Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Pocono 400 – Pocono Raceway
Sunday, June 11, 2017
BLANEY CAPTURES FIRST CAREER CUP SERIES WIN
· Ryan Blaney registered his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win today, giving Ford a weekend sweep.
· The win is No. 99 for Wood Brothers Racing and its first since 2011 when Trevor Bayne won the Daytona 500.
· The Wood Brothers have won at least one Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race in each of the last six decades.
· The win clinches a spot in the 2017 NASCAR Playoffs for Blaney, joining fellow Ford drivers Kurt Busch, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Brad Keselowski.
· Blaney is the 18th different driver to win a Cup race with the Wood Brothers.
· Blaney is the 82nd different driver to win a Cup race with Ford, and the first new winner since Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won at Talladega earlier this year.
· Today’s win is Ford’s 654th all-time in Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series competition.
· The win is Fusion’s 85th MENCS triumph since becoming Ford’s flagship vehicle in 2006.
DRIVERS WHO HAVE WON MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES RACES WITH THE WOOD BROTHERS
18 different drivers have now won races for the Wood Brothers. Ryan Blaney became the latest in a long line of success for the 21 team, led of course by David Pearson’s 43 career wins with the organization.
Full List of Wood Brothers Winning Drivers: David Pearson (43); Cale Yarborough (13); Neil Bonnett (9); Marvin Panch (8); A.J. Foyt (5); Glen Wood (4); Dan Gurney (4); Speedy Thompson (2); Kyle Petty (2); Tiny Lund (1); Curtis Turner (1); Donnie Allison (1); Buddy Baker (1); Dale Jarrett (1); Morgan Shepherd (1); Elliott Sadler (1); Trevor Bayne (1); Ryan Blaney (1)
RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – DOES THE REALITY MATCH THE DREAM? “I think it exceeds the dream a little bit. I grew up watching my dad race on this race track and it’s so cool to get the Wood Brothers in victory lane, number one, and to do it here at a race track that is really close to Ohio – a home to me – is pretty awesome.”
TAKE US THROUGH THE PASS FOR THE LEAD. “Kyle stayed out and he was on a little bit older tires and it looked like he was getting pretty tight, especially off of one and that’s where new tires really seemed to come alive because you could hold the line and get runs on him, downshift and get next to him. I had a big run on him off of three and he did a good job blocking, and we were able to get under him, but then I had to hold the 4 off. He was super-fast. I can’t thank Kevin enough for racing me clean. That was really cool of him, but it was definitely hectic. Hopefully the fans liked it. It was really cool.”
WHAT DID YOU HAVE TO DO TO HOLD HARVICK OFF? “Just not mess up. He was a little bit better than us all day and then we obviously had clean air, which is king at a lot of places, especially here, and he was able to get to us but not get a run on us. We kind of stalled him out and I just had to hit our marks and not mess up. That was the biggest thing was to hold the line. If I could do that, I knew I had a good shot at holding him off. That’s what kind of went through my mind.”
WHAT DID YOU WANT TO SAY TO THE CREW AT THE END, BUT YOU COULDN’T BECAUSE THE RADIO DIDN’T WORK? “I wanted to pick Eddie and Len up. I wanted to find them and pick them up, but it figures the one race we don’t have radio communication we end up winning it. Maybe we should turn the radio off more often, but I wanted to try to find Eddie and Len. I wanted to give them a ride to victory lane. That would have been cool, but maybe if we can get another one we’ll be able to do that.”
Ford Finishing Order
1st – Ryan Blaney
2nd – Kevin Harvick
4th – Kurt Busch
5th – Brad Keselowski
11th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
16th – Danica Patrick
17th – Clint Bowyer
21st – Trevor Bayne
23rd – Joey Logano
25th – David Ragan
26th – Darrell Wallace Jr.
27th – Landon Cassill
32nd – Matt DiBenedetto
KEVIN HARVICK – No. 4 Busch Beer Ford Fusion – “I just want to thank everyone on our Busch/Jimmy John’s Ford. They gave me a good car. I got behind a couple times and had a fast enough car to make it back up. And then I missed a shift from third to second. I just have to thank the Roush Yates engine shop for building a pretty sturdy engine because it should have blown up and it never blew up. I think there at the end I just couldn’t get into the corner like we needed to all day and I couldn’t stop like I needed to. (He) could charge the corner, so I needed for him to make a mistake and try to get up underneath him on the exit of the corner. He never made a mistake and did a great job and ended up winning the race.”
KURT BUSCH – No. 41 Haas Automation/Monster Energy Ford Fusion – “It was warm and we battled really hard today and had a nice, consistent run. I just didn’t have any special speed, but we ran good lap times, so I’m really proud of our Haas Automation/Monster Energy guys. It’s great to see a Ford in victory lane, so congratulations to the Wood Brothers. They deserve this. To see Ryan Blaney win, he’s gonna be a superstar in this sport. NASCAR loves him. We love him. He’s a good kid and I’m gonna keep pushing hard, though. We’re chiseling away at this and we’re gonna get in good position.”
