Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Nashville Superspeedway Post-Practice Media Availability | Saturday, June 19, 2021
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Grave Digger Ford Mustang — HOW IS THE TRACK? “Honestly, it’s not anything like it was last time I was here because of all that crap they put on the racetrack. You’ve got to run up at the top where it’s all sticky, but I think our Monster Jam Grave Digger Ford Mustang was fairly good in race runs. We didn’t do any qualifying stuff, just tried to work on our race stuff and felt OK about it.”
RESIN VS. PJ1? “I don’t even know. It’s so confusing at this point I don’t even know. It doesn’t feel like there’s that much grip. You can’t run the bottom of the racetrack because there’s no grip down there and then you’ve got to run around the very top where the grip is left, so I don’t know. It hasn’t been very good anywhere that we’ve put it down lately.”
DID YOU PICK UP SOME THINGS FOR THE RACE TOMORROW? “I think so. I think, for me, it was really just about rhythm and where I needed to run on the racetrack and picking up visual markers and things like that. Now, we’ll go back and kind of start fine-tuning the car. Everything right there was just big ticket items, making sure the travels and picking up the markers and doing all the little things like getting on pit road and running up and down pit road. Now we’ve got to go and look through everything and try to fine-tune our race stuff.”
DO YOU HAVE A FEELING ABOUT THE TRACKS COMING UP WHERE YOU MIGHT HAVE A GOOD SHOT TO WIN? “I think we’re having different conversations.”
AS FAR AS GETTING THE POINT OF WINNING WEEKLY? “We’re not to that point.”
ARE YOU CONFIDENT YOU WANT TO STAY WITH THIS ORGANIZATION NEXT YEAR? “Why would I not. I’ve spent eight years here and have two more years on my contract, so that will be where I drive for the rest of my career.”
DO YOU FEEL YOU’RE ANYWHERE CLOSE TO TURNING THINGS AROUND? “We haven’t run as well as we’d like, but our team has done a great job and put us in position to have a chance of winning a couple races. We just keep grinding away. You just never know week to week when you’re gonna be in position and when you’re not gonna be in position.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Duracell Ford Mustang — “It’s tough. It’s very inviting to drive into the corner pretty deep and you get down in the middle and you’re like, ‘Oh, wow. You can’t do that.’ So you’ve got to be very disciplined getting into the corner and that was kind of neat to find out today. I thought we made really good gains, so I was pretty happy with our car at the end of the day, but it’s a very neat place. It’s nice we were able to widen it out a good bit and it might just keep getting wider as the weekend goes on, so that would be nice.”
HOW DOES THIS COMPARE TO OTHER INTERMEDIATE TRACKS? “It’s hard to compare. Obviously, the surface reminds you the most of Dover, being concrete, and it’s not as banked so there’s not as much to hold you. I was surprised how little grip it had, honestly. I was pretty surprised by that, but it’s hard to compare. It’s a pretty unique place, but I think it’ll be a fun race to put on, especially as we keep moving the groove up and up. I think the XFINITY guys will do that. It’s taking rubber really well, so I’m very happy about that and it’s not gonna be just running the bottom.
HOW DO YOU BEAT HENDRICK? “Wreck ‘em, I guess (laughing). They’re on top of their game right now, obviously. I thought we got closer at Texas in the All-Star Race. I thought our three cars could run with them at the end, so we’ll see how our 750 package is, but they’re on top of it and we’re working hard to catch up. I think we’re making gains, but it’s just about you want to make big gains every week but it’s all about little things and hopefully we’ll have a pretty good idea after tomorrow where we stack up and if we kind of kept closing the gap.”
NO MORE PLAYOFF TRACKS LEFT IN THE REGULAR SEASON, SO HOW DO YOU BUILD TOWARD THE PLAYOFFS? “The biggest thing is you’ve got to have good notes from those tracks we’ve run at before earlier this year, but, honestly, even though we don’t run on anymore playoff tracks before we get there for the playoffs, you can still kind of judge how your cars are on mile-and-a-halves, on short tracks. That all can kind of formulate into one, so you can get a run on those places, but you can get an idea like, ‘Our 500 package is pretty competitive right now, or our 750 package, road course stuff.’ So, that’s kind of how I compare it, but it’s just a combination of good notes at the places you’ve been to already and still learning as you close in on the playoffs.”
WHAT WILL YOU WATCH FOR IN THE NXS RACE? “Seeing how they move around, where they’re gonna go. The truck race was good to watch, but the XFINITY cars are more like our cars this weekend with the low downforce, and then we have more power, but they still race like our cars with not a lot of downforce and grip, so just kind of seeing where they’re gonna be running. I’m sure they’ve watched our practice and pretty much everyone by the end was running up at the top of that black rubber, so that was pretty curious to see. The biggest thing I’m curious about too is if that kind of wears out. You see at Dover sometimes you can run up the racetrack a good bit and get speed for a little bit, but it kind of wears up and it heats your stuff up a lot and you go back to the bottom and it has that look, like where the left sides run at Dover there’s no rubber laid down. It kind of has the same look here, so I’ll be curious if that top kind of wears out and you move back down and just kind of seeing how cars react to that.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT POCONO NEXT WEEK? “It’s always special to me. I enjoy going back there every year. It will always hold a special place in my heart. It’s nice to have a double-header. I think that’s a cool deal they’ve done there at Pocono the last couple years with the double-header, but it’s always special to go back to the first place you won your Cup race at and I think I’ve got some family going too, so that will be even better. I’m looking forward to a couple nice days at Pocono. Hopefully we can win another one there, it would be pretty neat.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang — “It’s an interesting feel for sure to head back around it and start working on our race car, so it was a fun practice. We made some gains. We’ve got some work to do as well and we’ll figure it out as we go.”
