NASCAR CUP SERIES
DARLINGTON RACEWAY
TOYOTA 500
FORD PERFORMANCE DRIVER – POST RACE QUOTES
WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2020
FORD FINISHING RESULTS:
3rd — Kevin Harvick
4th — Brad Keselowski
6th — Joey Logano
7th — Aric Almirola
9th — Matt DiBenedetto
14th — Ryan Newman
17th — Michael McDowell
21st — Ryan Blaney
22nd — Clint Bowyer
23rd — Chris Buescher
24th — Corey LaJoie
31st — Cole Custer
35th — John Hunter Nemechek
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Mustang — COULD YOU WALK US THROUGH TONIGHT’S THIRD‑PLACE FINISH? “ Yeah, we had to start 20th, battled kind of an ill‑balanced car tonight. The track conditions were just a lot different. We made some adjustments going into the race. Just couldn’t get the front of the car to turn. Every time we tried to adjust the back, it would just take the back out. We never could get the front of the car to turn. Had to use a lot more throttle tonight. The things I could do with the car Sunday, I couldn’t do tonight. They kept clawing and fighting. In the end we had a great pit stop on the last pit stop, were in position to have a chance to win the race there, and it rained. The whole night we wound up restarting on the bottom of the racetrack. We’d lose three or four spots every time we’d restart. Definitely didn’t get the good end of the draw on the restarts. In the end our Mobil 1 guys did a great job of just battling. Sometimes you have great nights, sometimes you have nights you have to battle. It was a good two days in Darlington for us.”
WHAT DID YOU SEE ON THE KYLE BUSCH‑CHASE ELLIOTT DEAL THERE? KYLE SAID HE JUST MADE A MISTAKE. IS THAT WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE TO YOU? “He wanted to get back in line so quick. Kyle was on the bottom. He had a hole between myself and Chase. I’m sure he had one eye in the mirror, glanced forward. It looked to me like he completely misjudged and got the 9.”
DID IT LOOK INTENTIONAL AT ALL? “I just said he just misjudged and got the 9.”
DO YOU THINK WE’RE ON TO SOMETHING HERE? WEDNESDAY NIGHT NASCAR LOOKED PRETTY GOOD ON TV. MAYBE IN FUTURE SCHEDULES WE CAN BUILD THIS INTO THE SUMMER SCHEDULES WHERE SOME TRACKS ARE CLOSE TO ANOTHER, HAVE A FULL SEASON IN FEWER WEEKS? “As long as the TV ratings are good. That’s what drives our sport, the amount of people watching TV. If the TV ratings are good, it’s good for everybody.”
OBVIOUSLY YOU WINNING SUNDAY AND DRIVING TO A THIRD‑PLACE FINISH TODAY, WHAT’S THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DAY RACE AND NIGHT RACE AT DARLINGTON? “For us the lap times were up a little bit. Obviously the cars were a little bit faster than the lap times from Sunday. For us the front tires just didn’t turn as well. The back just ‑‑ every time we’d try to adjust the back, it didn’t help the front turn. Carrying that extra speed made our car push the front tires a little bit worse. That’s really all I have to go off of.”
YOU’VE TALKED BEFORE TRYING DIFFERENT THINGS WITH THE SCHEDULE. DOES THIS SHOW YOU THAT WEDNESDAY NIGHT MIDWEEK RACES CAN WORK GOING FORWARD? “Well, we did it. Like I said before, we can make it work. From a team standpoint and from competitors, it’s great if we can shorten the schedule, do all those things. In the end, the telltale sign is going to be when those TV numbers come out. If they’re good, that’s what drives everything. That’s what everybody sells their sponsorship on, that’s what we all want to see, is great TV numbers. We’d love the fans at the racetrack, but in the end the biggest stick comes from how many people turn on the TV.”
YOUR 50TH WIN. BROKE A TIE WITH YOUR BOSS, TONY STEWART. HAVE YOU TALKED WITH HIM SINCE SUNDAY SINCE TODAY IS HIS BIRTHDAY? “I sent him a text and he’s never responded. I haven’t heard from him since his birthday, so I hope he’s okay (laughter).”