POINTS IN ALL THREE STAGES JUST LIKE CHARLOTTE. A CONSISTENT RUN. “That’s the big thing is we just have to race the car within its boundaries. I overstepped its boundary last week in Dover because that restart where I got sideways and lost it and wrecked it. Today, I was much more patient with it and fourth-place is good.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – THE CAUTION CAME AT THE RIGHT TIME, BUT WHAT HAPPENED ON THE RESTART? “I just didn’t get enough go on the restart, which was a bummer. I don’t know, I feel like I probably could have won it if I had just gotten that launch. Kyle got a great launch. He went a tiny bit before the line, but not enough to where NASCAR was gonna call it, and I didn’t get the launch I needed.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 38 Overton’s Ford Fusion – “We had good strategy by Derrick Finley and our 38 team. We had one weak run – the second-to-last run when we were racing for the lucky dog. I don’t know if we had a funny set of tires or if we went a little too far on an adjustment, but that was our weakest run. All in all, we made improvements on the car. We just have to start a little bit better at the beginning of these races, but I’m proud of this Overton’s team. They had good strategy and a good day on pit road and we were able to salvage a decent finish.”
LANDON CASSILL – No. 34 CSX Play it Safe Ford Fusion – “We got it better later, but we just didn’t have a very good first half of the race and we never had a chance to fight back.”
KEVIN HARVICK PRESS CONFERENCE
KEVIN HARVICK – No. 4 Busch Beer Ford Fusion – CAN YOU WALK US THROUGH YOUR RACE? “Yeah, the guys did a great job. Really proud of the engine shop. I don’t know how the engine didn’t blow up with the third‑to‑second shift. Obviously the durability is good enough in the engines to do that. But we had a really fast car. Seemed like the caution came out there at the end of that second stage, and then we got back behind, and I think we were 23rd when we restarted and got back up towards the front and had another caution, and got almost all the way back towards the front, but I had a tough time driving in the corner all day. We never could stop like we needed to all weekend, so you just had to be really careful with the brakes. If I’d over‑drive it for a lap or two the pedal would start going down, and then I was really at a deficit. So I had to be very aware of where I let off every lap. The 21 could charge the corner a little bit harder than I could, and my best bet, the way I passed people all day was waiting for him to slip up off the bottom, and he never slipped up off the bottom, so just didn’t have enough laps to finish that last pass off, and Ryan did a good job of not slipping a wheel with the amount of laps that he had left and was able to hold on.
KEVIN HARVICK CONTINUED — IS THIS TRACK THE TOUGHEST ON BRAKES? “Honestly, we don’t use a lot of brake. It’s funny because the teams all hear that and then they come with the smallest brakes that you can put on the car, pretty much everybody. So it’s a balance between having big enough brakes because you don’t want to carry the weight and having the stopping power that you need to get in the corners. You know, we’ll definitely do something different. Obviously with this aero package it’s a lot different with the way that the cars slow down and how much drag they have on the cars. They don’t slow down like they used to and they have more speed going down the straightaways.”
WHERE WERE YOUR STRONG POINTS TODAY AND CAN YOU TALK ABOUT TRYING TO RUN RYAN DOWN? “Yeah, we ran him down, just never could charge the corner hard enough to get to his bumper. That was our only weakness. I mean, we had the car where we needed it pretty much in every corner, just couldn’t charge any of the corners like I needed to with the stopping power that I had. Just really had to manage that, but everywhere else, the car handled flawlessly all day and didn’t really make any adjustments on it other than a little bit of air here and there.”
THOUGHTS ON TWO FORDS BATTLING FOR THE WIN. “Yeah, you know, these young guys winning is important for our sport. Obviously as our team, we want to win, but these young guys have to get into Victory Lane to get these fans that don’t like me and Kyle and the rest of the guys, that fan base that’s available and new, the younger crowd has to win, and today Ryan was able to do that, so not only is it good for him, but it’s good for the whole sport.”
HOW DID YOU LIKE DOING THE BROADCAST YESTERDAY? “You know, I’ve been all but sick all week worried about it. I wish everybody knew how hard it is to do Adam and Mike Joy’s job. I didn’t do very well at it, but it took a while for me to get used to having people talking in my head while I was talking. The flow of it was a little bit rough in the beginning, but I felt like as we all got comfortable and got going, it was fun, and it’s great to step outside the box and challenge yourself to do other things, and I thought after the first two segments it went really good, and I think everybody got comfortable with it and had a lot of fun.”
DARRELL WALLACE JR. PRESS CONFERENCE
DARRELL WALLACE JR. – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – “Yeah. It’s a heck of a way to start my weekend and heck of a way to end my weekend, passing out. Patting myself on the back for that.
I’m just so bummed out and frustrated with myself. I know my family is going to be hard on me after this not to be so hard on myself, but I’m competitive and I want to win races and I want to lead laps. Just wanted to have a good showing, and to speed four, five times, same segment, that was pretty tough to swallow, and then this race just going green the whole time and just ‑‑ it was just not our day. I didn’t have everything lined up, and thought I had the right mindset going into it. I told our spotter Joel to be a little conservative to start out with pit road, and we’ll creep up to it. I guess we were already there.
