Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Clash at the Coliseum | Sunday, February 5, 2023
Ford Finishing Results
7th – Ryan Preece
12th – Kevin Harvick
15th – Chase Briscoe
16th – Joey Logano
17th – Ryan Blaney
18th – Aric Almirola
23rd – Todd Gilliland
24th – Michael McDowell
25th – Austin Cindric
Driver Quotes
RYAN PREECE, No. 41 United Rentals Ford Mustang – “The fuel pump. The primary pump went bad. I don’t know. I don’t think we were close on fuel. At first, I thought it was ignition because usually when it’s fuel it just keeps cutting, so I shut off my alternator and all of my electrical stuff and it seemed to help a little bit. It did it again and I lost four spots, so I just flipped the switch and a miracle happened. Ultimately, this car was so badass. It was so fast. We drove from 16th outside, inside, everything it took. I’m proud of the speed. I’m happy for the opportunity, but it sucks giving them away.”
YOU WERE ABLE TO GET OUT ON ALL THOSE RESTARTS, SO THE SPEED WAS THERE. “That just comes from, first off, my grassroots experience, just working hard and just having a fast race car. Chad and I, we’re a new team but we’ve already got a year-and-a-half experience together and knowing lingo. If it’s off, I’ll let him know it, but if it’s that close, he’ll go with his gut. I’m hoping that we can use this as a good start, go to the 500 and win that one and get ourselves in the Playoffs and then try to win some more.”
AT WHAT POINT DID YOU START TO HAVE TROUBLE? “As soon as Truex caught me. I don’t know if it was with 30 to go, but five laps before he caught me it was the fuel pump going bad. I mean, what are you gonna do? You’re a sitting duck. This is a motor racetrack. It’s two drag strips and when you lose all the power, you’re just a sitting duck.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang – “Man, we just made a big mistake there. I didn’t get notified that it was the choose lap and we got stuck on the outside and lost track position, and then I kind of burned the tires up trying to get down. It was a track position race all night. You needed to stay in the top three or four and I felt like took off really good. The car had great speed and it was doing everything I needed it to, but you can’t make mistakes like that. I’m not sure what happened on the communication side there, but it didn’t get relayed to me fast enough that we were coming to the choose. I hate that, but still a great way to start the year. We had a lot of speed in our Smithfield Ford Mustang and led some laps in the big show, but once you get in the back it turns into bumper cars. It is what it is. We’ll go to Daytona.”
CHASE BRISCOE, No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang – “For us, we were never really good all weekend on a short run and that kind of killed us at the beginning. We kind of lost our track position. There wasn’t really very many long runs. On long runs we would always kind of go forward and then you’d be beating and banging, obviously. I got turned around there the one time and it was really hard to pass. I felt like unless you were maybe three or four of those cars, they were really the only ones that were good enough that they could just kind of move through the field. We were one of those cars, I felt like if you put us in fourth or fifth, we would maintain, but we weren’t good enough to drive from the back to the front. We were just a little bit off. We just needed a little bit more. There was a lot of beating and banging and a lot of cautions. That was a really long race, longer than I expected. I felt like it was a good start to the season, just getting a race mentality. The race was extremely hot with the mufflers. I was getting pretty fumed out, but it’s good to kind of get readjusted to those things when we get the season back going.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 FR8Auctions.com Ford Mustang – WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT YOU COULD RUN OUT OF GAS? “I don’t know how many laps under caution we ran, but obviously just a calculation running the LCQ and a heat race. We just didn’t anticipate running over 100 laps of caution, so that was unfortunate. It was a battle out there for sure.”
YOU WON THE LCQ, SO SOMETHING POSITIVE. “I feel good about how we were able to start near the back and drive up into the top 12, top 13 twice, so our car was good. It’s just a good weekend. We’ve got a lot of new guys, so it was good to get up to speed and figure each other out.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 6 King’s Hawaiian Ford Mustang – “We’re better than we were here last year, but not enough better to make the difference. This track has gotten slick, but we’ll go swing at them next week.”
DOES IT MEAN ANYTHING FOR SHORT TRACKS THE REST OF THE YEAR? “There’s no other track like this and we were really good at Phoenix. We’re excited to see what we can do there. Of course, Daytona was really good for us last year, but we have to figure something out for this track, clearly, and we’ll just keep working on it.”
WHERE DID YOU IMPROVE FROM A YEAR AGO? “We are getting a better understanding of the car, but just not better enough of what it needs on the vehicle dynamics side. We’re still working through that. We’ve got some new hires and new things going on that started last week and we’ll see if we can get better,”
WHAT WAS YOUR TAKE ON THE INCIDENT WITH DANIEL IN THE HEAT RACE? “It’s just bumper cars – guys that are desperate.”
COULD THE OTHER GUYS JUST GET BACK TO THE GAS EARLIER? “We just never could get the corner. We were just really loose in with both of our cars and just couldn’t turn the wheel.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang – “It’s definitely a bummer again. We fought hard and thought we had made some improvements. I think we did, but ultimately it didn’t yield a much different result here. We had some really good short track runs last year, obviously Bristol and Richmond and a couple of others, and then there were a handful that didn’t go real good, I’m thinking like Loudon, so maybe it’s one of those deals where we’ve got to dissect what’s similar and what’s plaguing us at times like these or races like this and get back on track. It’s definitely not the way you want to start the year, but we’ll be ready for Daytona.”
THIS IS AN OUTLIER AS FAR AS TRACKS GO, SO DO YOU SPEND A LOT OF TIME WORRYING ABOUT IT? “We’re racers, though, so it hurts your feelings. You want to be better than that and we just weren’t. It’s not much like other places we go and it’s kind of like bumper cars out there in a lot of ways, but it’s still a race and we need to be more competitive.”