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU TO BREAK THE TIE WITH HIM? “You know what, as I went through Sunday night and into Monday morning, went through Tuesday and got to the racetrack today, just the amount of people that have called. 50 was great, obviously to get 50 wins. I’m not knocking that by any means. Being next to Junior Johnson and Ned Jarrett is quite an honor. I don’t want to degrade that at all. But the impact that Sunday had on the country, as I got text messages from speaker of the house Kevin McCarthy talking about how great it was for America, Joe Girardi talking about how great it was for sports, how it gave them hope for baseball. The PGA called today, talking about how the sports world was watching NASCAR to see what they needed to do to get their players back safely. The impact was way bigger than 50 wins. It was way bigger than breaking a tie with Tony Stewart. The impact of that race on Sunday meant so much in so many different directions. Totally on my part underestimated the impact that Sunday’s event had. Being the winner of that really, really drove it home for me, not only after the race with the fans not being in the stands, the lack of enthusiasm that you didn’t have to share all your enthusiasm with everybody. There were just so many moments that were just so much bigger than anything that had anything to do with my stats. I was just really proud of our sport at that particular point for putting on a safe event and doing the things we did.”
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TRACK SUNDAY NIGHT VERSUS TONIGHT? “Temperature is just a huge difference for our cars. Obviously with the rain all day, the low temperatures, it just affects the cars differently. It affected ours with the front tire not turning, the way the car traveled when it hit the ground off of turn two. We never could get the balance of the car like we had on Sunday with where the car was tonight. That was magnified, starting 20th, in traffic. Every time we’d restart on the bottom, we’d lose four or five spots. We were very slow gaining the track position to get a better handling car till the end of the race. It was a battle. Definitely different tonight than it was Sunday.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Pirtek Ford Mustang — HOW MUCH DID YOU WANT TO SEE THAT RACE FINISH UNDER GREEN AT THE END? “Yeah, a bunch. I thought we were in a really good spot. We had made kind of an aggressive, bold move to stay out on the long run there and it was looking like it was going to pay off. The yellow came out and we hit pit road and lost a few spots there, which was a bummer, but we cycled back to fourth right when the caution came out and were in position to have the optimum lane and be behind a car that had older tires. I was licking my chops, but the rain never gave us a chance. Just part of the way it goes. We weren’t hte fastest car today, but I thought we persisted and put ourselves in a spot to potentially steal a race win and just came up a tiny bit short, but that’s a part of it.”
FIRST MIDWEEK NASCAR RACE IN 30-SOME YEARS, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS? WERE YOU HAPPY WITH IT? SHOULD NASCAR KEEP THESE GOING FORWARD? “Loved it. Let’s do it every week.”
ARE YOU SERIOUS? EVERY WEEK? “Okay, every other week.”
DID YOU GET A LOOK AT THE KYLE BUSCH/CHASE ELLIOTT DEAL AND COULD YOU TELL IF IT WAS WHAT KYLE SAID THAT HE JUST MISJUDGED IT? DO YOU BELIEVE THAT? “I couldn’t see it at all. I had Harvick right in between us. Honestly, I didn’t see them wrecking until Chase was almost hitting the wall, so I didn’t have a look at it at all.”
WAS IT IMPORTANT AT ALL TO GET THIS RACE IN TODAY VERSUS TOMORROW WITH 600 MILES COMING ON SUNDAY? “I think definitely for the team guys. They are pushing hard to get cars ready. I heard from them this week that they came in at six or seven in the morning the day after the race with all the staggered times and the last thing they need, already fighting COVID, they don’t need to be fighting weather too. For the drivers, I think it is less of a story than it is for the crew guys. These poor guys are working their guts out and deserve a lot of credit for it and I am just glad they don’t have to go through it.”
DO YOU LIKE THESE ONE DAY SHOWS WITH NO PRACTICE? “It doesn’t hurt my feelings. I think some of your major events it probably makes sense, but I think this way is good. Of course we are a little biased because we are experienced. If we were rookies we would be calling BS. I think you should be rewarded for experience but I also think you should be rewarded for hard work. I am all for not having all these practices and all that. I can’t figure out why some tracks we used to go to we would practice at 9 am. That never made a lot of sense to me. I think this cuts costs down and puts emphasis on drivers that are experienced and professionals and I don’t think that is a bad thing overall. I feel a little bit differently about the lower tier series. Those guys definitely need some practice. For us, I think we are showing it can work.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang — TELL US ABOUT YOUR RACE. “Our race was hard fought, blue collar. A lot of it was where you placed yourself, so it was just like last week. Strategy calls that can play out the right way and being on the top lane for the restarts was what it was all about. There was only one long run in these two races. I feel like, overall, I’d say we maximized our day, but I also feel like if we had one more restart being sixth it’s a pretty sure bet you’re gonna get to fourth and with Denny out there on old tires he was gonna be a sitting duck for Brad for sure, and, most likely, a lot of cars would have got by him once he lost that clean air. So I wish we ran a little bit more, but, overall, we made improvements from the first race. I’m proud of that and we’re off to the 600.”
