NASCAR XFINITY SERIES
SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 2020
UNOH 188 – DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
FORD PERFORMANCE DRIVER – POST RACE QUOTES
FORD FINISHING RESULTS:
1st — Austin Cindric
29th — Chase Briscoe
CINDRIC AND FORD CONTINUE TO ROLL WITH DAYTONA ROAD COURSE VICTORY
Austin Cindric registered his fifth win of the season and fifth in the last six events overall with today’s win at Daytona International Speedway.
Since returning to action on May 17 at Darlington Raceway, Ford has dominated in the NASCAR Cup and NASCAR XFINITY Series, winning a combined 20 times in 33 starts. Ford has registered 11 wins in Cup in 18 races, which includes a current three-race winning streak, while the NXS duo of Chase Briscoe and Austin Cindric have combined to win nine times in 15 events, including seven of the last eight.
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 22 MoneyLion Ford Mustang — VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW — HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE DAY? “I’m not sure anyone was really happy with their race car. Unfortunately, I have a tough perspective of driving really fast high-grip race cars at this track, but great credit to my team — the MoneyLion guys — and everyone that puts this together — Ford Performance, Roush Yates Engines, obviously everyone at Team Penske for workig hard. That’s five wins on the year and back-to-back now. I’m really proud of that. I didn’t feel like I drove my best today, but we executed there at the end where it counts and that’s what makes these races so difficult to win.”
FIFTEEN YEARS BEFORE YOU WERE BORN SAM ARD WON 5 OUT OF 6 XFINITY RACES AND NOW YOU’VE DONE THAT. “Yeah, it’s incredible and takes great race cars and executing races. I’m proud to be driving this 22 car and contending for wins week to week. There’s still a lot of work to do, but this is great for the points for sure.”
HOW WOULD YOU CHARACTERIZE THE DAY AND WHAT YOU HAD TO DEAL WITH? “I think we dug ourselves two holes there. Staying out got us a good stage point there. That’s important and then I probably grabbed a shovel and dug us a little bit bigger of a hole there on the restart in trying to win that second stage. That put us behind a little bit and maybe I wasn’t able to be as ahead of my adjustments, but, overall, I’m super-excited for five wins on the year so far and adding to the points. To get MoneyLion in VIctory Lane again at Daytona of all places, I wish there were fans here to see this race because it was a thriller.”
THE END OF STAGE TWO WAS PHYSICAL BETWEEN YOU AND CHASE. “Yeah, I think there was give-and-take available on both ends. I probably could have been a bit more patient judging that second stage and I think he could have been a little less aggressive on his defense, but, overall, it’s two brothers fighting and then they go yell at mom saying it was his fault. It’s easy for me to say because I was the winner of the race, but he drove a great race and obviously wasn’t able to survive that turn one carnage.”
TAKE US THROUGH GOING INTO TURN ONE ON THAT ONE RESTART? “A lot of the restarts I kind of learned by my own mistakes as far as trying to drive it in deep three-wide. There was less and less grip it seemed like there as the race went on, or maybe patience went out the window. I saw guys lock up tires and I was fortunate enough to be on the inside and not get collected and was able to get a good restart and come away with it.”
THE PASS FOR THE WIN WASN’T EASY. “I probably scared him. I got a whole ton of wheel-hop in turn six. I thought I was gonna clean us both out, but he did a great job driving smart there. It was fun. He was driving hard and came up with a good finish, so good job to those guys. Hopefully, we can have more fun in Dover.”
POST-RACE WINNER’S PRESS CONFERENCE
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 22 MoneyLion Ford Mustang — “It was a lot of survival there at the end. That’s what makes these races as difficult as they are is to make it to the finish. We were a contender all day and tried to get our race car a little bit better. We had to fight through in that second stage to try and regain some track position, but it was just a solid day up until that point. Obviously, being on the bottom of that restart I felt like I had made enough mistakes trying to come through the field, diving three-wide to the outside knowing that there was pretty big grip limitation trying to do that, so I saw it coming, but I was surprised that I did it too, to be 100 percent honest. That was kind of the catalyst for us today and put us in a great spot to be able to execute on the restart and come up with the win.”
