Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
AAA 400 – Dover International Speedway
Friday, May 13, 2016
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., driver of the No. 17 Sunny D Ford Fusion, enters the weekend with a new sponsor and a bright outlook after a fifth place effort in the opening practice session at Dover Friday. Stenhouse spoke with media members after practice.
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Sunny D Ford Fusion – HOW DOES THE LOW DOWNFORCE CHANGE THINGS HERE THIS WEEKEND AND TALK ABOUT YOUR RECENT UPTICK IN PERFORMANCE AS A TEAM. “If we can kind of keep going in the same direction with the downforce in the years to come it is only going to suit myself that much more. Dover is a tricky racetrack when you have a lot of downforce so now that we have less than last year the cars are a handful to drive. I think you saw that some in the XFINITY practice. The track is tough. The cars are definitely out of the track more and sliding around. Lucky for us our Sunny D Ford Fusion is really fast. I feel really good about it. We were fifth in that last practice and I don’t mind if qualifying rains out now. I was a little worried before practice. I didn’t want to start 19th but I feel our cars are getting better. We are getting better as a race team. We aren’t exactly where we want to be yet. We finished 13th last week and had a top-10 car but didn’t get the results out of it we needed to. That is just us cleaning up some of the mistakes we need to clean up. The last couple of years I would have been really happy with a 13th place finish. It is nice to be disappointed with that now and continue to work and build on where we need to be. I think we are capable of running in the top-10 every week, we just have to make sure we do everything we are capable of doing. It has been nice. Everyone at Roush Fenway has worked really hard. Everyone at Ford Performance has given us a lot of help and it is nice to see all the hard work start to pay off. The guys in the shop have been working really hard for the last three years and finally everything is starting to come together like we anticipated it would. It is just took a little longer than we wanted it to be.”
HOW HAVE YOU STEPPED UP AS A LEADER FOR ALL OF ROUSH? “For me it is being in the shop and giving the teams in our meetings direction on where we need to be and what we need in the race car to be better every week. Walking around the shop and telling all the chassis department and body shop department, just walking around and telling them that I appreciate their hard work and everything that they are doing is starting to pay off. But we still have to keep it going in the right direction and that is feedback from myself and my team and Greg (Biffle) and Trevor (Bayne) as well. I feel good about where the 17 team is and the direction we are going in our race car each week and if we can continue down the path that we are going down it is going to continue to get better. It is just not getting frustrated and making sure that I keep my eyes open for what we need in our cars each week so that when I come back to the shop I am not giving false information on what we need. That is the biggest thing. We don’t want to go down a path that is not going to get us better each week. That is some of the things that I have tried to really make sure that I focus on and really think through each week before I give them a direction on what I feel we needed from the previous weekend.”
GOING BACK TO THE LUGNUT ISSUES, DO YOU THINK THERE IS ANYONE IN THE GARAGE NOW THAT DOESN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT “SECURE” MEANS? “I don’t believe you will see any issues this weekend. I think that was a pretty good example of what they did not want on a race car. Now, I don’t know how they will police it throughout the race. Obviously that was an easy one to police after the race and I don’t know if teams will still push the issue and do four through the middle of the race or not. I know they were last week. I saw a lot of pictures of that from the pictures we had as a race team. It will be interesting to see what people do. Dover is not a place you want to push the issue anyway so that is one good thing that I think NASCAR has going for them. You want all your wheels for sure tight here. The loads that go through the wheels here at Dover are probably higher than any other race track we go to. I don’t think you will see an issue on that. I think it was pretty clear what they didn’t want to see though.”
