Earnhardt and his Intimidator black hat style – he was winning all the time, so I definitely can’t take that over. But as far as somebody that wants to go out and just do the best for their team despite what everybody else things, that’s definitely us and the 17 team. That’s my crew chief, myself, spotter on down. We’re there for us.”
YOU’RE DOING SUPERCROSS TOMORROW IN THE BOOTH? “Yeah, that’ll be fun. They’ve got the triple crown format run in Houston. I’m gonna fly down after practice tomorrow. People can follow along on our social channels and it should be fun. I’ll be back in the booth and haven’t been in there for a race in a long time. I did some Nationwide races back in the day in the booth with ESPN, so it’s been a while, but I’m looking forward to going down. The points battle is intense. I think there are a lot of good storylines, so I’ll be enjoying going there. I didn’t think I was gonna make a Supercross race this year. Normally, I get out to Phoenix early in the year and make a race, but just haven’t done that this year, so I’m looking forward to it.
WHAT MAKES THAT KIND OF RACING EXCITING? “I feel like with Supercross every person out there can jump the jumps. Bikes come into play. You do have to have a good, solid team behind you, but for the most part everybody can do the same things on a dirt bike as far as triples and quads and whoops and different rhythm sections, but it’s who can do them the fastest the longest and so I think what intrigues me about that is how much work that they put in outside of race weekend. I mean, I feel like their races are won during the week as far as training themselves. Our sport, I feel like, yeah, our races are won during the week, but it’ s more on the car build side and working with your team and making sure your setups are gonna be dialed in where they need to be and then fine-tuning that on the weekend. So it’s totally different as far as the weekday prep goes and I think that’s what is intriguing about their sport and why you have ups and downs and some riders being really, really fast. They had a good week of practice and got a little confidence and go to the race weekend carrying that same speed, but you have just a little bit of off practice time throughout the week and then you struggle on the weekends. I think it’s very interesting.”
DANIEL SUAREZ, No. 41 Ruckus Ford Mustang – WHAT DOES THIS TRACK MEAN TO YOU? “It’s the only race track that actually my family and friends can drive from my hometown. It’s always cool to have a bunch of friends actually driving today to spend the weekend here, so it’s always fun to come to Texas. I know a bunch of people here in the area. I have family in Texas and, like I said, I have a lot of people that come from Mexico, where I was born and raised, so it’s always fun to come here as well with the fans because they’re great. I love racing here. I’ve been racing here for four years now and I always feel very close to home. It’s always good and fun to come back.”
HOW HAS THE SEASON GONE? “I think it’s been OK. There is a lot of room to improve, but I don’t want to sweat it yet. We have a lot of potential to do good things. My crew chief and engineers, these guys are very good and they have a lot of potential to do very good things. We have to keep working hard, keep working on our communication and chemistry and keep getting better. I feel like we are heading in the right direction. I feel like we still need just some raw speed, but we’re gonna get there. I don’t feel like we are yet to win races, but I don’t have any doubt that eventually we’re gonna get there. We just have to be patient and try to work hard for that.”
WOULD YOU BE OPEN TO PARTICIPATING IN A SERIES LIKE THE 10-PART DOCUMENTARY THAT FOLLOWED F-1? “I don’t know, probably. I don’t really know.”
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO TO GET AROUND THIS TRACK FAST? “This race track has been pretty tricky since they repaved it, especially corner one and two. It’s an extremely hard corner because it’s pretty flat in comparison to three and four. It’s very hard to be extremely good in corner three and four and be good as well in corner one and two. Today is kind of like a relaxed day because we have a lot of q-trims and trying to practice for qualifying runs, but I feel like tomorrow is gonna be a whole different ballgame. Hopefully, today actually so far I’m very happy with my car. I feel that we have, for sure without a doubt top 10 speed, so hopefully we can keep that up. Qualifying is gonna be a whole different game and you guys will have fun with our drafting deal and all the games, but we’ll see. Hopefully, we can be smart and stay out of trouble and have some fun and put the car on the speed chart where we deserve.”
