Ford Performance NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Bojangles Southern 500 – Darlington Raceway
NSCS Post Race
Sunday September 6, 2015
FORD FINISHING RESULTS
2nd BRAD KESELOWSKI
4th JOEY LOGANO
11th ARIC ALMIROLA
18th GREG BIFFLE
27th DAVID GILLILAND
28th SAM HORNISH JR.
30th RYAN BLANEY
35th TREVOR BAYNE
36th BRETT MOFFITT
38th RICKY STENHOUSE JR.
43rd COLE WHITT
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – Finished 2nd
“I needed to be a little bit better everywhere. Needed to be better on the restarts and a little better probably because I brushed the wall a little bit there. I just needed to be a little bit better everywhere to have a shot at the win.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion – Finished 4th
“I was proud of what my team did to make this Shell Pennzoil Ford a lot faster throughout the night. I feel like it is tomorrow. I don’t even know if it is or not. That was a long race. We got it to where I thought we were a winning race car. We were able to get up front and lead with good speed for a whole run. We got a little behind and tried to make it up and tried to work the right restarts and do everything to make it happen but we just came up a little short. I am proud of the speed we had and the momentum we are building for the Chase. We aren’t slowing down any. I am looking forward to it.” CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE RACING OUT THERE TONIGHT? “It was a lot of fun. The cars are so out of control and you have to drive it with so much finesse and really think about your moves before you make them and Darlington is always a tough race track but the tire wear was so big. The car was running five laps and a caution comes out and everyone comes on pit road. It was crazy. You wonder if you have enough sets of tires for the end of it. There was so much that went in to the race and so many different elements playing out. It was fun to be a part of it.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 43 STP Ford Fusion – Finished 11th
“It was a crazy night. A little bit of a struggle at the beginning and then Trent and the boys made some really good calls and got the car handling a lot better and I was really happy with it there toward the end. We got it the best we could and I think we got out of here with a respectable finish. That is all we had tonight. We will go on to Richmond and race like hell there and see what happens.” YOU PICKED UP A FEW POINTS TONIGHT BUT I ASSUME YOU FEEL YOU NEED VICTORY NEXT WEEK TO MAKE THE CHASE? “Yeah, we really do. We need to try to get to victory lane. We need a really good night at Richmond and hope for some bad luck for the 15 but if that doesn’t happen we don’t have anything to hang out heads about to be honest with you. We have been solid all year. We have been consistent. We just haven’t quite found the speed that we need. If we ever find the speed we will be in good shape. We have a great group of guys and Trent is doing a great job on top of the box. We just need a little more speed in our cars.”
GREG BIFFLE, No. 16 Ortho Ford Fusion – Finished 18th
“We ran short on tires because I had a flat and I pitted under green. We went almost two laps down. We were two car lengths from two laps down and came all the way back to the top-10 then had a spin and worked our way back up again. Then we were out of tires and had to stay out so that cost us. Overall that was a fun race. I thought it was a great package with everyone slipping and sliding and racing hard and driving their cars and not waiting on aero. Look at the passing we had and everything else. I think it was the same as Kentucky and it will only get better.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Cargill Ford Fusion – WHAT HAPPENED? “That was just hard racing. I got up under the 55 and got loose. We saw a lot of us get loose. It just snapped around. I hadn’t been that loose early in a run and it just jumped out from under us there. We were slowly making it better and clawing our way toward mid-pack or a little better than mid-pack but it just got out from under us there.” HOW HARD IS THE CAR TO HANDLE OUT THERE TONIGHT? “Yeah, it was difficult but a lot of fun. We enjoyed it. It is a lot of fun out there sliding around and tires wearing out and I think this is what we all wanted. It just bit a few of us.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion — TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE CLOSING LAPS HERE TONIGHT. “Yeah, long race. Long night. At least we led a lot of laps, which is something to be very appreciative of, and obviously started on the pole, and that was great. Just seemed like one of those races that just kept cycling with yellows and pit stops and yellows and pit stops. I don’t know how many yellows there were but I don’t know if I ever drove a Sprint Cup race with this many yellows before. There’s got to be somebody with a stat on that. A lot of yellows and a lot of back and forth there, and we just came up short right at the end, which was a bummer. But a lot to be proud of, but still want to win these races, and gosh, man, we were right there, and we just haven’t been able to close it out. We’ll go to work and keep working.”
WE HEARD A LOT ON THE RADIOS FROM DRIVERS THIS WEEKEND THAT THE CONSENSUS WAS ALMOST THAT THE OLD DARLINGTON WAS NEARLY BACK. DID YOU FEEL THAT WAY? “You know, the race kind of reminded me of ‑‑ I remember when I was a kid and my dad wanted to teach me how to drive a car, and he gave me a stick shift. You practice and you learn and you learn how to drive it and you stall it out all the time and then eventually you kind of start to figure it out and you stop stalling it so much and you get into a pattern and you don’t stall it out anymore. Then for whatever reason you get a car with an automatic and you drive that for five or six years and you get back in a car with a stick shift or a manual, and you stall it out all over again, and you keep stalling it out and you have to get back in the routine. The race reminded me a lot of that because the cars, just five or six years ago when I entered Sprint Cup, were extremely difficult to drive, much like a stick shift when you’re first learning how to drive. Then they’ve gotten really easy to drive over the last four or five years, to the point where we’re all kind of looking around at each other as drivers going, wait a minute here, this isn’t good, it shouldn’t be this easy to drive these. So we asked NASCAR to, make these cars harder to drive, give us our, metaphorically speaking, stick shift back, and they did, and I think somebody thought they’d be really funny and pick Darlington as the track to do that, which would be like if you picked the mountains of Virginia to give somebody a stick shift back. It’s kind of that same feeling. Kind of metaphorically speaking I think there was a lot of people that stalled it out today.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED …
THIS WAS THE SECOND RACE WITH THE LOW‑DOWNFORCE PACKAGE THIS SEASON. COULD YOU GIVE ME YOUR THOUGHTS ON HOW YOU THINK IT PLAYED OUT? ”I loved it. Like I was just kind of saying there to Kelly, it separates the race car drivers from the pretenders, and that’s the way it should be.”
GIVEN THE FACT THAT WE’RE NOT GOING TO HAVE THIS PACKAGE AGAIN THIS YEAR, WHAT CAN YOU TAKE FROM TONIGHT THAT YOU’LL BE ABLE TO USE IN THE CHASE, BOTH FROM A MENTAL AND PHYSICAL LEVEL? “There’s a lot to take from tonight for us that extends beyond the downforce, still all the same things, restarts, pit road, dialing in some of the suspension stuff on the race car. Mile‑and‑a‑halfs are the bread and butter of this sport. This is a little bit smaller than mile‑and‑a‑half, I think, but as we get into the Chase, you win the mile‑and‑a‑halfs, you win the championship. You know, it might not be with the same downforce, but it’s a difference ‑‑ it’s not that big of a difference and a lot of the same things still apply, engines still apply, suspension stuff still applies, pit crews, restarts, all that stuff, strategy, so I would still take that away from it.”
