Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series — Jockey Made in America 250
Road America | Sunday, July 4, 2021
POST PRACTICE MEDIA AVAILABILITY
The top-10 drivers in the current NASCAR points standings participated in media sessions following the only practice session this weekend at Road America on Saturday. Below is a transcript of race-related questions and answers.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Snap-On Ford Mustang — IT HAS BEEN AWHILE SINCE YOU RAN HERE WITH THE XFINITY SERIES, HOW IS IT TO BE BACK HERE IN THE CUP CAR? “It is nice to be anywhere that you feel wanted. The fans have really done a great job of showing up. I walked through the campground last night and met some fans, had a brat and drove some go-karts. There is a lot of energy here. That is exciting to see. I am happy for everybody and am thinking this is going to be another big weekend for our sport. We have had two great weeks with Pocono and the week before in Nashville for our sport with a lot of people and a lot of energy. It has a good upswing feeling effect for the sport. This is a nice way to piggyback on that.”
WHAT DIFFERENCES DO YOU NOTICE BETWEEN WHEN YOU RAN THAT XFINITY CAR AND THE CUP CAR THIS WEEKEND? “Well, I am not running the Xfinity car here today. I don’t know. It has been so long ago and the car was a different car. It was the other gen car. I don’t know if it is a very good comparison.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE NEWS THIS WEEK OF JUSTIN MARKS AND TRACKHOUSE? “Just more big news in the sport. There are a lot of things going on and it piggybacks off what I was just saying about coming here to Road America and coming off those big weekends at Nashville and Pocono. It feels like the sport is on a nice up-turn”
WHAT IS IT LIKE BEING IN WISCONSIN? HOW HAVE THE FANS RECEIVED YOU? “It has been good, a good reception with good energy. Clearly the fans were hungry for this kind of race. It is a great weekend to have it, being Independence Day weekend. I think Bob (Pockrass) wrote a nice article about it when he said it feels like they might have found a home for July 4th.”
SOUNDED LIKE YOU HAD A LITTLE SMALL INCIDENT THERE IN PRACTICE BUT WE DIDN’T SEE IT: “Yeah, I dipped the wheel off in the kink and did a little loop and fired back up and drove on. Just pushing her to the limits.”
WHY IS THE KINK CAUSING EVERYBODY A PROBLEM? “I don’t know if it is the tires or the car but there is a big lack of rear-lateral grip and the cars want to spin out very easily. That section seems to really push you to the ledge and when you go over it just doesn’t recover. Then you add that it is really dusty and dirty down there and it is just a lot of factors. That is certainly looking to be the calamity corner of the track this weekend.”
ANYTHING YOU CAN DO TO AVOID IT? “Yeah, stay on the track (laughter). The big issue is if someone wrecks in front of you, you can’t see because the dust is so bad. Probably going to have to do some touchup work there.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Light Apple Ford Mustang — THIS IS YOUR FIRST TIME AT ROAD AMERICA, WHAT DO YOU THINK? “It has been a progression for me. Every lap gets a little bit better. Hopefully by the end of the Xfinity race I am better with the references. There are just so many blind references to the apex of the corner that made speed that I am struggling with a little bit right now. My Cup car was way better than my Xfinity car but I think that is just from seat time. I am really happy with my Cup car. We will see what happens today.”
HOW MUCH IS EXPERIENCE ON THE TRACK WORTH? “Well, it is a 2-minute and 15-second lap. So I would say a lot.”
IS THIS A TRACK THAT YOU WERE LOOKING FORWARD TO WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED? “I was, yeah. I have never heard a bad thing about Road America. You hear so many great stories about people racing here and doing things here and how great the racetrack was. Since I have stepped foot in it, it has been that way.”
HOW SIGNIFICANT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO CARS? “My Cup car drives way better than my Xfinity car. They are nothing alike.”
WHAT IS THE TOUGHEST BLIND PART OF THE TRACK? “I think the kink is probably the toughest to make speed in, as you saw through practice. Turn 1 is deceiving because the apex falls away from you and you can let off the brake pedal and make a lot of speed to the center of the corner off the brake pedal because there is nowhere to go on the exit. Same thing in Turn 3. So, I think that the hardest corner for me right now has been the kink and probably up into Turn 6 because if you go too far you wheel-hop. If you let off the brake too soon you shove the nose. It is a unique corner because there is no reference to turn in. The bridge is in the wrong spot to use as a reference. There are a lot of reference points you need to pick up and that will just take a lot of laps to get the details right.”
WHAT ABOUT COMING OUT OF THAT LAST CORNER COMING UP THE HILL WHERE YOU CAN’T SEE ANYTHING? “That isn’t really that big of a deal because you know you are going straight. The unique part in the kink is, obviously, you have seen people wreck and dust goes up in the air and that makes it a little challenging knowing where they are.”
