Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series — Drydene 400
Dover International Speedway | Sunday, May 16, 2021
Ford Finishing Results
5th – Joey Logano
6th – Kevin Harvick
10th – Cole Custer
12th – Ryan Blaney
16th – Brad Keselowski
17th – Chris Buescher
23rd – Ryan Newman
24th – Matt DiBenedetto
25th – Michael McDowell
28th – Anthony Alfredo
34th – Josh Bilicki
35th – Chase Briscoe
36th – BJ McLeod
37th – Aric Almirola
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang
HOW MUCH DID YOU WORK ON THE CAR AND WHAT’S IT LIKE AT THE END WHEN YOU GET THE CAR THE WAY YOU WANT IT? “A little bit too late. We had some debris go through the grille early in the race, so we were pretty good beforehand and then knocked a big hole in the nose and that’s why the turn went away, so it took a while to repair that and get everything to where it needed to be and we didn’t really get that until the last run and it’s a rocketship. The Shell/Pennzoil Mustang was really fast. I was able to drive from I think it was 16th to fifth in that last run there and had the 24 in the old sights, but didn’t get there in time. Overall, very proud of the team and their recovery today. We definitely got dealt some adversity and we made the most of it. I wish it was a win. I wish we maybe could have raced those guys, but, overall, we’ll take that considering the way it was going.”
HOW DID YOU OVERCOME ADVERSITY TODAY? “We’ll take a top five after everything that happened there. They did a good job fixing it. I don’t know, I hit something at some point that went through the grille and just lost a ton of downforce trying to fix that, and then we got it fixed there the last run and the Shell/Pennzoil Mustang was a rocketship and started rolling up through the field pretty nice and just ran out of time. I had the 24 in front of me and thought I could maybe get him. I’d like to have another restart and see what can happen. The boys on pit road are so good, maybe grab a couple there and a good restart and maybe the day looks a little bit different, but all things considered Jonathan Hassler did a great job up on the box recovering from a hard day. Think about the days you don’t have your crew chief and then there’s adversity. It just makes it even harder, but everyone did a great job sticking together. It shows that we have a really strong team here.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield/Weis Markets Ford Mustang (Involved in Accident on Lap 302)
“I’m OK. That was another hard hit. My body is hurting. It doesn’t want to take any more hard hits like that. It’s just such a trying year. I don’t know what exactly happened. I think something in the suspension broke. It wasn’t like a right-front went down. It wasn’t like all of a sudden. A couple laps before that I felt like I was laying on the splitter pretty hard, which is unusual that far into a run, and I kind of mentioned it on the radio and then went down into turn three, the worst possible place — well, there’s no good place at Dover to have a suspension failure or a tire go down — but our guys deserve so much better. Our partners, Smithfield, Ford, everybody, Go Bowling, Pit Boss Grills, everybody that helps us deserves so much better. We’re so much more capable, but God is really testing us this year.”
