Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
New Hampshire Media Availability | Saturday, June 22, 2024
Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 12 Mendards/Dutch Boy Ford Mustang Dark Horse, met with media members at New Hampshire Motor Speedway Saturday afternoon to discuss his win last weekend at Iowa and more.
Ryan Blaney, No. 12 Menards/Dutch Boy Ford Mustang Dark Horse
HOW DOES THIS CHANGE THE SEASON NOW THAT YOU’RE IN THE PLAYOFF? DOES IT CHANGE IT AT ALL, YOUR PREP FOR THE PLAYOFF? “I feel like winning last week was just, I wouldn’t say kind of pressure off, just kind of a little bit of relief of man, you know, finally got in the victory lane. I feel like we’ve been close a couple of times and I thought we had one won at Gateway and it didn’t work out for us and it was nice to string together a few good runs in a row there with Gateway and Sonoma. I thought we were really good. And then Iowa last week. So hopefully we’re hitting our stride and learning things that I think we can apply. I just hope to keep learning and keep learning things on tracks. I think our short track stuff is pretty good right now. It’s just a matter of trying to get the mile and a half’s and bigger worked out. So hopefully we can continue this momentum in our company of running a little bit better.”
I’M DOING A STORY ON CHICAGO AND SHANE VAN GISBURGEN. ON A DRY TRACK, DO YOU EXPECT HIM TO KICK EVERYBODY’S TAIL LIKE HE DID A YEAR AGO IN THE COUNTER RACE? “I don’t know. It’s going to be interesting to see. Obviously he’s really talented. I’ve been enjoying watching his inaugural Xfinity season. He’s a good guy. I’ve gotten to talk to him a good bit, and he loves the sport and really enjoys it. I don’t know if he’ll have as much of an advantage this year because everyone was kind of in the same boat last year as far as first time there, but he raced on a lot of street courses, and the V8 stuff and the rain and all that craziness that went on. He probably had a little bit of a leg up on everybody and it showed, and he took advantage of it and won the race. Hopefully, we can all draw a little bit closer to him at that place to where he doesn’t embarrass us like he did last year. We’ll see though.”
YOU’RE STILL CHASING YOUR FIRST CUP WIN HERE AT NEW HAMPSHIRE. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES THAT THIS TRACK PRESENTS FOR YOU, ESPECIALLY THIS WEEKEND GIVEN THE WEATHER? “I don’t know what the weather is going to do. Nobody knows. I feel like we’ve always run pretty good here. I thought we had a good shot to compete for the win last year and we had a problem on pit road, last stop of the race and kind of took us out of it. I feel like this place has been fairly good to us and like I said earlier, I think our short track program is kind of getting to be fairly decent. That stuff changes week to week. You just try to stay on top of it and try to keep learning from previous years and weeks. But I’ve always wanted to hold the lobster ever since I was a kid. So hopefully we can keep adding to our entrees. We had corn last week and lobster this week and trying to add a full plate of dinner. So we’ll see what we can do. But I love it up here.”
THE THREE TIMES THAT PENSKE CARS ROLLED INTO VICTORY LANE THIS YEAR WERE WITH THE SHORT TRACK PACKAGE. WHAT HAS BEEN CLICKING REALLY FOR THE TEAM ON THESE SHORT TRACKS AND ARE THERE ANY NOTES COMING IN TO LOUDON THAT ARE BEING CARRIED OVER FROM THE OTHER TRACKS? “I definitely think we can carry over some notes. This place has some similarities to Iowa last week as far as rough entries. I think entry to turn three is super rough. You can see it on TV and it’s kind of the same, a little bit kind of different angle in the corner, but turn one entry at Iowa last week was super rough also. So, did we learn some stuff last week that helped us get in the corner at Iowa that might help us get in the corner here? There’s all these things you piece together. You can’t just bolt in what was in the car last week. I think there’s maybe some ideas of what you can change. Here you’re kind of limited and we don’t have the long practice like we did. Locked into springs and stuff like that. You hope to hit it fairly right to where you can tweak on it. I think short tracks have been a strong suit for us this year. Last year I even would say the same thing as far as the end of the year. So hopefully that stuff continues to get better and you’re always trying to stay on top of the competition. We’re good right now, but that could change in a week. You just have to continue to learn with each other and your team and your teammates. But at the same time, you have people in the background working on mile and a half stuff. How can we be better at those places? So the neatness of what we do in our schedule, all different types of racetracks, that you have to figure out how to be good on all of them, but that seems to be a strong suit for us right now.”