I’m so used to analog tachs and everything, and this digital stuff I’ve got to figure out. I’ll say I’m not a fan of it right now. It’s jumping around too much. You just don’t get a true feel of what you’re running down pit road. A lot of other guys say it’s fine, so I’ve just got to figure out what I’ve got to do better. But it’s just frustrating on my part.
But aside from that, I will cheer up and thank everybody involved in this process. This was a wonderful day for me, a wonderful day for the sport. I wish we could have got a little bit better finish in our Smithfield Ford, but I’m just thankful for the opportunity. I’ve been dreaming about this since I was a little kid, being in the Cup Series, and now it’s here, and I made a name for myself. I thought I ran a pretty decent race, just kind of running there by myself, passed a couple people, tried not to make anybody too mad, and hopefully earned a lot of respect from those guys out there. I definitely had a blast. At the same time I was a little frustrated. But we’ll build off of it. I’ll practice more with the dash and go debrief with the team, and we’ll just get better.”
Q. Two questions: One, what did it feel like stepping into the 43 and taking the green flag for the first time? And two, your best bud earlier in the week said, Dude, we’ve got to get photos, this is an iconic weekend. He’s in Victory Lane. You’ve got to feel good about that.
“Yeah, I’d like to get 50 percent or 5 percent of what he won since that picture happened and I think I was a good luck charm. But hats off to everybody on the 21 team. So pumped for him. 7:00 ‑‑ oh, he won’t get back until late. He’ll probably still want to go party tonight, so we’ll be ready for that. But just the start, you know ‑‑ climbing in that thing, I thought I handled my emotions very well. Didn’t get nervous at all. We were out there just kind of warming up the tires and the green flag fell and we were off. We were way too tight at the beginning, lost a lot of ground, but I was good. I was like, we’ll settle in here, get a pit stop and get her right, and that was it. Pit road, I didn’t want to come back down pit road all day. If I could have stayed out all day, I would have. But a special moment for everybody watching, for me. I know I got my mom, my dad, my girlfriend here, even my neighbor, next‑door neighbor flew up here to come watch this. That’s pretty special. But it was really cool, a really fun day. To set aside my selfishness, this was a bad‑ass day.”
Q. What did you mean by you passed out? Were you dehydrated after the race?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: I don’t know another form of passing out. I don’t know another form of passing out. There’s only one way to pass out. I just kind of looked at my ‑‑ I don’t know what I was looking at, and then all of a sudden I was like, all right, let’s go to Victory Lane, let’s go congratulate Ryan. I’m all good.
Q. Were you dehydrated?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: No, it’s happened three times now where I’m very hard on myself and I’m super pissed off at myself, and I’m just so mad I just pass out. Competitive.
Q. I talked to Drew after the race and he said they’re thrilled with your performance, despite everything. He said if you would have had perhaps another practice you guys would have been able to practice pit road, which a lot of people do during the happy hour and you guys just didn’t have that time. But it was the biggest thing acclimating to ‑‑ because you seemed to have plenty of speed out there. Was it just the digital dash since you weren’t accustomed to having that in the XFINITY car?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: Yeah, no doubt. We switched it from happy hour, and I jumped right in my XFINITY car, and they sent me a picture of how we could switch up ‑‑ there’s so many pages on there, it’s like an iPad in that thing, and we switched it up to get to my liking, bigger lights, just a bigger tach so I could see everything going on, and we changed our lights around, and the third time, the fourth time, whatever time it was, I was way under the limit I thought, and it still ‑‑ we were busted for segment 2. So somebody whoever was working segment 2, I’ll find you later. (Laughter.)
Q. First off, you’re okay, right?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: Yeah, I’m good.
Q. And second off, this is a big day for you, but what are your expectations moving forward now?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: We’ll definitely go to Michigan. I like that place. Not that I don’t like this place. I think I run a little bit better at Michigan. Big speeds there, so need to be prepped for that. But like we just talked about, I’ll be spending all of first practice running up and down pit road, bringing it in hot, running the length of pit road each and every run. But I’m looking forward to it. This is a first step. I know we ran a good, clean race, and that’s all you can ask, didn’t wreck the car, brought it home in one piece, so I’m pumped for the guys. They’re all pumped up. But it’s something I’ve had since I started playing sports is just a competitiveness, and I get really hard on myself when I mess up at if it’s playing video games. My girlfriend gets so mad at me when I’m playing this golf game on my phone and I lose, and I want to chuck my phone across the room. It’s just something I’ve got to work on. I like to win. I can drop the mic and pick my nose, but I don’t want to do that.
Q. Despite everything that happened, you still finished only one lap down. If things would have been cleaner, do you have a sense of where you might have finished with a better day?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: Yeah, I think it just wasn’t our day, honestly. We’d be in the Lucky Dog spot and go another 20 laps and pit sequence would shake out and we were the third car a lap down now. I tried to do everything I could before the pit stops and just ‑‑ this place is all about strategy, and that never helped us.
