Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Atlanta Midweek Media Availability | Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Cole Custer, driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Haas Factory Team in the NASCAR Cup Series, was battling for the win in Sunday’s Daytona 500 before getting involved in an accident coming to the checkered flag. The result was a 21st-place finish, which he spoke about to the media this afternoon.
COLE CUSTER, No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT GOING FROM ONE SPEEDWAY RACE IN DAYTONA TO ANOTHER ONE THIS WEEKEND IN ATLANTA? “It was a great start for our team at Haas Factory racing. It was a great way to start off the year having both Xfinity cars have a shot at the win and having a Cup car have a shot at the win. It doesn’t get much better than that. I can’t say enough about our people and how hard they’ve worked over the offseason and to see them get rewarded and have a shot to win races is a great way to start. Hopefully, we can just keep it going and have another shot at it at Atlanta.”
HAVE YOU HEARD ANY COMMENTS FROM DENNY HAMLIN’S PODCAST? “I have not. I’ve been trying this year to totally stay off social media for the most part, so I have not listened to Denny’s podcast. I’ve heard some rumors, I guess you could say about it, but I haven’t actually heard it.”
TO PARAPHRASE, HE FELT YOU COULD HAVE WAITED LONGER TO MAKE THE MOVE. LOOKING BACK, DO YOU HAVE ANY DIFFERENT THOUGHTS THAN YOUR INITIAL REACTION? “Even when we got out of the car and I saw Denny right after, I told him, ‘Yeah, I feel like I should have waited for the frontstretch.’ There were definitely things that made me want to take that run on the backstretch because I got such a big run from the 19 pushing me, and I was probably a couple car lengths back of Denny at the time. I just tried to take the run. It was the last lap. I tried to take it. I knew I probably should have waited for the frontstretch, but it’s one of those things that you learn for the next time, and then also having the 35 spin out on the frontstretch, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, man. These guys are all wrecking. You’ve got to get to the lead now.’ So, you just didn’t feel like you had a second to waste, but, looking back at it, I definitely would agree that I wish I had waited for the frontstretch to give myself a little better shot at it. With the wreck, I think at the end of the day it’s three or four guys trying to go for the same place at the same time. Us and the 11 sidedrafting and then the 19 ended up hitting me in the left-rear and turning me into Denny, but I don’t really fault anybody for that. I feel like everybody is just trying to side draft and push and trying to win the Daytona 500. I was happy we had a shot to win and hopefully we can keep it rolling.”
DO YOU FEEL YOU EARNED SOME RESPECT WHEN YOU’RE TRYING TO WIN THE DAYTONA 500? “At the end of the day we’re all competitors. We’re gonna go out there and race as hard as we can and these superspeedway races come down to pushing and shoving and side drafting, so I think you see wrecks every single speedway race and usually they’re on the last lap. At the end of the day, it’s everybody trying to go for the same spot at the same time. I wish I made the move on the frontstretch, but I’m not gonna regret anything.”
DO YOU THINK YOU EXPRESSED YOURSELF WELL WITH DENNY AND IT’S FINE? “Yeah, he was a little bit frustrated when he first came up, but I just told him I needed to see a replay. There are so many people that are hitting each other on those last laps and how it all comes together, so I made sure I saw a replay before I really had a great opinion on anything, but, yeah, I felt like we were both calm about it. I think we were both frustrated we didn’t win, but it was a calm conversation after.”
HOW DO YOU WALK OUT OF DAYTONA AND HEAD TO ATLANTA? WHAT’S YOUR MINDSET? “Hopefully have another shot at it. I feel like our team did a great job adjusting on our car throughout the day and communicating to try and make things better and that put us in a situation to have a shot to win at the end, so we just have to go there with the same mindset and try and be there at the front.”
DID YOU LOOK AT THE CHRISTOPHER BELL INCIDENT? “I looked back at that one, too, and Christopher actually texted me on Monday and he was like, ‘Yeah, my car just couldn’t really take a push that great all day.’ So, there weren’t really any hard feelings it seems like there. I mean, if I was gonna do it again, I wish I got just a tick more square on him. Maybe that would have helped it, but it sounded like he was kind of chasing his car a little bit all day, so it just wasn’t the best situation. When it’s five to go, you’re gonna have to push and shove. It is what it is. You try and help the guy as much as you can out front and there are definitely things I can learn from that to try and make it better, but I hated it because, honestly, I think that was the first time I ever wrecked anybody on a superspeedway off my bumper. I felt horrible after it happened, but when you look back at it, it sounds like he was kind of chasing his car a little bit.”
HOW HAS THE APPROACH CHANGED NOT HAVING TEAMMATES OUT THERE ANYMORE? “I think at the end of the day on the superspeedways the Fords work really well together, so that’s always been a plus for us, and then also having an alliance with RFK has been huge. It’s been great working with them, so I think just building off that and at the end of the day you just try and have a good handling car at Atlanta and try and have a car that you can be aggressive with and have some speed. Hopefully we can just get up there and try to control lanes.”
