Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Auto Club 400 – Auto Club Speedway
Sunday, March 26, 2017
CLINT BOWYER – No. 14 Rush Truck Centers Ford Fusion – “It was just a good weekend. I appreciate everybody’s hard work at Stewart-Haas Racing. Having these teammates and having this group behind you, the organization and the teamwork, it’s just amazing to be a part of it at this point in my career. Thanks to Rush Truck Centers for making this possible. Gene Haas and Tony Stewart for giving me this opportunity. It means a lot to me to be in this 14. I have a lot of fun with these guys. Buga and all these guys mean business. It’s a confidence thing right now, a momentum-builder and we’re getting closer. Obviously, this is a good track for me. I wanted to win that damn thing, but to come home with the wild finish and everything that it was, we’ll take it.”
A GOOD RUN. “It was a good weekend for us. We never showed the speed in practice, but I wasn’t worried about it because I knew the car was really comfortable on the long run and things like that. I was proud of the effort that Buga and all the guys give me each and every week. I’m proud to have Rush Truck Centers on our car this weekend. It’s just a great sponsor and a fun guy. I’m just having fun again. That’s what it’s about.”
DID YOU SEE THIS COMING? “Hell yeah. It better be coming. When you’ve got a team like this that’s organized and as good as they are, it better be.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Auto Club Ford Fusion – “It was up-and-down for sure. Our car was really good on the short runs just like yesterday. Our car was good on the short runs and not good on the long runs. We would lose too much time. We tried to short pit them and got caught with the caution and got stuck down a lap with 20 to go or so. We were able to recover and at one point I thought we were gonna win the race and had some trouble on pit road and lost some spots again, but we were able to make some of them back up and end up with a top-5 out of it with the Auto Club Fusion. It was up-and-down to say the least for the whole weekend for me.”
YOU CAME UP FROM THE BACK FAST. “Yeah, I was able to drive up pretty quick to where we were in the top-10 and we kind of stalled out around seventh. We were good on short runs, but would fall off too hard on the long run. We got caught with the caution while we were trying that green-flag cycle with 30 to go or so. We lost our track position, but were able to get enough cautions and allow us to fight back into the top-5. I thought, ‘Man, we’ve got a shot at winning this thing.’ We were catching them so fast with a newer tire, but another caution came out and we lost some track position on pit road and then we battled back and kept fighting to get back to fifth. Overall, it was a good recovery. Two good recovery days, I guess because we had a short-run car. I guess we need to try to make our car a little bit better on the long run and smooth out some mistakes.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT BATTLING BACK? “It was a battle, but this place is a lot of fun. The track is so wide and tires mean so much. How crazy is it that we’re pitting with half-a-lap on our tires and we’re putting four more on. That’s pretty cool.”
KEVIN HARVICK – No. 4 Busch Beer Ford Fusion – “I feel like we won. Those are the days that championships are made out of right there. To wreck before we even get to the start-finish line, I don’t know exactly what happened in front of me, but, obviously, we got a caved-in grille. They did a great job fixing it. We got some wavearounds and made the car better and made something out of the day. That’s why these guys are who they are and won championships and races because they can make days like that happen.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – “We struggled. We just don’t have the overall grip and speed in our cars, but we’re working hard. Everybody at Richard Petty Motorsports has been working really hard. It’s a big improvement from Atlanta. We gained on it when we went to Vegas and then we’ve kind of gotten flat and stagnant and we haven’t been making as many gains and strides since Atlanta, so we still have some work to do. I’m proud of the effort, we just have to dig deep. We have to keep working hard and get speed in our car and more grip in our car so we can go and compete.”
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion — TALK ABOUT YOUR DAY OVERALL. “I thought we were not great at the beginning, kind of faded at the end of the first stage. I thought at the beginning of the first stage we were really good. We drove up there. In the early part, we seemed to fade late in runs. In the middle part, we had equipment leave the pit box and that put us in a big hole back there, but we did a good job fighting back, putting ourselves in a decent position to have a good finish and a decent shot at (the win). Most re-starts worked in our favor except the last one. We just got put three-wide there and kind of got hurt. Overall not a bad day for us coming back from that pit road penalty. That was pretty good.”
THE CAR SEEMED TO BE GOOD AT THE BEGINNING AND THE END, NOT SO GOOD IN THE SECOND STAGE. “We could fire off pretty decent and then we’d fade in the middle. Then it would start coming to us in the last 10 laps of a run. We got a little bit more consistent at the end of the race.”