FIRST MIDWEEK NASCAR RACE IN 30-SOME YEARS, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS? WERE YOU HAPPY WITH IT? SHOULD NASCAR KEEP THESE GOING FORWARD? “I think it really shows and opens up what we can do. We just raced Sunday and now we are racing Wednesday and then we are going back to the track on Sunday again. It is pretty cool to see that we can do that and put on good races without any real big hiccups at all. I love it. More racing and less practice. I am all about that.”
DO YOU LIKE THESE ONE DAY SHOWS WITH NO PRACTICE? “Let’s race. We are racers, that is what we do. We are race car drivers, not practice car drivers.”
MATT DIBENEDETTO, No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Mustang — CAN YOU SUM UP YOUR RACE TONIGHT FOR US? “Yeah, we started off the night okay. I thought we made some improvements on the car and had a little track position and moved forward. We pitted under the first caution and thought we might have had an issue. We did not. So that stuck us back in the field. We wanted to check on a possible issue and got stuck in the back of the field. From then on, not having track position with this high downforce racing is a real pain in the butt. We struggled to get it the rest of the day. As the track rubbered up we fought the same issue we did on Sunday of losing rear grip in the car. We were fading at the end and then Greg Erwin just made a good bold call at the end seeing some weather coming and my spotter Doug Campbell as well was in on that. We got lucky and pulled a ninth place out of it. All of the tracks except for Darlington we have had really good speed at so I know we will take a little luck from this one and moving forward we should be fast at a lot of places and be better at Charlotte.”
FIRST MIDWEEK NASCAR RACE IN 30-SOME YEARS, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS? WERE YOU HAPPY WITH IT? SHOULD NASCAR KEEP THESE GOING FORWARD? “Yeah, I enjoy less practice and more racing for sure. It makes me feel like an old school dirt racer. I love the schedule and getting back at it.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Fifth Third Ford Mustang — “Unfortunately that wasn’t as much fun as we were hoping to have. We were better tonight with our Mustang but we were still fighting a little bit of handing and some mistakes on my part that I need to clean up and try to get back in a rhythm there. We are trying to work to be better but it is tough without practice right now. We are working hard on simulation and do what we can to dial in and get ready for Charlotte. We have a long race coming for us and it was a good race for us last year. I am glad we got the race in tonight, a little late, but better late than never.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield #GoodFoodChallenge Ford Mustang — “I thought we had a really good car tonight. We ran up in the top-five quite a bit and had a really fast car on the long runs. Everyone else’s car would slow down a lot and my car wouldn’t slow down nearly as much on the long run. We would start beating all the leaders really good on the long run. If we could have had that race go green to the end, I think it would have been interesting because we were beating the leaders pretty bad. I’m just really proud of all of the guys on our Smithfield team. We came back with some setup changes from what we ran Sunday, and I felt like we made some real improvements to the car and were very competitive. We cleaned up some things on pit road, so I’m really proud of those guys. We’ll just continue to build off of that. I feel like we’re in the game.”
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Rush Truck Centers/Mobil Delvac 1 Ford Mustang — “Very proud of the car the guys brought for me on a short turn around. Fast hot rod. The thing just took off behind two cars racing for the lucky dog and smoked the wall and blew our night. The 14 was fast, so if we keep doing that our day will come.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 Car Parts.com Ford Mustang — “It was a solid night for our No. 34 CarParts.com Ford Mustang. We definitely made improvements from our first race at Darlington, unfortunately the last restart didn’t go our way. The inside line was just really hard to get going and we lost a couple of spots, finishing 17th. We raced around a lot of competitive cars today and I felt really good. Everybody at Front Row Motorsports did a really good job this week, we just need a little bit more and we’ll be right where we want to be. All in all, it was a really good day.”
JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK, No. 38 Scag Power Equipment Ford Mustang — “For as good as our day was on Sunday, we swung to the opposite end of the spectrum tonight. It was a long night. You never want to be that guy who goes out early. Not sure if I cut a tire or just drove it too hard and got loose. I really hate it for my crew and our No. 38 Scag Power Equipment team. These guys have been working their tails off over the last two weeks, and it’s obviously very frustrating to have the kind of race we did tonight. It happens sometimes, but I’m still happy to be here. We’ll take it as a learning experience and move on to Charlotte. Thank you to everyone at Scag Power Equipment and all of our Front Row Motorsports partners for continuing to support us race after race.”
