Ford Performance NXS Notes and Quotes
BCBS NC Race for the Cure 300 – Charlotte Motor Speedway
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Ford Finishing Results
1st – Joey Logano
9th – Brad Keselowski
15th – Ryan Reed
17th – Jeb Burton
20th – Darrell Wallace Jr.
26th – Clint King
30th – BJ McLeod
RYAN REED – No. 16 Lilly/American Diabetes Association Ford Mustang – “We made the Round of 8, which is really good, but that was a tough day. I’m glad we could make the most of it and move on, but we’ve got work to do over at Roush Fenway. It’s good to see a Ford in victory lane. I’m happy for Joey and the Penske guys, but we’ve got some work to do before Kansas.” DID YOU KNOW YOUR POINTS SITUATION DURING THE RACE? DID YOU WANT TO KNOW? “I didn’t ask one time. There at the end they said we were good and we just needed to take care of our stuff, so I didn’t ask one time where we were at. I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to go run our race and finish the best we could. I knew we were fighting an uphill battle and I knew the guys were working as hard as they could, so screaming and yelling about points doesn’t help anything. We’ve just got to put our heads down and get the best we could, so a top-15 after we started with a 25th-place car is a lot of progress, but we’ve got a long way to go.”
DARRELL WALLACE JR. – No. 6 Leidos Ford Mustang – “We don’t deserve to be in the Chase. These restart games got us. I was sleeping on that restart and everybody checked up and I just kept digging and ran right in the back of the 48, so that kind of put us behind. It’s just a handful. When we race during the day, no matter what track we go to, we’re all over the place. Right here at nightfall they were telling me to be conservative, but I felt like I could have drove right up there to the lead with how different the car was and how much better it drove. We’re missing something. It would be cool if we could plug in the computer a daytime versus nighttime setup, but it just doesn’t work like that. I don’t know what we’ve got going on for daytime stuff, but it’s not working. It’s just a bummer. Yeah, it’s cool that we made it to the next round, but who’s happy about the way we ran?” HOW WILL YOU ADJUST GOING FORWARD? “Kansas is smooth. It’s still somewhat smoothly paved. We got away with that at Kentucky. We ran pretty good there, so we’ll see what we can do to have a decent run. I’m going to enjoy this next off week. We’ve got to pull something out of the bag. My team never gave up. I never gave up. I never got too frustrated and never put it in the fence while I was up there at the top. I was trying to get all I could to keep us going, but we’ve just got to get better. I don’t like running 20th.”
WALLACE PRESS CONFERENCE – “I didn’t think too much about points until my spotter, who knows me like the back of my hand, he just said a couple words. ‘We need this spot bad,’ and he left it at that. We had to dig for it on that last restart, so that put us in by one point. We just have to work hard. Our Leidos group never gave up all day. I think we all had plenty of thoughts in our head of just trying to get by and go home and forget this race and go on to next week, but we can do that now but know that we’re going into the next round is pretty good.”
WILL THE DOWN TIME BE A WELCOME REST OR ADDED STRESS? “That’s the million dollar question right there. I’m gonna try to relax and take a little vacation, but still focus on the big picture knowing that we still have to work for it. We’ve got Kansas to kick off the next round, so that’s big. Hopefully, it’s kind of like Kentucky – smooth, fast – we had a good car there. I was outrunning that 1 car, so that was pretty good until he won the race. We’ll see. It’s good that we reset and we kind of get to relax now. Tensions get high and I’ll tell you 100 times I’m not worried about points, but I don’t know if it gets a little bug in the back of your head and everything kind of intensifies and magnifies to added pressure and you don’t even know it until you get out of the car. For me, I was just really bummed out about the race, but when they said you made it in by one point I kind of wanted to shed a little tear. That was pretty big for us, but we’ll definitely throw this race away and refocus on the next one.”
HOW DEEP DID YOU DIG ON THAT FINAL RESTART TO PASS THE 44? “Like I said, my spotter was like, ‘We need that spot bad, so let’s give us your best restart.’ My mom always said there are gonna be hard days in front of the good ones, and they only make you stronger. We have to use it as a little bit of motivation knowing that we can do better and go onto Kansas and try to do a lot better than what we did today, but that was fun trying to put it all on the line. This Chase format shows you what you’ve got to do. You can’t slack off on one restart. The door opened up for us and we had to jump on it and go up top of three or four-wide and do what you’ve got to do. There were thoughts of doing more to the 44 to get in, so it just worked out in our favor.”