There was a moment where things got bottled up on a restart and 37 and 38 were supposed to be in opposite spots, and just a whirlwind of things were going on at that moment. But if we could have got back on the lead lap, I definitely think we had a top‑20 car, which would have been awesome. If I would have come out here and finished 26th one lap down with no mistakes, the same mistake four or five times in a row, I’d be fine. But it’s pretty embarrassing on my part.
Q. Aside from the pit speeding stuff, what’s the next biggest thing you want to work on for Michigan?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: Just getting more comfortable in these cars, having the raw speed. I was figuring some things out, figuring out which tire I could feel out there, and that was really cool, as opposed to the XFINITY car, I was talking to Blaney before, you’re kind of just sliding around, not really in the racetrack. Here you can feel each tire, so I was kind of pumped up about that, so some things to keep in the memory bank and talk at the debrief about to see how we can be better. At the end of the day, it was my first race. I did okay, but I want to be better.
Q. Just to clarify, was it definitely just human error? Sometimes with pit speeding it can be calibration ‑‑
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: Yeah, the analog you can get it right to 4,000, right where we want to be, and keep it there. You get with this digital stuff, it’s jumping around. Yeah, I’m just going to leave it at that.
Q. I just wondered if you could talk a little bit more, this was a huge day for you, and it was a huge day for your best friend. I mean, the fact that he gets his first win on the day you’re making your first start, it’s really a pretty neat thing. If you could just maybe elaborate a little more on that
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: Yeah, I’m so pumped up for Ryan. He’s been wanting this bad, and I think he got ‑‑ no, he did not get his first truck win. He got his first truck win in Iowa. I was watching that. Second truck win, thank you. So he knows how to get around this place. I should have talked to him. That’s the only person I didn’t walk to, and that might have helped us out. I could have talked to him about pit road. But super pumped for him, his family. We grew up together, so they’re all family, and it’s really cool to be best friends with him, and to see him get it on this special day for the sport after that picture we took this morning, all the stars were aligned for him.
Q. And really you were a part of it versus not racing on Sunday and watching it.
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: Yeah, I would have been posting a video from me screaming at the TV if I wasn’t racing today. It was pretty cool. I’ll have to tell you, the last three laps I was watching it on the big screen. As I was going down the frontstretch, he was going down the backstretch, him and Harvick there. So it was pretty cool to hold off Harvick.
Q. Darrell, how much did stage racing affect the outcome and the pit strategies both days, and were you able to keep up with all that?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: No, I was not. Cup racing is (clicking tongue) a lot different, and we only could do a 35‑lap fuel run, and the stages were 50. So a lot of people were short pitting, and you’ve got to be on top of that, and drew made some really good calls to do that. We just ‑‑ first trip down pit road, it cost us, and that put us behind the 8‑ball the whole rest of the day.
I think it ‑‑ yesterday ‑‑ I don’t even want to talk about yesterday. I was so bored yesterday. But today, it’s something ‑‑ I like the stage racing. It breaks it up, gives you a break, let’s you regather your thoughts, try a different strategy for that next stage. It just didn’t work out for us.
Q. You had such a strong car at Dover last weekend. I know what you were saying, how hard you are on yourself. Was that the best ever XFINITY car you’ve had in your career?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: Yes. Yes. No doubt. That was the best car we’ve had with our four guys, and man, I just got loose there on that restart. The caution came out and it reset, but we over adjusted on our balance there, and we couldn’t get back up to the 42 and the 22. But that was a lot of fun. I love going to that place. But maybe next time.
Q. I know we only had four cautions all day here, but I was wondering if you could talk about the restarts here. Obviously it’s always kind of a story line and how much everyone fans out. What was that like from your perspective as your first Cup start?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: Yeah, I think I was a little bit too far back in the field to really be in the eye of the storm and get to experience that. You’d see it up ahead and it would all kind of funnel out and ended up working. The start of the second stage, two people popped the wall, 14 and somebody, so I was just like, all right, make sure you don’t do that and keep the car clean. I thought I did that okay. I mean, I was really conservative today. A lot of people said it’s not my job right now to go out here and set the world on fire and do everything under the sun to show everybody.
For me it’s just to go out here, run a smooth, clean race, like I did, not mistake‑free, but to come out here with a clean race car, we got a little bit of scuffs on the left side, but that’s it. That’s one big accomplishment for us.
Q. After dreaming about it all these years, was there anything about Cup racing today that surprised you, or was it everything that you expected it to be, the level of competition, just everything about the race?
DARRELL WALLACE JR.: I knew jumping into this that it wasn’t going to be easy. I’ve always said you shuffle ‑‑ you get shuffled back in trucks and XFINITY, you lose seven, ten spots. You shuffle here, you get 25th to 30th. These guys are good. These guys are here for a reason. There’s no more climbing. I’ve been in the ladder rungs for the last couple years and now I’m at the top. There’s nothing else I can do but just to go out there and just get better and better and learn how this sport works and how this series works. It was tough. You know, running where I was, we were running for the Lucky Dog spot and I was driving my tail off, and those guys were just pulling away. So just some things I’ve got to focus in on and then remember.