ARE YOU MORE RELAXED THIS YEAR SINCE COMING TO SHR? “I do feel more relaxed. I’m happier. It’s always good to be with a group of guys like this. Last year, I wasn’t happy. It was just a little bit different and this year I’m more relaxed and just hoping to do my thing and I feel like we have more speed. Last year, there was a lot of inconsistency. Right now, I feel like we’re consistent and moving in the right direction. Last year was different, but for sure I’m more happy and more relaxed. My team, Billy Scott is a great crew chief. I have great engineers and a lot of good people behind me and I feel like we’re gonna do great things together. We just have to be patient and try to keep working in the direction we’re going so far. I don’t feel like we are where we want to be yet, but we have to be patient. We’ve been working together for seven races only, so everything is new, even the spoiler, so there are a lot of things we’re still working on trying to get better and hopefully we can keep going in the direction that we are going so far.”
DO YOU THINK THE QUICK MOVE OF GOING TO CUP AFTER CARL EDWARDS RETIRED HAVE ANY EFFECT ON YOUR DEVELOPMENT? “No. I don’t think it had any effect at all. I feel like I was ready to move up to Cup, but I wasn’t ready to move up to Cup and change the whole thing through the year. That wasn’t the plan and when you’re a rookie that’s something that you need. You want some consistency. That’s extremely important. As a driver you want consistency because you are learning so many different things and people change almost every month and it’s very hard to have consistency, so that’s in the past. There’s nothing that I regret as far as any decisions I’ve made.”
IT SEEMS YOU HAVE MORE CONFIDENCE IN YOURSELF. “I have always had confidence in myself. I feel like if I lose confidence in myself I have lost everything and I know what I can do. I didn’t get here just by luck, so I know what I can do. You need the right group of people, people who actually trust in you and want you to do well and agree to have that good chemistry and everyone has to pull in the same direction. If somebody is not pulling as hard, that’s gonna be reflected in the race. I feel like right now with Billy and my engineers and everyone at Stewart-Haas Racing has been working very hard. My pit crew is another great example. They started the first month of the season struggling a lot. They were a few second off the competition. I had conversations with them and I’ve been working out with them and just having conversation and trying to bring their confidence up. Last weekend they were killing it the last few stops, so that’s just something that really means a lot to me, that we’re heading in the right direction. We just have to put everything together and trust in each other and move forward.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BRISTOL NEXT WEEK? “Bristol is actually one of my favorite race tracks. I love Bristol. I think the laps are gonna be very, very fast with the new downforce package. It’s gonna be very, very fast and a lot of fun. For sure, Stewart-Haas Racing has a good package for Bristol, so I’m very excited and looking forward to go there with this team after they won there last year.”
DO YOU THINK YOUR TEAM IS READY? “Honestly, I never felt this close to my team – ever. We have great communication. We have fun together. Last week, we went bowling together. We are very close and I never had that before. I’m very lucky to have a great group of people with me – a great group of guys that work very hard. They work hard and we have fun together and that’s a lot of fun. It’s always a lot of fun to get along so well away from the race track and when it’s time to work, we work very hard and we’ve got everyone’s back and we move forward.”
IS THAT A LUCK OF THE DRAW OR THE CREW CHIEF OR SOMETHING YOU DID? “I feel like it’s been a lot of work by Stewart-Haas Racing and Billy Scott. This was a team that has been built by them and I’m just the lucky guy that gets to join the group. Since day one I knew this group was good, so hopefully we can keep having fun and getting better. I feel like we have in the last few weeks. We have had top 10 cars pretty much in the last month and now we have to close the races and doing a better job on pit road like we did the last few stops at Martinsville and we’ll be just fine.”
DID YOU SEE THAT BEER CAN THROWN AT YOU AFTER THE RACE? WAS IT THROWN AT YOU? “I don’t think that thing was thrown at me. I was walking. The guy had to be extremely good to try to hit me that close while I was walking. I was talking with Ryan Blaney during the week and he said, ‘Man, I just hear this explosion and I turned around and it’s sad that people are doing that, but think about it, Denny Hamlin was on your left, I think that thing was for him.’ So we were laughing about it. I don’t really know. I turned around and saw a lot of drunk people there, but I doubt it was for me. Who knows? It may have been for me, but who knows?”
DOES IT MATTER? “I don’t care.”
SO NOBODY YELLED AT YOU? “I read something on Twitter or somewhere that somebody said something about Mexicans, but that’s not true. I was there. I actually spent 30 seconds there waiting for my interviews and nobody said anything. It’s just people making stuff up. Nobody said anything and I doubt that thing was for me. Like Ryan said, I thought it was very funny when he said because I never thought about it, he said, ‘People don’t like Denny too much at that place.’ So it may have been for him, but who knows?”