WHAT ARE YOUR EMOTIONS WINNING ON THE ROAD COURSE TODAY? “I probably need to give myself a day or so to calm down. I’m not 100 percent proud of my race, so it makes me apprehensive about being super-excited. I’m pretty hard on myself and usually don’t need too many people to tell me what I’ve done wrong because I’ve probably already thought about it or at least beat myself up over it. There were plenty of things I could have cleaned up today, but if I took a step back and rewind a couple a couple months ago, I worked really hard as I do every year to try to get a ride for the Daytona 24 and it was the first time in three years I hadn’t gotten a ride for the Daytona 24. I ended up staying and spotting the race, which was a great motivator to get a ride the next year, so that was kind of a low point for me early in the year not to get that to go together. It doesn’t play your way. It’s hard to do in a series where you don’t run full-time, but that was a bummer for me. So, to be able to come to this track and be able to do that is a big check in the box for me — something that would make this year really special and my time at Daytona really special is if we were to come back here in a couple week’s time to be able to win on the superspeedway. That would be special because that would mean I would have won on the road course, the superspeedway and in a rallycross car here when they ran rallycross. I think that would be really cool for me as far as driving different things at Daytona and kind of add to my versatility, if you will. I think that’s probably what makes today special.”
HOW DO YOU LOOK BACK AT THROWING THE WATER BOTTLE AT BRISCOE BETWEEN THE TWO STAGES? “That’s a double-downer because I didn’t even make it in the window. I didn’t even execute on that. It’s tough. I got pretty heated there and I probably should have reeled myself in. That’s probably the biggest thing I’m not very happy about with myself today. I let that get to me and obviously it showed. I’m very passionate about what I do. I’m very passionate about driving and it’s been a while since I’ve had a heart on my sleeve moment like that. It’s probably a good lesson for me halfway through the year to know that I’ve still got some work to do up here and that’s where it counts, so I’ll reel that in and use it as a learning experience and hopefully the two of us can learn a little better from that end of stage two.”
IS WINNING GETTING OLD SO OFTEN LIKE THIS? “Those guys work extremely hard. I was way more excited after Kentucky than I was after today, but I feel like it’s very, very difficult in all three series to win these races. For me right now, I’m already thinking about Dover. I’m thinking about things I could have done better today. That’s what makes racing in NASCAR so exciting and so challenging is you have to prepare immediately for the next week — or at least to be the best you have to. That’s what I’m focused on. Like I said, I’m not extremely impressed with everything that I did today, but I don’t think that should take away from — we got the fastest lap of the race. We should be able to start on pole at Dover, somewhere I really love going to race, so I’m really motivated to make that a great weekend as well. Having some stats this year to be compared to Richard Petty and compared to Sam Ard, that’s pretty cool and it’s pretty cool for the guys that get to work on my cars. I wouldn’t be here without them and it makes me very motivated whenever I show up to the track that I know those guys have done their best and they know that I’m doing my best.”
ARE THERE ANY PLANS TO TALK TO YOUR CUP TEAMMATES AND GIVE THEM ADVICE ON HOW TO NAVIGATE THIS ROAD COURSE? “Yeah, I think there’s a lot to be learned as far as with the setup of the cars, learn from the things we did right today, learn from things we didn’t do right today. Hopefully, that’s able to transfer over and help those guys. I’ve been a pretty open book to whatever I can do to help that group, whether if it’s this weekend or any other weekend. I talked to Joey for a good bit last week about things that I feel about this racetrack and I feel like you see a lot of those guys doing their homework for this weekend because it is a big challenge for teams and drivers and crews alike.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WOULD TELL THEM ABOUT THE TRACK AFTER EXPERIENCING IT TODAY? “I was surprised, honestly, I’ve got bad perspective because I’ve driven some really incredible race cars here as far as prototype machinery and top tier GT cars. This thing drove terrible in comparison between being able to navigate the infield. It was a lot of fun to go through the bus stop. I was fully expecting the bus stop to be the most fun portion of the racetrack for me because, talking to Noah he said his watch was on recording the race for almost three or four hours. That’s the longest stint that I’ve ever done at the Daytona 24, so your stint length is probably about the same length as what I’ve done here, but you don’t have to worry about saving brakes, saving fuel, saving your splitter, saving your equipment. You can go all-out in the bus stop and that’s somewhere where you have to be pretty conservative in the 24 hours, so that was really fun for me to do today and kind of feel the limits of that and drive these big, heavy cars and try to make them work.”