RYAN BLANEY WINNER’S PRESS CONFERENCE
Please walk us through the pass of Kyle Busch and holding off Kevin Harvick for the win.
RYAN BLANEY: “Yeah, so we did a great job ‑‑ I say we. Jeremy Bullins and everybody did a great job of positioning ourselves to start towards the front on tires. When the 18 stayed out, he looked to be the best car all day, and it’s almost a curse when you’re that good. Everyone just kind of does the opposite of what you do in that situation. We’ve been on the bad side of that before.
Once we got to second, I knew he was going to fall off pretty hard, and it was just a matter of getting by him before everyone else. All the other really fast cars on our strategy got to second, as well, or got to us. And it was a pretty good race to get by Kyle there at the end of the race, and then having to hold Kevin off was really tough. He was fast all day, and you just got to not mess up and hit your marks and take airway and props to him, he drove me really clean, and I have the utmost respect for him doing that, and I’ve seen him win countless races passing cars within the last 10 laps, and he does a great job with that. But thank you to him again for racing me clean.
But it was exciting in the car for sure. Hopefully it’s exciting for the fans, and like we said, we just put ourselves in a spot to capitalize on it like we did today.”
Jeremy, this 21 team has had speed the whole season, consistent speed. You guys have been so close; what has been the key to really getting this 21 car up front and in position to win week in and week out?
JEREMY BULLINS: “Just experience. I mean, we started this thing part‑time in 2015, built a team, put people together, made changes here and there throughout, and have a group of people now that I feel like can compete as a team with anybody. We’ve had good cars all year. We’ve had good speed all year.
The last few weeks we’ve been really fast and just had some unfortunate things happen but felt like we were in a position a couple times to take advantage of that, and today we put it all together and overcame some stuff, and it all worked out.”
Len and Eddie, you’ve had so many legendary drivers in the seat of that 21 car; what makes this guy sitting to your left so special?
EDDIE WOOD: “He’s special all right. Like Jeremy said, we put the deal together in 2015, and right away you knew you had ‑‑ Ryan was going to be special because he just had speed, you know, everywhere we went he had speed, and that’s something that doesn’t come easily. We were on a brand new team, everybody was new, young, and it just ‑‑ every week he had fast cars, and a lot of it is due to the driver.
You know, given our alliance with Team Penske that is second to none, that just really makes a big difference, and Jeremy came over to be a crew chief, and it just all worked out. Blaney is on his way now. He outrun two guys today that are champions, and they’re at the top of their game, and to outrun them to win a race here, this is one of the toughest tracks that we go to. Always has been. And I’m really, really proud of him, and he’s here. He’s arrived now.”
LEN WOOD: “You know, I think when he pulled those rookie stripes off in Daytona, it made a difference in him. I won’t call it more aggressive, but it’s kind of, and it shows every week. We’ve been fast everywhere we’ve been. We’ve had issues. We were very close to a win at Texas, very close at Kansas, and it kind of dawned on me, I said, we’re not going to win a race where it’s expected that day. We’ll win somewhere that we don’t expect it, and it was here today.”
Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Pocono 400 – Pocono Raceway
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Page 9
Q. You have had other opportunities where you were out front or something came up; did it help not having the communication back with the pits because I know of the radio issues. Were you able
RYAN BLANEY: “Yes.” (Laughter.)
Q. Did that put you kind of in only your own head, so to speak, and did you drive any differently this time, like this is not going to happen again, I’m going to win this race?
RYAN BLANEY: “Thanks for that. I appreciate it. I was saying we should just unplug my microphone more so I’m not complaining as much throughout the race. But that was ‑‑ just one of the problems that we had, we had a loose wheel early and had to come back down after that, and we didn’t have track position after that, and there was such little cautions here that you couldn’t drive your way back up there unless you were just lights out better than everybody else. That’s where they did a great job of putting us in a spot to where we have a shot at it at the end.
You know, the old hand on the door for ‑‑ was it tight, hand on the door? Door is tight, roof was loose, thumb up, thumb down if it was good or not or keyed the mic ‑‑ because they could hear the mic key, they just couldn’t hear me.”
JEREMY BULLINS: “There was a lot of Morse code.”
RYAN BLANEY: “I could say it put you in your own head a little bit more if you’re not talking as much. No, I would still key the radio and I actually forgot the radio was broken after the last pit stop. I was trying to talk, and they’re like, yeah, we still can’t hear you. I completely forgot it was still broken. It’s definitely something I’ve never had happen before, but luckily I could hear them and we were able to work something out.”
Q. Did you drive those last few laps any differently than you had ‑‑ you’ve been in position to possibly win before, but were you any more determined?
RYAN BLANEY: “I didn’t really drive any differently than I would have before. You just try not to make mistakes. One little mistake and he was going to get by us pretty easy. You just try to hit your marks like you do all day, and I think what really was able to hold him off is I started downshifting in the tunnel turn, and he was doing that when laps got on our tires and I was able to keep our rpms up and get runs off that corner. I thought that was the game changer that brought us to kind of even with him or at least closer to him.