IS THERE A WILDCARD RACE IN THE SECOND ROUND? “I think all of them are wildcards to me. You look at the Cup race today. You don’t really count Charlotte as a wildcard, but you have five or six Chasers that all had problems. Anything can happen. We can be running up front at Kansas and blow a tire or blow a motor. Anything can happen to anybody, so you just hope you have good karma going into these next three to get to the next round.”
WINNER’S PRESS CONFERENCE
JOEY LOGANO – No. 12 PPG Ford Mustang – “What a fun night, for sure. That was a good recovery from the first part of my day. I feel a lot better than I did about three or four hours ago when I tried to knock down the wall. I feel better now. Obviously, a great PPG Mustang. Brian Wilson put together a great team by picking and choosing a bunch of people from the race shop. It’s a lot of fun because you’ve got guys who have been racing for years and some it was their first race this weekend, so it’s a fun mix to be a part of and to come out here and race with nothing to lose – we had a good car, maybe not the best car out there, but we had a good enough car that we could make something happen with. We stayed on the lead lap on that long run and the pit crew did their job by keeping us in position to make an awesome restart at the end. It was kind of an all-or-nothing move and to be able to get the lead and ultimately hold them off to get the checkered flag. It was a lot of fun to be able to do that and a lot better way to end the day than the way it started.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL AFTER RUNNING 800 MILES? “I’m OK. I didn’t run the full 800 miles. I think I sat in the garage for about 100, I think. My neck feels it from knocking down the wall, but beside that I feel good. My arms are in good shape. I tried to prepare myself the best I could for today knowing what I had ahead of me, and I feel good. I feel like the car drove good. If the car was that bad I’d have a hard time trying to keep up with it, but I think trying to do this at Dover last week would have been very challenging. After a Cup race at Dover usually you’re pretty tired, but here at a mile-and-a-half, a little bit bigger race track, you have a little bit of straightaways to relax for a little bit. I think that gives your body enough to get through it. Mentally, I’m shot. I’ve had a long enough day that I’m kind of used up, but overall I got everything I had to get out of it.”
DURING THE CUP RACE HOW WERE YOUR EMOTIONS? DID YOU FEEL BETTER AFTER THE RACE COMPARED TO WHEN YOU WERE SITTING IN THE GARAGE? “Yeah, I feel better about it. My team did a good job fighting to get back out there and I think we gained two points by doing that, and that could be the difference when it’s all said and done. We did a good job getting back out there and we were three or four laps from being able to pass about four cars, which would have been nice. But right now I think we’re six points out is what I was told before I started this race, and we’re going to quite possibly our best race track. I think Charlotte and Kansas are our two best race tracks, so I felt very confident going into this round and I had a very good car today. I’m looking forward to getting to Kansas and seeing what we’ve got and seeing if we can break through to get a win, but, if not, a solid points day. I think we can manage with what we’ve got, but we can’t afford to make any mistakes with Talladega coming up and a for sure unknown. You never know what’s gonna happen, so if we can break through and get a win we’ll feel a lot better.”
BRIAN WILSON, Crew Chief, No. 12 PPG Ford Mustang – “Obviously, we use the XFINITY Series to develop a lot of crew members, so we’ve got a lot of young guys whether it’s on the pit crew or the mechanics, and for myself included I’m trying to develop as a crew chief, so for everybody it’s extremely exciting. For some of us it’s pretty relieving to get a win, but it definitely is the reason why we have this program at Penske.”
MIKE NELSON, VP of Operations, Team Penske – “One good thing is it’s Brian Wilson’s first win as an XFINITY crew chief, so I’m happy to see him get that after his long tenure with us at Team Penske. I’m very proud of him for that, and I saw a lot of new faces, guys that haven’t been with us for a long time that got a chance to get in victory lane. It’s good to get PPG in victory lane as well, so I’m really proud of the effort out of this team and they never gave up all day long.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – WHERE DID THAT RUN COME FROM ON THAT LAST RESTART? “At the initial start of the race I started third and Larson was in front of me and I could have made the move then, and I thought, ‘Man, this would be really dumb to do this the first lap of the race.’ I knew I had that move in my back pocket, so when the caution came out and I saw us third I liked my position, and I said, ‘Well, now is the time to do it.’ Then we were going down the backstretch three-wide and it was kind of a game of chicken, to be honest with you. Who is gonna lift first? And I was not gonna be the first one to lift, I knew that. I was driving the car with nothing to lose, so I’m gonna drive like I’ve got nothing to lose and it worked out fairly well to be able to drive off in there and keep them on my quarter and eventually we both made the turn, but I was able to kill enough of his momentum to get out in front of him and then the race was on. He started running the top and catching me and I was like, ‘Oh boy.’ I was getting confused. I almost keyed up and asked what should I do because I was faster on the bottom and I knew that, but I saw that he was making so much speed up top I was like, ‘Maybe I need to go up top and just slow him down.’ But I think he got into the wall a little bit that it gave me enough of a cushion to be able to hold off the 1 at the end. I’m glad it came down to that because it was gonna be a crazy race at the end to try to hold each off. It’s something Kyle and I have done quite a few times, even here at Charlotte I think earlier this year in the All-Star Race. We’ve raced for the win here a lot. He’s very fast here at this race track. He’s got the top figured out very well, so it’s kind of a fun race because it’s kind of top versus bottom and you kind of see how it turns out. It’s fun to race against him. Obviously, I’ll be racing against him for the rest of my career, but it’s a lot of fun.”