DO YOU LIKE RACING ON A COURSE LIKE THIS THAT NOT MANY GUYS HAVE EXPERIENCED BEFORE? “I definitely think it’s a challenge. There’s a little bit that you feel like you want to develop things a little better because you can get in the scenario where you can have a simple issue that completely ruins your day. That’s what makes starting these races with no practice or qualifying or really any hot laps very challenging, so it’s a big burden on the teams and, fingers crossed, my guys have done an incredible job at doing that. Most of the field really has across all three series, but it’s a fun challenge. I’ve never been a stranger to doing that. I look back, I’ve obviously run a lot of laps here, so I could say that I kind of knew what I was getting into maybe a little bit more than some of the regulars, but when I raced rallycross back in 2015, I was the points leader heading into the Detroit race and I had just come from Limerock, where I was racing Mustangs. I missed practice. I missed qualifying and they had a problem with the jump in qualifying. They had a big wooden ramp. It was all screwed up and they had to cancel qualifying, so they started on owner’s points and I was on the pole. I showed up right before my heat race and there were no sighting laps or whatever, so it’s literally just a standing start and you go. That was probably one of the most intense moments of my life, getting a standing start and just figuring the track out when you can, so I’ll always remember that about that race and it can always be more difficult. At least you get some pace laps to figure it out, but it’s a fun challenge and I think it shows the talent of the drivers in NASCAR.”
WHAT’S GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND WHEN YOU HEAR THAT BRISCOE IS DONE AND ALLMENDINGER IS DAMAGED? IS IT EASIER TO SEE THE FINISH LINE AT THAT POINT? “That was probably the first thought that crossed my mind was, ‘Man, those guys are out. This should be smooth sailing,’ but nothing is guaranteed. These races are so hard to win. You saw Brandon Jones be able to put in a great drive the last couple laps to finish second there, so you have to push 100 percent. You’ve got to remind yourself of that constantly to never underestimate your competition. You can get yourself in a real hole if you don’t respect the guys that you’re racing and I have a great deal of respect for the guys that I’ve been racing because a lot of them I’ve been racing a lot of my career and I know what they’re capable of and it’s fun to be in a series that way. I wish between the 98, the 16 and myself we would have been able to race that one out for the win because I want to beat the best. I want to beat the best because if you can beat the best, you are the best. Obviously, those guys were the best today and I felt like them getting involved in that wreck impeded probably a greater finish than what we had.”
DO YOU EVER REGRET GIVING CHASE BRISCOE SO MUCH ADVICE ON ROAD COURSES? “It’s tough because I feel like my approach as a teammate or a friend or whatever it may be — a co-driver — is that I have to have the confidence in myself that if you know everything that I know, I can still go do a better job of it. Now with saying that, I’m not gonna tell him what springs I’m running and what setup we’ve got in and so on, but you’ve got to have that confidence and I took that approach at a very early age and I think in some ways it’s paid a lot of benefits because it makes me push myself with very talented people that I’m racing against. He’s come a long way in this stuff from the first time we ran together, I believe it was 2018. He was seconds off the pace and when we came here earlier this year with the GT4 cars, he was all over the same pace that I had, so I talked to his crew chief from ARCA earlier this week and we were laughing about that because I really feel like the progression that I’ve made running the high line, running up against the wall, is equal to the same progression that he’s made in road racing and it’s been fun to push ourselves in that regard. I think that’s what we’re constantly doing. I feel like we can’t ger ourselves in the trap of ruining it for both of us, pushing ourselves that hard because there was some emotion today just for a stage win. So, I feel like that needs to be reeled in on my end and his end. I don’t think there are any innocent parties there. I said in my MRN interview it’s like getting in an argument with your brother where he got to the Playstation first or whatever and you go yell at mom and ask her to pick a side, but, at the end of the day, we both lose if we’re not moving forward. We’ve had the tie with Ford Performance for a while and I’ve really tried to use that as a friendship. We went to lunch today before the race and just watching IndyCar qualifying and he and I have a good relationship, but today was probably a bump in that road.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS THE MENTAL ASPECT OF ALL THIS? “It’s everything. Racing is mental. It’s very mechanical, but it’s very mental. I don’t think it really hurt my race, but I showed vulnerability and as a race car driver you can’t show that. You can’t show your weaknesses. You’ve got to execute on your strengths and go back to the shop on your weaknesses. Today, I did something I probably hadn’t done in a while which is raise my voice on the radio, so there’s some sort of pride that it’s been a while since that’s happened, but you get heated and you get excited and you want it really, really bad, and I think that played into it today and I’ll be pretty open and honest about it because I’m a pretty open and honest guy. So everything I’ve done in NASCAR has been on the surface and that’s no exception. I think it’s a good reminder for me at this middle stage of the year that you’ve got to keep locked down.”