But no, I didn’t really drive anything different. You just try the best you can to focus and do what you do all day, which is hit your marks and try not to make mistakes.”
Q. I want to talk first about this weekend, but this weekend I know was special for you, especially seeing Bubba make his first start here, getting the picture before this race. And also being able to hold off champions like Harvick and Kyle Busch there, how special was this victory for you personally?
RYAN BLANEY: “Yeah, we need Bubba in the Cup Series more. The one start he makes, I win the damn race. He needs to keep running. No, it was cool to have him. I don’t know where he finished. I know they had problems on pit road or something like that. But I was behind him a little bit and he seemed to be doing a really great job. But that’s special for him.
But to me, obviously your first win is special, and to do it with the Wood Brothers and at a place where I vividly remember coming and watching my dad race here so much is really special, as well. And this is a hard racetrack. This is one of the toughest racetracks we go to, of playing with where to shift, how to shift, what your car needs. It’s three completely different corners, and I felt like we were super strong through 1 and the tunnel and struggled in 3, and you’re going to have that.
It’s just really neat to be able to get these guys their 99th win and hopefully we can go for 100 here.”
Q. Have you talked to Dave yet?
RYAN BLANEY: “I haven’t had my phone. No, I’m excited to get back and talk to him. They had a big night last night up at Sharon Speedway. My dad’s racetrack and Motorcraft actually sponsored that night, Ford and Motorcraft. That was a big deal for them to put that fan appreciation night on. Good fortune, I guess, they do something like that and we go win the race. That’s pretty cool. But I haven’t talked to him yet.”
Q. You sent me a copy of your lottery ticket last night and obviously you’re here because you didn’t win the lottery. Is this better than winning the lottery, having your protégé in Victory Lane?
EDDIE WOOD: “Yeah, this is way better. This will last forever. Every win you get is very, very special, and especially when you get like Ryan’s first win, and we’ve had a number of kids that come through our car that won their first race in our car. Dale Jarrett did, Kyle did, and to be part of that, that now he’s ‑‑ we can always say he won his first race with us, and it’ll always be that way. But it was a great day, and like the radio thing, and I mean, it was just like us going back to the old days with no radios. You asked about which it was; we used to have a piece of gray tape on the dash that would have roof loose, door push, and that’s what you went by. It just kind of took me back, and then right there at the end, the way he was trying to get away from Harvick and dropping down to the inside like that, Neil Bonnett did that in 1980 here, and went on to win the race.
I don’t know, it was just like I had flashbacks. It was really cool.”
LEN WOOD: “He’s like the 21st driver to win in our car, too.”
RYAN BLANEY: “Really? That’s awesome.”
Q. Ryan, I had an interview with your dad here 10 years ago actually in the late race, and what we talked about was trying to stay in the top 35, you know, just so he was guaranteed a start the next week. And now here you are not very far from where your dad grew up in Victory Lane. What does it feel like to put the Blaney name in Victory Lane in the pinnacle of the sport?
RYAN BLANEY: “Yeah, my dad grew up not too far from here. He was kind of on the Ohio‑Pennsylvania border in Hartford, but to do it so close to where he grew up, and I remember this place so much. We always had a bunch of family come out here and watch this race because he’s from right down the road.
But yeah, actually he just dawned that on me that my dad never unfortunately won in the Cup Series, and even though I felt like if he would have got the right opportunities, he would have done very well, and that’s something that just dawned on me. Thanks for reminding me of that. That’s really cool. It was really special a few weeks ago we won at Charlotte in the XFINITY Series where he won ‑‑ it was Busch back then, that was his one Busch win, and now to do it this week, getting Blaney in the Cup Series in Victory Lane, that’s really neat. I just figured that out. Thanks. I appreciate that.”
Q. How important is today with Bubba making his debut and you bringing the Wood Brothers back to Victory Lane? How big of a day is that for the next generation of racers?
RYAN BLANEY: “I think it’s a great day. We’ve had a bunch of new winners this year. Ricky got his first win this year. I think there was another ‑‑ who else? Austin won the 600. So it’s a huge year for the rookies, and then Bubba making his first start this weekend. That’s a big deal. Luckily we were able to get a picture before the race today with our cars. That was really neat. But it’s nice to be part of kind of this younger group of drivers, and I think we’re all kind of coming into our own. Erik Jones had a great day today. He run third. He had a super fast car all day. So I think it’s pretty neat to just be part of the group. You always want to be part of the group, and luckily we’re able to finally get in Victory Lane because I’ve been pretty jealous of Larson and Austin and Ricky for them getting to Victory Lane, them being young guys, as well, and now we can finally add our name to that group.”
Q. For Ryan and Jeremy, we’re just past the midway point of the regular season, so I just wanted to get like an evaluation for the first half of the regular season versus what you’re going to do for the second half.
