FORD QUALIFYING RESULTS:
1st – Joey Logano
7th – Ryan Blaney
12th – Aric Almirola
13th – Chase Briscoe
16th – Michael McDowell
18th – Chris Buescher
19th – Austin Cindric
23rd – Brad Keselowski
25th – Harrison Burton
27th – Todd Gilliland
28th – Cole Custer
31st – Cody Ware
32nd – JJ Yeley
35th – Kevin Harvick
36th – BJ McLeod
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Rheem Ford Mustang – NOTE: Harvick cut a left-rear tire during practice and did not make a qualifying attempt while repairs were made. “It’s really just kind of a guess. How long the tire was going flat. Trying to decide did the tire come apart or was it going low. You’re kind of guessing as to what was what to analyze your handling characteristics of the car. So it’s definitely a lot of guessing at this point. Fixing the diffuser, not having a backup car, no spare parts or anything like that. You have to round all that stuff up from somebody else and put that stuff on your car and repair those couple of pieces that were damaged. They got all that done. The big key is just trying to figure out how to analyze your car and not knowing what the circumstances were with the tire.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang – PIT ROAD INTERVIEW – YOU DIDN’T KNOW WHAT YOU HAD BEFORE QUALIFYING. WAS THAT A SURPRISE LAP? “At this point in the season everything is a surprise, you’ve just got to adapt quickly and today the guys did a great job giving me something I could wheel and it felt good and able to lay down a really good one and two there. My three and four was decent. I thought I probably left a little there, but, overall, it’s so cool to have this car up front. This is my first quarter midget. This is where it all started for me, so to go to where it all started and start on the front row here at Darlington is really, really special. All the way from Silver City in Meridan, Connecticut. This is a pretty neat thing for me.”
WHAT DOES THIS DO FOR TOMORROW? “I hope there are a lot of pit stops here. It helps with the pit stall selection, obviously. There’s nice little advantage up there at stall one, but it’s a long race. This is definitely a long one. You have to have some long run speed in your car as well, so hopefully we’ll have that.”
POLE-WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang – DO YOU FEEL YOU ARE MORE ON THE EDGE HERE WITH THE NEW TIRE OR NOT? “I think it’s the same stuff that we’ve been fighting when you go to low grip racetracks like Fontana and it has some bumps, some tire wear. You have those things and we don’t all have everything quite figured out yet. We’ve had 15 minutes of practice at a time and we can’t change anything that’s substantial to fix it, so we’re learning at a very slow rate in comparison to what we’ve done in the past when we’ve had three practices and changed springs and bars and changed all this stuff, where we can’t do that anymore. It takes longer to figure things out and I think that on top of the car really doesn’t do a good job being sideways like the old car wanted to be sideways. This one doesn’t really like it, so when you start to get in trouble it’s gone. The challenges when you come to a low-grip racetrack, where the car is yawed out more, makes it ever more challenging for the drivers to get a hold of that.”
HOW IS THE NEXT GEN CAR COMING ALONG SINCE THE CLASH? “It’s coming. We’re still developing and learning things as we go, whether it’s as a sport or as an individual team. We’re all kind of figuring out what makes it go fast and then I think all things considered it’s gone really, really well. You look at the situation our sport was in as far as getting parts and the lack of time with the car, it was a recipe for disaster. It really could have gone the other way fairly easily, but I think everyone in the industry has done a good job of getting cars to us, racing and doing everything we need to do and putting on good races. The races have been pretty entertaining.”
IS THIS A CASE TODAY OF THIS CAR STILL BEING UP AND DOWN, WEEK TO WEEK, AND TRACK TO TRACK? “It’s kind of hard to say. Darlington is such a unique racetrack. There’s only one Darlington. We really haven’t gone to many bigger racetracks yet. We went to Fontana and that’s a unique one. Vegas is probably similar to Kansas in some ways, but it’s kind of hard to say for sure on how that all works. I’d say we’ve been racing better on the short tracks. Take Dover out of the question, but the rest of them, yeah, so it’s hard for me to give a clear progress report. I can give something maybe in general, but it’s kind of tough to say, ‘Hey, are we better at short tracks than mile-and-a-halves right now?’ It seems pretty equal.”
ON HIS THROWBACK SCHEME. “I think my car looks cool this week, at least it is to me. I don’t know if it’s cool with anyone else, but, for me, the quarter midget scheme is like the coolest thing because I think it says so much to kids about chasing your dream. My dream when I drove this paint scheme as a kid was to be a Cup driver and win a championship and to have that paint scheme is so special to me this weekend and having it on the front row it’s a full circle thing. Having Silver City Quarter Midget Club on the back and all the fun stories that go along with the scheme to me is really neat, so having that start on the front row on Mother’s Day, that’s a pretty neat story.”
IS THIS THE BEST CAR YOU’VE HAD THIS SEASON OR IS IT TOO SOON TO TELL? “We fired off pretty good off the truck and the speed continued throughout the run it seemed like, so probably one of the best ones we’ve had so far this year.”