HOW RELIEVED WERE YOU TO GET THE MONKEY OFF YOUR BACK LAST WEEKEND? “It was nice. I feel like we had a couple chances to win already this year and just hasn’t really gone our way. It was nice that we put a really good night together. I was proud of the effort from our whole group of the changes we made from Friday to Saturday and Sunday. I didn’t really feel good Friday. I knew we had a lot of work to do and they did a great job of figuring out what we needed to do to be better. It showed in qualifying, it showed in the race and we got better through the night, especially the last two runs of the race. It is good. I don’t sit around and think about races you lose, like Gateway, but you know you get asked about it every weekend about how much does that kind of still sting and it was just nice to kind of redeem ourselves from that one. Nobody on our group hung our head and just just kept thinking about man we gave that one away. It’s just we knew that we’ve been running good and let’s just utilize this while we can and try to get them while we have a little bit of a leg up on everybody on the short tracks. It sank in right away. I think it sank in the most when a lot of my family came to victory lane. That was pretty cool. It was neat to have my parents there, my Uncle Dale, my mom’s side of the family that were there. So yeah, it sank in pretty quick. It’s cool to do it at a place like that where I’ve gotten support over the years by so many of those folks that are just from down the road. A lot of them, you know, maybe never been to victory lane. I get lucky to go to victory lane if you get a chance to win the race and to be able to bring your family into something like that, especially the younger ones, that’s a pretty cool experience for them so to see that is cool. I feel like a cool uncle whenever you can do that and just add to the cool uncle pot. It’s a big big weight off our shoulders and hopefully we can keep keep this going and continue to keep running you know pretty strong like I know we should and try to get back some of those races in the month of May that we had really bad races. Charlotte and Darlington and getting wrecked out early. Try to get back a little bit in this points battle and keep trying to climb back up the ladder.”
HOW MUCH OF A GAME CHANGER WAS WINNING POCONO, THAT FIRST WIN, AND WINNING IT WITH A TEAM AS ICONIC AS THE WOOD BROTHERS? “Pocono is one of my favorite wins. You’d never forget your first one, and especially to do that with those guys. I remember walking into their race shop in 2015 before we did the part-time deal that year. And you see everybody up on the wall. They have all the winners up on the wall. Pearson and Yarborough and all those guys. And you’re like, man, I want to be on the wall. I want to be on the wall in their shop up in Stewart. I will never forget the day they hung that picture of me up. Even though it was a small contributing factor to their 99 wins, you’re still part of it. You still have something to do there. Those guys are family. Even when I started driving for Penske, they still considered me part of their family, which is great. I love seeing Eddie and Len and Leonard at the racetrack. Leonard will sneak up on you. I never know when he’s coming, but he’ll find me off pit road and it’s always good to see him and he’s doing good so that definitely means a ton. You never forget your first one. You they work so hard to get to that point of watching people win in the Cup Series. I was able to grow up around it and watch it and you want to be there you want to be there and this is what you want to do and you work every since you are young to try to get to that point and have an opportunity and then to do it like it’s just all comes full circle. It’s something I’ll never forget and standing with Eddie and Len anind victory lane at Pocono after the race for a long time just talking about it all is it’s pretty cool.”