JEREMY BULLINS: “More of the same. I mean, we’re in the Chase now, and the reality of that is the way the points structure is, you have to win races to win a championship, and so there were some times like the Texas thing, I got questioned about going for stage points and all of that, but at the end of the day, all that stuff is going to add up at the end of the year. We went into the season thinking we could win a race and we could contend with these guys so that’s the mindset we’ve had racing these races and trying to be aggressive at times. That’s certainly not going to change. I feel like we’ve proven that we can do this. We beat some of the best today. We had a fast car. So I think for us, it’s just more of the same, trying to carry on and build on this. We’ve said from the beginning that it’s a process of trying to build a team that can do this week in and week out, and we’re getting there, so we’ve just got to keep working hard and keep doing the things that have us here today.”
RYAN BLANEY: “Pretty much what Jeremy said. I feel like our approach this year has been the right approach of going out there and trying to win races and win stages at the same time. To be honest with you, before today, without all the stage points we’ve gotten, we would be in big trouble. I think what kind of kept us alive here in the past month and a half when we’ve had our struggles. But I don’t think we do anything different. We’ll go out and this team obviously proved we’re capable of winning today, and I think we can go do that most weeks, and you just always want to kind of build your playoff stock. I like the rules changes of you’ve got to race all year. You get a win and you’re in, but you can’t relax because that just sets you up for the end of the year.”
Q. I was going to ask about your father, also; have you spoken to anyone from your family yet?
RYAN BLANEY: “No, I leave my phone in the bus before intros.”
JEREMY BULLINS: “He texted me so I’m sure he’s texted him.”
RYAN BLANEY: “He probably texted you before me.”
JEREMY BULLINS: “Congrats. About time.”
RYAN BLANEY: “That’s a typical Dave thing to say. Did he text you, I can’t believe you didn’t screw up, give the win away?”
Q. Was the communication issue, was that for the whole race or was it part way through?
JEREMY BULLINS: “About lap 40, about two thirds of the way through the first stage.”
Q. And when you realized what was going through your mind and what did you try to –
JEREMY BULLINS: “What happened was I kept hearing something key up, but there was no noise, and I knew right away that it was the mic in his helmet because that’s why you didn’t hear the car running, you didn’t hear any background noise. I knew exactly what was wrong as soon as it happened, so I asked him, are you trying to talk to us and I heard it key up again, so I’m like, okay, there’s no way to fix this without giving up a bunch of time, so we’re just going to have to old‑school it and get through it, and it was pretty much that simple.”
Q. For the Wood Brothers, how has the relationship, the technical alliance been with Penske, and how worried are you that you might not have Ryan next year?
EDDIE WOOD: “I’m not going to worry about that today. The relationship ‑‑ see, our relationship with Mr. Penske goes back to the early ’70s. We actually met Roger in Riverside, California, the first race he showed up that we were there in ’72 or ’73 with Mark Donohue and a Matador, and they won that race, and we were parked beside those guys, and in those days we all wore white rental clothes, white shirt, white pants. Everybody did.
Well, when the Penske crowd showed up, they had black pants and they had these white shirts with these things on the top. I don’t know what they were. They were epaulets. I had never seen one, and I thought that was the coolest thing I’d ever saw, and they all had their shirt tails tucked and they were all proper, and we looked like a bunch from no‑telling‑where.
But at that point, we just made a friendship, and then when this opportunity came to team up with Jeremy and Ryan, it just all kind of fell into place, and a lot of people were involved in making all that happen. Our good friend Edsel Ford, he was part of that with Mr. Penske, and just things really happened. It’s just a great relationship. I mean, as the results show.
Everyone treats us like family over there. The people that work over there that Len and I raced against in the early ’70s, they’re still there. Like no one leaves. You go to work for Mr. Penske, you don’t leave. You don’t want to. That’s just the kind of group they are, and we just love our relationship with them.”
Q. Eddie, you mentioned all the drivers who have won their first race with you, but the flipside of that those drivers eventually move on somewhere else, and I know Roger was saying last week, that third car possibility next year for Ryan next year at Penske. Is it just sort of understood that like you guys are a team where younger drivers are groomed and move on someplace else, and while you guys have that time together it’s great, but maybe there’s always a sense that it’s not going to last long‑term?
EDDIE WOOD: “I mean, the relationship we have is great. Nobody can ever take this away. Just like with Trevor Bayne, nobody can ever take that win away. You know, when Ryan came to drive our car, it was actually kind of understood that he was going to be moving on probably the next year, and then it didn’t happen, and whenever it happens, that’s fine. Everybody will move on, and he’ll go on to bigger and better and greater things. He’s going to win a lot of races, and I think he’s going to win some championships. Whatever we do from there, it’ll be fine. I think you and I have had conversations like this before.
Yeah, we’re just excited to be where we are. It’s a great place to be.”
Q. Do you have any thoughts on that, Ryan?
RYAN BLANEY: “What he said. I like where I’m at.”
Q. Ryan, you kind of touched on it earlier how difficult this place is. But you’ve had some experience here before, you got a truck win here. How much does that prior experience help you coming into a place like this and to conquer here today?
