Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
NASCAR Zoom Media Availability | Wednesday, April 21, 2021
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang — CAN YOU LOOK AHEAD TO KANSAS AND YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THAT PLACE? “I’ve always enjoyed Kansas. I know that I did have a really bad accident there, but in my mind I just view that as a bad accident. It just happened at a place. It just so happened to be at Kansas. It could have happened anywhere. I don’t really put that on Kansas and so every time I’ve been back since then it’s never really been a thought that’s crossed my mind. I actually enjoy going to Kansas. I have friends in Kansas City that I enjoy spending time with that makes it even more enjoyable to be there and on top of that I love the racetrack. The racetrack is a really fun racetrack to run at for me and I’ve had a lot of success there and had a lot of really good runs there.”
KEELAN HARVICK IS RACING KEVIN IN THE IRACING EVENT TONIGHT. WHO WILL FINISH HIGHER? “I’m gonna say Keelan is gonna outrun Kevin. From my experience, a husband and a father has way less time to goof off on iRacing than these kids do. You look at guys like William Byron, not married, no kids, he’s got lots of time to spend in that simulator and messing around on iRacing. It is not something that I have loads of time or experience with, just because I don’t have the time. I do not have the time to devote to be good at iRacing because I’m trying to be a good race car driver, but on top of that I’m trying to be a good husband and a good dad and a business guy and I’m trying to work out and stay fit, and life happens too. I end up way too busy to put in the hours that these other kids do, so I’m sure Keelan gets plenty of iRacing time.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN THINK OF THAT WILL BE DIFFERENT THIS WEEKEND AT TALLADEGA? “No, I expect Talladega to be the same old Talladega. It’s gonna be exciting. There’s gonna be a lot of close racing and pushing and shoving. There’s probably gonna be a big wreck and it’s just a matter of hoping you’re ahead of the big wreck or that you miss it, so that’s the same old Talladega. We’ve had really good speedway cars. We obviously won down at Daytona in the Duel, so our cars are fast. We know we can go there We know we’ll have the capability of winning, you’ve just got to have some luck on your side and have things go your way and hopefully you don’t end up crashed.”
DO YOU WORRY ABOUT STAGE POINTS AT TALLADEGA OR JUST FOCUS ON THE WIN? “I’ve thought a lot about it this week and I still don’t know. I think pointing our way in from here is a long shot for sure, especially just because we haven’t scored a lot of stage points anyway and our cars have been off, so a good day for us is similar to what we ran at Richmond. We flirt with the top 10, you score a few stage points and get a top 10 finish. That’s what we’ve been capable of lately, so I know the guys at the shop are working hard to get our cars back to where they need to be to go compete for wins every week, but that’s something I’ve thought a lot about. I don’t know that we’ll be able to point our way in. We’re gonna need to win, and Talladega is a great opportunity for us to do that, but we can’t do that if we’re on a wrecker, so I think it is important for us to be mindful of that, making sure that we get to the finish so that we have a shot to win the race, and I personally think that winning at Talladega is more important than scoring 20 stage points and two playoff points from winning both stages, but ending up in a big wreck. So, if I had to trade one for the other, I would definitely trade the win for any sort of stage points or bonus points.”
IS IT ANY MORE DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND HOW GOOD YOUR CAR IS CONSIDERING WHERE YOU END UP STARTING DUE TO WHERE YOUR POINT POSITION IS? “I’ll tell you, that has been one of the hardest things for us as a race team and all the struggles that we’ve had this year is that it is so hard to bounce back the next week. In year’s past, when we could go and practice and qualify and do all those things, if you had a bad weekend, as soon as that weekend was over you’d debrief about it Monday, Tuesday and then your focus is the next week and you’re going forward, and you literally forget about last week, and you can go and if you unload and your car is fast and you qualify up in the top five, then you’ve got a great starting spot for that next week’s race, you’ve got a good pit selection and you can kind of rebound before the race even starts. Where now, if you have a bad weekend, it carries over to the next week. If you have a bad weekend and you’re in the situation that we’re at in points, you’re starting 27th, 28th and you’re picking 27th, 28th on pit road, which is not a good situation. You end up around good cars on pit road, which makes it more difficult for your pit crew. It just compounds and I know that’s the environment and the situation that we’re in and it’s the same for everybody, but last year being on the opposite end of that and being up in the points and finishing good most of the time, and even when we didn’t finish good because we were so high up in points, we would still start in the top 15. It certainly makes a lot of difference. Things are a lot easier going into that next weekend and the situation that we’re in now it just is so hard to claw out of it because even we had a great run at Richmond. We finished sixth, but because we’re so far down in points I think we’re starting 14th or 16th at Talladega because of our points position, so it’s really challenging to dig out of the hole that we’re in the way that the starting lineup and pit selection is calculated.”