FORDS AND TOYOTAS HAVE COMBINED TO WIN 16 OF THE LAST 17 RACES HERE AT NEW HAMPSHIRE. DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT THERE ARE TRACKS THAT FAVOR ONE MAKER OVER ANOTHER OVER THAT LONG PERIOD OF TIME OR IS THAT JUST A CRAZY STAT? “That is a crazy stat. I didn’t know that. I don’t really know if tracks necessarily form well with a manufacturer or anything like that. I think that’s just kind of a coincidental thing. I look at Gibbs, I look at Penske, we’ve both been really good here. Stewart-Haas have been good here for a number of years. You say that and there might be a Chevy in victory lane, you never know. I mean, it’s just one of those funny things that might happen. I don’t think it’s a manufacturer thing. I think it’s just kind of coincidence of what teams figure some things out here and what manufacturer they are. But that is a nice stat. Hopefully we can add to that streak.”
ARE WE AT THE POINT THIS SEASON WHERE WE SEE OR WHERE YOU CAN EXPECT GUYS TO GET A LITTLE BIT MORE, I DON’T WANT TO SAY DESPERATE, BUT RACY. THOSE GUYS THAT MAYBE ARE REALLY TRYING TO GET IN THE PLAYOFFS. ARE WE AT THAT POINT WHERE YOU NOTICE THAT AS YOU’RE RACING? “Yeah, definitely. I definitely pay attention to that. I look at the points once a week, like on Sunday night when y’all put it out, and then I don’t really look at it the rest of the week. There’s nine to go till the playoff start? So yeah, it’s getting down to those final two and a half months. It’s going to get pretty dicey here with guys who are close to the cut line. Guys who need to win. You kind of start seeing that develop. I feel like, within the last two months of the regular season and then you have funky tracks coming up, Chicago, Daytona and Indy. I don’t know what anyone thinks Indy is going to be like. So there are a lot of opportunities I feel like for teams to do some things that might be bigger risks but they have to do it because they know what they need to do to get in and then you always have the little points battles of a handful of guys who are close to the line and those are always interesting to watch through the stages and end of the race and all that stuff. It’s nice to not be a part of that right now. We just kind of worry about getting wins and trying to pass a couple guys that we’re close to in points. It definitely is that time of the year. You figure out where you’re at, where you’re settled in, and you never know who can jump up and win any single week. It’s just a product of the sport and this car. It will be definitely kind of a race within the race. I feel like sometimes watching on TV, you’ll have this battle and then you’ll have these battles kind of going on for points and playoff spots and things like that. Those are always fun to see. So hopefully TV does a good job covering all that stuff because there is a lot that goes on, but it also is a good storyline. If you can kind of weed that into your race program.”
DO YOU KEEP A LITTLE BIT OF A LITTLE NOTEBOOK ON THAT? MAYBE YOU’RE RACING SOME GUY LATE IN A RACE, YOU’RE LIKE, OKAY, THIS GUY’S LIKE 90 POINTS BELOW THE CUT LINE, HE’S GOING TO BE DESPERATE TO WIN OR WHEREVER. DO YOU SORT OF KEEP SOME OF THAT IN THE BACK OF YOUR MIND AS TO WHAT THESE GUYS MAY THINK THEY HAVE TO DO? “I feel like you do have a little memory bank of all that stuff, kind of where everyone’s at. I feel like sometimes I get told that in certain scenarios. I get reminded of it, like, hey, this guy’s, he might be desperate to win, he’s out, by a good bit he’s got to win the race. So that just kind of gives me a little bit of heads up of, hey, you know, might be some desperation moves that are gonna be thrown just so I can be prepared for it. So yeah, you definitely keep that in mind. You’re not gonna give up any positions for anybody. That’s just not the way it is but yeah it’s nice to know that if someone throws a haymaker, you never know but you have to understand, at least I try to understand in my shoes if that does happen, I get it. I’d do the same thing if I was in that person’s position for the win and they need to win and I get roughed up, that’s just part of it. I get it but it is nice to have that reminder every now and then just to make sure you know what might be coming.”