WHAT WAS IT ABOUT TODAY THAT MADE YOU UPSET? YOU MENTIONED BLOCKING IN A BRAKING ZONE. “So blocking and blocking under brakes are two different things and I’m pretty passionate about blocking. That’s why there are blocking rules in other series is because it’s very dangerous. I haven’t seen a replay and I probably may have been a bit preemptive on my complaints because it’s something that he did a lot at Indy in the long brake zones and I really didn’t like it a lot because what you’re doing there is you’re asking the car behind you to not hit you. You’re putting yourself in harm’s way and it creates contact. That was what I felt was the instance there, but, like I said, I never saw a replay and I probably could have been a bit more passive about it, but, yeah, blocking under brakes and blocking on the straight are two different things because that’s after you’ve committed to a brake zone, that’s after you’ve committed to a line and you’ve committed to the corner. If you’re usually blocking someone under brakes it means they’re going faster than you and you’re putting yourself in harm’s way doing so. Hopefully, we can learn from it, but I don’t think that’s the best way to approach at least halfway through the race, but it’s aggressive, it’s hard racing and those playoff points mean a lot, so I’m not gonna fault him for driving aggressive, but, like I said, I think we could have given ourselves a couple favors and avoided some of the contact.”
BRIAN WILSON, Crew Chief — No. 22 MoneyLion Ford Mustang — “That was an eventful day. Obviously, staying out there to try to win the first stage, that was not what I wanted to see, but we we’ve definitely been focused on trying to get as many playoff points as we can get, so I’m glad that worked out. Things got mixed up a little in the second stage. I don’t feel like once Briscoe got up front, I don’t feel like we had the best car. He was pretty strong today. Obviously, it was a good battle, but he was able to pull away from us, so we’ve still got some work to do, but I do think it’s a good statement from our team that we can win even on days when we don’t have the best car. I do feel like we probably had the second-best — the two of us were able to pull away over a longer run — so we’re not far off, but I feel like as a group we’ve got some work to do to make the car better for here.”
YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE 74 AND 47 STAYING OUT ON THAT ONE RESTART? “I’m all for it. I’ve been on plenty of teams where we’ve called different strategies. We obviously did it at the end of stage 1 to try to get the playoff point. Everyone’s got to weigh out what their situations are and what they’re willing to do. Obviously, those guys thought it was a good move to stay up there. In that situation, all you can do as a team is try to react to it and make your situation as good as you can. You’ve got to think that’s gonna happen at some point in the race, where you’re gonna be on a different strategy. I think that’s part of what stage racing does and the number of tires we have in this series. That adds to a lot of the strategy and I like the fact that we have those options, so I can’t really get mad when somebody else takes a different option.”
HOW DO YOU LOOK AT THE DOVER DOUBLEHEADER NEXT WEEKEND? “I’m excited about it. If my math is right, I think we should have the number one stall and should start up front. We’ve been using these doubleheaders as a way to try and learn something when we don’t have practice, so we’ll try to build off of our setup from last year for the first race, and then we’ll have a package ready to go for the second race to try to learn something to make our team better.”
HOW DO YOU WORK WITH A YOUNG DRIVER IN TRYING TO MAINTAIN THEIR EMOTIONS? “I don’t ever think that emotion is a bad thing. We’re all heavily invested in this. It’s an emotional sport and we all want to win. Right now, we’re going head-to-head with our Ford teammate week in and week out and I think that’s gonna continue through the year. Austin and Chase have raced really hard for a lot of years. Austin has called him like a brother and they raced like brothers, so it’s okay to get mad and upset like that. Austin reigned it in really quick. I think he did a good job of that. If there’s anything that as a team we need to work on we’ll talk about that behind closed doors, but I liked the fact he was able to bring it back in really quick and execute at the end of the race.”
WHAT DOES THIS TEAM NEED TO DO TO MAINTAIN ITS MOMENTUM? “It’s tough. That’s what you worry about when you go on a streak like this where we’ve been winning so much. Are the other guys gonna catch up? What do we have to do to keep the hammer down and try to keep the momentum for the playoffs. The playoff points help a lot. We’re at a point now where I feel like if we’re able to close out this regular season, we should have plenty of points to carry us through. It’s almost gonna be a race worth of points that we have going into the playoffs, so that’s gonna be huge. The biggest thing is, like I said about the Dover weekend, we’ve got to try to keep learning as much as we can with limited practice, so using those weekends to move the program forward is big for us right now.”