HOW HARD HAS IT BEEN TO ACCLIMATE BACK TO THE CUP CAR? “There’s definitely little things like trying to get used to the mirrors and just your whole surroundings in general, but it’s been pretty solid so far and nothing too crazy. I have a great team around me and just have to keep building it.”
HAVE YOU SEEN RACING AT DAYTONA OR SUPERSPEEDWAY RACING IN GENERAL CHANGE BETWEEN THE OLDER VERSION OF THE CAR AND THE NEXT GEN CAR TODAY? “For sure. Yeah. The second the Next Gen car came out it seemed like there was a lot more pushing, a lot more shoving. It’s very hard to get the third lane to work, so that leaves you with two lanes and everybody pushing and shoving in those two lanes because they can’t go anywhere else. It’s created more chaos, I would say, just from the pushing standpoint. I would say that’s the biggest thing.”
WHEN IT COMES TO SUCCESS AT DAYTONA, IS IT MORE LUCK BASED, PERFORMANCE BASED OR A COMBINATION? “It’s kind of a 50/50 if I was to guess a number. You have to be at the right place at the right time. You look at the 24 and he ended up winning the race and he wasn’t in the first two rows on that last lap, so you have to be at the right place at the right time, but, at the same time, you have to do everything right as the driver and as a team on your pit stops, how you work the draft, when to take risk and when to kind of save your car, so there’s a lot that goes into it, but being at the right place at the right time has a lot to do with it also.”
WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN CHANGE WITH THE TEAM AND WHAT HAVE YOU HAD TO GET USED TO AGAIN WITH THE TEAM AS A WHOLE GOING FROM XFINITY TO CUP? “I think the biggest thing for me is how much I’ve changed in the last couple of years, just knowing how much better to work with your team to try and fix problems and things like that because usually race weekends do not go perfect. Usually, there’s always something you’ve got to fix, something you’ve got to make better and the teams that can go in the right direction and fix those things tend to be better. The driver is a huge part of that and how they communicate with their team, so I think that’s one of the biggest things, and just having the confidence to know you can go out there and compete with the best of them.”
YOU HAVE BEEN IN RACES WHERE CAUTION HAS BEEN THROWN ON THE LAST LAP AND WHEN IT HASN’T. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT SCENARIO AS A COMPETITOR? “If I was to give my opinion, usually what they’ve said in the past is if there’s heavy impacts, they’re gonna throw the caution. Like Riley’s, when he kind of just spun or slid to the inside, I understand that not being a caution, but probably with how big that wreck was on the backstretch I would expect a caution because you never know if somebody is gonna get hurt or what’s gonna happen. Unfortunately, it’s kind of the world we live in on superspeedways that they’re probably more so gonna end under caution than anything because the pushing and shoving is so extreme, but at the end of the day you have to think about the safety first. When people make that big of an impact, the caution should probably come out.”
HOW BIG OF AN IMPACT WAS IT? “It was fairly big. When the 11, I think, came up the track and then maybe it was the 51 that came back up the track too. We all hit each other and you’re in the wall. It’s definitely a somewhat heavy impact and you just never know, so I think, at the end of the day, if you see guys hitting the wall and having pretty big impacts, yeah, I mean the caution should come out and you also don’t want people barreling through that wreck, too. When guys are just sliding across the track you could t-bone somebody or something, so that’s just my point of view from a driver.”
HOW IS IT WORKING WITH A CREW CHIEF YOU HAVEN’T WORKED BEFORE AT THESE TWO TRACKS? IS IT EASIER ON A NEW DRIVER/CREW CHIEF RELATIONSHIP OR HARDER? “I think it’s honestly a good way to ease into that kind of relationship just because you have a little bit bigger window on hitting your balance and how it all plays out with the handling of the cars. I think Aaron has done a great job and obviously giving me a shot to go win a race at the end of the Daytona 500. I can’t really ask for much more and they worked so hard this week. It was incredible the amount of work they did on that car because after the Duels, pretty much every single body panel had to be replaced, and the floor and the splitter. We had to take the engine out. It was a lot of work and for them to still give me a car that could go compete definitely shows what we can do.”
IS THE WAY YOU ADVANCE AT ATLANTA AND MANEUVER IN THE TRAFFIC DIFFERENT THAN DAYTONA OR NOT? “Yes and no. It seems like it can get that way, where you kind of just run double file and it’s hard to pass, but, at the same time, there’s a lot more handling involved in Atlanta, so one guy can be handling good and then you get a lot of pressure on them and you’re trying to make moves around them, so just the handling side of that really changes the racing at Atlanta a lot of the time, but it is still drafting. You’re gonna try and draft and try and make moves on other guys.”
DOES IT MAKE YOU HOLD YOUR BREATH FOR A SECOND WHEN YOU SEE A WRECK LIKE PREECE’S AT DAYTONA? DO YOU THINK MORE ABOUT IT? “I don’t know if you think about it as a driver, I guess, but it catches your attention for sure. After the race I didn’t even know he flipped until after when I saw it. I was like, ‘Oh, man. That was big. I hope he’s OK.’ Nobody wants to see cars flip over as a driver.”