BOTH WINS THIS YEAR HAVE BEEN IN THE 12 CAR. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU’VE FELT DRIVING BOTH CARS THIS YEAR THAT IS DIFFERENT? “I think something that is very special today is that we won on an oval and it’s no secret that Team Penske has been struggling with on the XFINITY side this year is our mile-and-a-half program or even our short-track stuff hasn’t been as fast as it needs to be. We won on a road course earlier this year and that’s a road course. That a different game, but to answer your question, the 12 and the 22. The cars, and Mike can speak to this part even better than me, but the cars start off the same. When they leave the shop they’re the same, and then obviously we’ll put our setups in and change it a little bit from there. Roger probably says it the best. He says you both get nine irons and then it’s up to you how you want to grip the club, and that’s kind of how our setups go. The cars start the same. We’re able to work on them differently, and I think circumstances have worked out pretty well with the 12 car. When we’ve had opportunities to win, we’ve won and I think that’s something that’s fun to do with this group of guys, but the 22 team has made great strides as well. Both of our cars were up there towards the end of the race and I think if you look at where we were earlier this year to where we’ve been in the last three or four races, the speed is coming back. So it’s fun to be a part of that and to see it kind of make the turn and stop the bleeding and now we’re starting to move forward again and to break through. You guys well know as much as anybody, but when you get a win and get that momentum – the XFINITY side at Team Penske needed something like this, a nice little pick-me-up. The pit crew today that pitted the 12 car is normally the 22 XFINITY pit crew, so to see all of them in victory lane is a big confidence-booster for all of them, so a lot of good things came from this.”
MIKE NELSON CONTINUED – YOU HAD 8 XFINITY WINS LAST YEAR. WHAT HAVE YOU FOCUSED ON THIS YEAR TO GET THESE CARS BACK TO WHERE THEY’RE NOW BACK UP AT THE FRONT? “It’s just in the details. Typically, when you get behind it’s never one glaring thing, so we’ve worked on a lot of things and it’s all areas from the engine side to the bodies to the setups to the details of how we go about the race weekend. It’s really just been a lot of little things that we’ve done and we still have a little ways to go, but I feel like we’re on the right track.”
BRIAN WILSON CONTINUED – “I would echo what Mike said right there. We really had to focus on the details. I think the races where we’ve had two cars has definitely helped us, being able to have double the information throughout a weekend, so a weekend like this is very important. And then coming back to tracks the second time around with all the rules changes during the off-season that doesn’t hurt ever. We showed up with the setup that was very close to the first race and really it was just basics and just working on the car and making the handling better to where I don’t feel like we had the best car tonight, but we certainly were in position and Joey was able to have a great restart. It’s just kind of getting that momentum and working on the details.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW THE BALANCE OF THE CAR NEEDS TO BE PERFECT AT A TRACK LIKE CHARLOTTE? “Charlotte definitely throws everybody a curveball, especially when you expect it to be a night race and it ends up being a day race after a Cup race. There was a lot more rubber on the track than what we normally see in the XFINITY race, so there were a lot of variables there. After the Cup race I debriefed with Joey for a while, trying to get a feel for where the track had gone, and then we even at the start of the race we were not where we needed to be. On every stop we had to work on the car all the way through. Charlotte is always a challenge, especially when you start off and you’re not very close and then you know that at the end of the race it’s gonna be dark. There were quite a few challenges tonight. I’m not gonna say that we nailed it perfect, but by the end we were good. We were in the ballpark on handling and obviously good enough to be able to get the win.”