ARE YOU FEELING LIKE THINGS ARE TURNING AROUND? “I do. We’ve needed just a weekend like that. We’ve needed a race to kind of go without any major issues and have a good car, have a good day on pit road with no mistakes, me not make any mistakes, good restarts, all those things and get out of there with a finish like we felt we were capable of and that’s exactly what we had at Richmond. I felt like we could have run similar at Martinsville. I felt like we could have run fifth to eighth at Martinsville and that bad luck that’s been plaguing us most of this year was still there at Martinsville. We kept getting contact with other cars on restarts and left-rear tire rubs and cutting a left-rear tire down, pitting under green, just all of these different things that keep happening, so Richmond was finally the first weekend that went smooth and we finished sixth, so it just goes to show me and our race team that if we can just have a smooth, solid weekend we’re capable of running top 10 right now.”
HOW MUCH ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK TO SPEEDWAY RACING AFTER THREE STRAIGHT SHORT TRACKS? “I enjoy short track racing, so I would short track race every single week. I think it’s so much fun, so I’m not opposed to continuing the streak of short track racing, but Talladega is certainly an opportunity for us, not just because it’s a restrictor plate race, and everybody always says that restrictor plate racing is an opportunity for them, but I really feel that way for us just because of all the success that we have had on restrictor plate tracks. I’ve won at Talladega in the Cup Series, the XFINITY Series and always seem to find myself up front with a shot to win most races there, so I really view Talladega as a place that is a potential possibility to go and get a win.”
WHAT ARE YOU HOPING FOR AT KANSAS WITH A MONTH BETWEEN 1.5-MILE TRACK RACES? “We just have to be more racy. We’ve got to be more competitive. I’ve got to be more on offense and less on defense. I feel like our mile-and-a-half program has been off and because of that every restart you’re just playing major defense. It’s hard to play offense because the car’s not driving good, don’t have a lot of speed in the car and it’s a handful and not as fast as the cars around you, so you’re just playing a lot of defense and when we’ve been at our best that’s not the case. You fire off on every restart and you’re on offense. You’re picking and choosing lanes and putting your car in places where you need it to go to make passes, not to try and block a run or try and play defense. So, that’s one of the things that I hope to see when we get to Kansas is that we’ve made improvements with our cars, that we’ve got speed in it, but not only speed but driveability and that we’ve got grip in the car to where we can take off and move around the racetrack and hold the throttle down. On these 550 packages on the mile-and-a-half it is so important to hold the throttle down. Anytime you spend off-throttle it is detrimental, especially to the competition.”
HOW DO YOU LOOK AT RUNNING UP FRONT THESE DAYS AT RESTRICTOR TRACKS BECAUSE WE SEE MORE AND MORE WRECKS HAPPENING THERE? “It really stems from the rules package. The rules package changed after Newman’s wreck and slowed the cars down, bigger rear spoilers, less horsepower. Anytime you do that, the cars are gonna be closer together, the draft is gonna be even more of an equalizer. It’s gonna keep the cars a lot more bunched up and packed up, especially with that rear spoiler that we have now with the wicker on it creates a really big hole, so the runs from behind come a lot faster, which makes it harder to block, but also makes the guy behind you that’s coming with a run, makes him get to your bumper a lot faster and a lot more aggressive that what we’ve had in the past. When somebody hits you once, you can usually hang on to it. When somebody hits you twice or hits you off-center in the bumper cover it just takes that lead car and turns him, and usually speedway racing it turns them to the right into that outside wall. We’ve seen that a lot. It’s happened to me at Talladega last year leading the race. It happened to me at Daytona running second. It’s happened to a lot of the other cars, just the guy behind when he gets to the bumper if he’s not perfectly lined up, it will shoot that car that he runs into to the right and especially the harder he hits him. The rules package plays a big factor into that and makes it to where nowhere is really a safe zone anymore. It used to be that leading and controlling the race was the ideal spot, but now the leader is equally vulnerable.”
YOU CAN’T LOCK BUMPERS IN THE XFINITY SERIES. WOULD IT MAKE SENSE FOR NASCAR TO CONSIDER DOING THAT IN CUP? “I don’t think they want one more thing to police and, to be honest, I think them and the networks, I think they enjoy some of the big wrecks. It’s become part of the promotion of these races, that when you see the highlights from Daytona or Talladega that’s usually the highlights for them. The fans enjoy seeing it and it’s become a part of superspeedway racing and people have grown to expect it, so I don’t see them creating anymore rules that’s gonna prevent us from wrecking.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE SEASON SO FAR AND HOW CAN YOU IMPROVE? “I don’t know about you, but I’ve never started a project or anything else that I’ve expected it to go miserably wrong, and that’s exactly what has happened with our season. No, I did not expect our season to start the way that it has. I don’t think anybody on our team or any of our partners or anybody, even most of the reporters that report on our series, would have expected us to go through the beginning part of the season that we’ve gone through, so that was definitely something that’s caught us all off guard. It’s been a really rough stretch, but I’m proud of the way that we’ve continued to fight and we’ve continued to dig deep and really try and persevere, and Richmond was a nice way for us to bounce back and hopefully we can put all those bad races behind us and we can move forward and keep the momentum going now.”
