Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Saturday, September 7, 2019
RYAN NEWMAN MEDIA AVAILABILITY
RYAN NEWMAN, No. 6 Acorns Ford Mustang — WHAT IS YOUR TEAMS PLAN GOING INTO THE WEEKEND? “Just to perform and enjoy it. There are a lot of teams that would like to be in our situation. There are a lot of teams better than our situation but there are a lot that would love to be fighting for a playoff berth. We will do what we can to be the best we can with the Acorns Ford and enjoy the race. It is home for me. Lots of friends and family and I get a chance to run the Silver Crown car tonight at IRP. There is a lot going on. That is just part of it. I definitely enjoy it.”
DO YOU REMEMBER YOU FIRST RACE HERE AND WHAT THAT WAS LIKE? “I think there are a lot of guys that come here that are young that have never been here, if that makes any sense. Then there are guys that have been here but never got a chance to race. I was one of those guys. I understood more so the history and relevance and everything about the speedway. I watched Indy races here and had a better understand for myself of what to expect. I think it is totally different when you get out on the racetrack. I think my first experience was at a test and we had a lot of fun and had fast race cars. We came back here and had a practice session on a Thursday or something like that, a really quick 30-minute practice session and we were P1 and that was all the confidence I needed to go into that weekend, 18 years ago or whatever it was. I think that you can overcome the inexperience really quick with some confidence.”
SOME CONTACT WITH DANIEL SUAREZ LAST WEEK, WAS THAT JUST RACING AND NO BIG DEAL? “Are you saying I made contact with him or he made contact with me? That is just racing. That is what I said afterwards. Everything kind of cycles in our sport and what comes around goes around. It is what it is. I don’t think he meant to turn me around but he did turn me around. It is just racing. I get it. Whether he plowed through me like Kenseth did to Logano or just took the air of me or whatever. It is racing. I don’t have any intentions going into this race other than to do the best that I can for our team.”
REGARDLESS OF WHAT HAPPENS THIS WEEKEND, YOU HAVE TALKED ABOUT THIS BEING KIND OF A ROOKIE TEAM. WHAT DOES THIS GROUP NEED TO DO MOVING FORWARD TO WHERE YOU AREN’T IN THIS POSITION A YEAR FROM NOW? “Win. That is the easy answer. Just keep progressing as a team. We have talked about it a little bit personally but our team is so new. It is newer than I have ever experienced. That is huge. With all the changes we had in our sport in the offseason, I think it was underestimated by me and a huge change to tackle. I feel like we have done a good job but to answer your question, we just need to continue to progress to make our cars go faster. I think we have had some good strategy and pit stops and good moves on the race track. All those types of things. Good things need to turn into great things and keep progressing as a team. Those experiences will hopefully build a notebook that we can carry into next year and be more successful.”
HOW DOES EXPERIENCE HELP YOU WITH THIS RACE TOMORROW COMPARED TO SOMEBODY THAT HAS MAYBE NOT GONE THROUGH THIS BEFORE? “I think I am like one level beyond veteran now. I think I am like a senior veteran. Not only have I been around the sport a long time but I have experienced the pushes and pulls and ups and downs of the playoffs and racing your way in and not making it. I just think that no matter what I am going to sleep well because I will be tired after the Silver Crown race. It is a great opportunity to go out and have fun. There are so many kids out there that I have been a part of in my racing career and watched whether it was at the dirt track on Wednesday and Thursday that want to be in my seat. I appreciate that now more than I ever did.”
DO YOU APPROACH THIS WEEKEND ANY DIFFERENTLY BEING ON THE BUBBLE? ARE YOU MORE CAUTIOS OR MORE AGGRESSIVE? “Both. Always both. To me, this is no different than when the green flag dropped for the Daytona 500. You have just as many opportunities and points to gain as you do to lose and it is the same for everybody. You can’t try to make up for in one race what you didn’t accomplish in the first 25. We are in a position where we are break even with one, have to race another and have to keep our eyes on the one behind us. That is no different than it was in Daytona. We just need to go out there and do our job and try to win. If we can’t, take the best position we can take and keep in mind that we are racing for something more than just one race, we are racing for the next 10.”
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE SUAREZ, BOWYER AND JOHNSON ARE RUNNING OR DO YOU NOT WANT TO KNOW DURING THE RACE? “I want to be able to know where they are at, whether it is in front of me or behind me but in the end it doesn’t matter. It just is something that slides in your consciousness. If I can’t get to them, then I can’t get to them. If I have them behind me I want to keep them behind me. That is the facts of it. I think you kind of subconsciously want to know those things but in the end you can’t do anything about it, otherwise you would lap the field 22 times.”