HOW SURPRISED WERE YOU ABOUT THE LENGTH OF A LAP HERE? “It doesn’t seem as long as it actually takes.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 BodyArmor Ford Mustang — YOU WERE HERE ONCE WITH THE XFINITY CAR, HOW DIFFERENT IS IT WITH THE CUP CAR? “Yeah, I ran here in 2015. It has been some time. It is nice to be back though. I enjoyed this place a lot in 2015 and we ran second here. It is just a cool racetrack. A super big place. It is really tough and technical with a lot of tire falloff too. It is going to be neat. It was nice to get on track today, even if it was just 50-minutes. You can’t get that many laps in that little time. It is nice to be back though. Driving in here yesterday and seeing all the people around here is awesome. I thought it went pretty decent today and we will see what we can do tomorrow.”
PARKING TOMORROW IS COMPLETELY SOLD OUT, WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN DONE HERE: “That is good. I remember coming here in 2015 and it was packed. I thought it was packed. I knew with the Cup cars coming here along with the Xfinity it was going to get more people. It is great. The 4th of July is obviously a special weekend no matter where we race. These fans deserve it for sure. Hopefully we put on a good show. There are a lot of people here. It is good to see.”
THIS IS A STRETCH OF THREE ROAD COURSE RACES IN THE NEXT FIVE. HOW DO YOU LOOK AT THIS STRETCH? “I just kind of take them as they come. There are obviously a lot more road courses this year, which is good. I enjoy road course racing, especially when you can come to new places like this. We will have here, and the Glen and then Indy. Two brand new road courses for the Cup guys. I don’t really think about them any differently, you just have to shift more and turn right more than usual. Our program has been pretty decent on road courses, so hopefully we can close the gap a little to the Gibbs and Hendrick teams. Hendrick was strong at Sonoma and I have some Sonoma vibes here with how far the tires are falling off.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang — SOUND LIKE YOU HAD AN INTERESTING SESSION OUT THERE: “It is hard to get a clean lap. It is hard to get a lap in with all the cautions and cars out there. When you only get 50-minutes of practice there is no patience. You have to go and you hustle through things and it takes a minute to decipher what was what and where you stack up and what you need and what the changes did. It is just 50-minutes of chaos out there trying to figure out which way is up. I feel like we got our car okay. I feel like our faster corners are off and we need to make some gains there. We took off a little further off than I thought we would. We threw some things at it to try to get close but I still need to look to see where we stack up. A lot of guys made qualifying runs at the end. It seems like the normal cast of characters at the moment that are pretty fast.”
ARE YOU AT A DISADVANTAGE BECAUSE 30 GUYS IN THE CUP RACE HAVE RUN XFINITY HERE BEFORE AND YOU AREN’T ONE OF THEM? “Yeah, I feel like a rookie. That is how they feel, right? The guys that don’t have experience when they come to the other tracks. COTA was one that none of us had experience so it wasn’t much of a disadvantage. Here it is just trying to figure out what corner comes next and where you brake. Little nuance stuff of when you release the brakes and those types of things. Where you want to be. All that stuff was new. Just kind of figuring it out as a go and you don’t have much time to do it. You have to figure out which way you are going, what you need in your race car, which way you think it is going to go in the race and then how to race others. Yeah, it is a lot to figure out in a short amount of time.”
HOW MUCH OF A FACTOR WILL THAT EXPERIENCE BE TOMORROW? “I mean, they might have a little edge to start with but I feel like I have been doing this a long time too. I have experience in other ways, so maybe I can make up the difference.”
THE FANS HERE IN WISCONSIN HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS RACE. WHAT HAS THE FAN RESPONSE BEEN LIKE? “It is great. I went for a run around the track last night with a map to figure out where i was running to and I stopped a few times and saw some fans and jumped the wall to talk to them. The amount of camping is incredible. There are campers everywhere around this huge track. It is really cool and I can’t wait to see what Sunday looks like with the amount of fans that will show up. I am sure a lot of people will come out. I am looking forward to it. It has been pretty welcoming so far.”
HOW MANY BEERS DID YOU GET OFFERED ON YOUR RUN? “I didn’t get offered any beers. I got offered a steak though. It sounded good after my run but not when I was going into Turn 8.”
HOW HARD CAN YOU PUSH IT IN QUALIFYING? “As hard as I can. I am going to have to. You are going to have to push super hard to lay down a decent lap. That is what practice is about, trying to find your limits and jump over them a couple of times so that you know where they are at.”
SO YOU WERE JUST ON A RUN YESTERDAY, ON THE TRACK? “Yeah, I was just running around. I get bored. For exercise and to check stuff out. I was bored. I don’t like sitting in my bus by myself so I get out.”
HOW MANY LAPS DID YOU GET? “One, are you kidding me. Just when you start to get a little tired you are down in Canada corner and it is a long way up from there. That is like the very bottom of the racetrack, I learned that. I was chugging up that hill. I started to get tired.”
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU? “I don’t know because I stopped to talk to those fans and took some pictures of stuff that I saw. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to look.”