DOES BEING WIDER MAKE IT EASIER TO PASS? “Absolutely. Yeah, it should. It’s surprising that the resin doesn’t have grip. It’s the opposite. It’s actually slicker, so you see guys going to the way top side of it or try to creep around the very very bottom around it. It might be a little bit different than what we all expected and understand about that stuff, but I think we’re all still probably learning about it. The way I look at it is the track is wider, so it’s doing its job, but maybe not in the way we thought it would.”
WILL YOU BE INTERESTED TO SEE HOW WELL THE RESIN WORKS AND WHETHER TO USE IT AT DIFFERENT PLACES? “Everyone is gonna have an opinion about it, right? It’s just like PJ1. When you put it on the racetrack everyone has an opinion on whether it’s better or worse for the racing. Everyone will have an opinion again tomorrow. We’ll have plenty to talk about all week long when it comes to coming back to Nashville, which is great. I sat up in a suite last night to watch the truck race and the first thing I said was, ‘I can’t believe this place is this pretty and been sitting here for 10 years.’ It’s beautiful, so I think that part is great and we’ll be the judge of how the racing is. Every race is gonna be different this weekend. The trucks were a lot different than the Cup cars and the XFINITY cars are similar, so we’ll learn a lot here from this race in a few minutes.”
IS IT FUN COMING BACK TO A PLACE LIKE THIS? “It’s been fun this whole year because we’re going to new racetracks and you kind of challenge yourself, your skill set and how quick you can figure things out in these 50-minute practices. It’s not much to tune your car in, so you’ve got to have a gameplan no matter what your car is doing and try to sling some stuff at it real quick. It’s fun to get back out there and start practicing and, like I said, seeing what you’ve got and all that. It’s a lot different than what I remember and it’s a lot slower than what I remember. Maybe when I was 18 everything felt really fast as I was doing everything, I don’t know. I think I missed a gear a little bit. They’re not turning much RPM.”
YOU HAVE THE RECORD FOR BEING THE YOUNGEST WINNER IN THE XFINITY SERIES. HOW IMPORTANT IS THAT RECORD TO YOU? “It’s special to be able to hold it, but you want to see progression in this sport, so in ways you hope it gets beat. In ways it’s nice to hold it. It’s kind of nice, but records are meant to be broken and not many records hold forever because everyone is evolving and getting better, so I expect that record to get beat some day. It’s been 13-14 years. It’s been a long time. It would be cool to see it. It would be a huge accomplishment for someone. It happened so quickly for me, jumping into both series really quick, so it can happen like that. In these races you never know what’s gonna happen, so it happens quick, especially now in the XFINITY Series even more so because it’s kind of like the non-companion races were years ago. Non-companions didn’t have Carl Edwards and Harvick and Burton and all the guys, so every race is a little bit different now considering all you have is Kyle out there today.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Dent Wizard Ford Mustang — WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE TRACK? “I’m really impressed. The track is in amazing condition for having sat 10 years. I feel like it’s in better condition than when I was last here. I don’t know how that’s possible. It’s like it has reversed age. They’ve got the Fountain of Youth in here somewhere, but the concrete is really good. The last time I was here was really bumpy and it doesn’t seem to be nearly as bumpy as it used to be. The asphalt on the track where you blend down looks like it’s brand new, so somebody has been doing a lot of work around here and they’ve done an excellent job. It’s far surpassed my expectations coming here to Nashville.”
YOU’RE NOT AS FAST AS YOU WERE THE LAST TIME YOU WERE HERE. “No. Well, the last time I was here I blew up, so I’m faster than that. I was in the garage here the last time.”
BEFORE YOU WERE IN THE GARAGE YOU WERE IN THE TOP 20 IN SPEED. “In the XFINITY car I was running second, I think, but we haven’t been very fast. I’m glad we had a practice because we didn’t start anywhere near where we need to be to have a shot at this thing on Sunday. We’re gonna take some big swings at it.”
PENSKE HAS BEEN STRONGER ON 750 RACES AS OPPOSED TO 550. DOES THAT GIVE YOU SOME CONFIDENCE? “It did and then we unloaded and got on track. We just haven’t been strong so far. Most of the 750 tracks are short tracks. This is one of the few, maybe here and Darlington that’s a 750 track that’s not a short track and I didn’t think we were particularly strong at Darlington with any of our cars, so we’ve got some work to don on the aero side for sure.”