RYAN BLANEY: “Any race you have here before always helps. You always kind of put it in your memory bank, and that truck race in 2013 we won on restarts. We didn’t have a ton of restarts, but that restart, the last one, put us in a spot to be in second and be the closest car to the front on tires. Yeah, there are some things that I learned in that truck race that you always just ‑‑ whether you think about it or not, you just kind of subconsciously always just kind of becomes part of how you drive and how you do restarts and things like that. Yeah, I could say that probably somewhere embedded in your memory bank there’s stuff you learn from back then when you’re a kid to apply today in the Cup Series.”
Q. Ryan, growing up I’m sure you maybe dreamed about how your first win was going to ever play out. How close to that dream and reality kind of mix today?
RYAN BLANEY: “You know, yeah, you always dream about winning a Cup race. It’s the ultimate ‑‑ you know, it’s one of your goals. It’s right below a championship. Like I said, when I watched my dad race no matter where it was, forever, I always appreciated how these races played out, whether it was here or anywhere else. But that’s what you always dream about. But don’t really think about it too much. You’re not like, okay, I’ve got to get this win this week. You just kind of go into each weekend and try to do the best you can. You can have confidence to run well, but I’m not like, oh, if I win this race I’m going to do this and this and this, and you just kind of focus on the task at hand. But it definitely is a little bit more surreal than I expected. It’s so cool to do it and with a great team, as well. This is what I always watched and wanted to do as a kid, so I got lucky to get opportunities to make it happen.”
Q. Len and Edward, how tough has it been over the years for you guys to kind of survive and endure, and I’m sure days like this make it all worth it, maybe all the things you had to go through to kind of keep this thing going.
EDDIE WOOD: “Yeah, it’s like that for everyone. You go through really low lows and the highs are really, really high, but there’s just enough highs to level out the lows. There’s probably a lot more lows than there are highs, but we’ve got a lot of in between that’s okay, too. But you just take it one day at a time and one situation at a time and one crisis at a time, however you want to say it. There’s always something going on or changing in racing, and you just have to adapt and figure out a way to make it work. We’ve always been fortunate enough to have good support from Ford Motor Company to help us through the hard times, and then you have a day like today, you don’t even remember the tough times.”
Q. Brad interviewed you in Victory Lane. You did that to him yesterday, so how was it to reverse roles?
RYAN BLANEY: “Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, so I was part of the FOX broadcast yesterday, and I just drew ‑‑ myself, Erik and Stenhouse drew whoever was going to go first, second or third, and I drew Victory Lane and Brad happened to win, and that was so cool to interview him in Victory Lane, and it was awesome to see him pretty much take the microphone from Jamie Little in Victory Lane and like, I’m going to interview you. That was cool to see his support. I wouldn’t be here without Brad to be honest with you. He’s the one who gave me my start in 2012. I started driving his trucks then and led to the Penske deal, led to the Wood Brothers deal, and I would be nothing if it weren’t for him and taking a chance on me. He’s been a huge person I’ve looked up to, and for him to do that, it really, really makes me feel good. Really cool to see his support still as a great person.
Q. Next stop is 100, so how big would that milestone be for the team?
LEN WOOD: “That would be unbelievable to come from where we’ve been the last few years. Our dad and uncles back in the ’60s and ’70s, they were almost unbeatable and built, built those wins up, and we’ve tried to maintain and do better, and I think with Ryan winning and obviously Trevor Bayne in 2011, hopefully we can get that win, No. 100, out of the way soon.”
Q. Ryan, you talk about the young guys, how important it is to be part of that group. Well, Kyle Busch tweets out congratulations, Kurt Busch said you’re going to be the next superstar, Mario Andretti tweets out what an exciting win, great young star. What is it like to have like all these drivers so early in your career give you that sort of respect and accolades?
RYAN BLANEY: “That means a lot, obviously. That’s really cool that they showed their respect. It was so cool on the cool‑down lap to see everybody come up and give you a thumbs‑up. That to me is so cool, to show all the support that they have, whether it’s your best friend or your worst enemy, people you’ve had run‑ins with, they were congratulating me, and that’s cool.
I grew up watching Kyle Busch win Tundra races, Kurt Busch, Mario Andretti. It’s an honor to race with those guys today and to race with Kyle Busch at the end was really cool, and to race with someone I’ve looked up to a bunch when I was growing up, that’s really neat to be racing with him. You try not to think of that when you’re racing. He’s just another competitor. But after the fact, you know, as a fan of those people growing up, I kind of try not to fan out a little bit. I looked up to those people as a kid, as I said, so that was really cool. I’m excited to see what they all have to say.”
Q. Along the lines with Kyle, he’s not known to be light on anybody on the track, and he’s never had a win here, so you were holding him ‑‑ you passed him and kept him from getting his win, and you held Kevin Harvick off. Were you aware of any of the ancillary things going on?
RYAN BLANEY: “No, not really. You just try to ‑‑ you see the leader and you want to pass him, and then you see whoever is behind you if they’re closing on you or not, which he was, just trying to let them pass you. You don’t really ‑‑ like I said before, you don’t really notice who it is. If it’s Kevin or Kyle or Brad or Joey, you don’t really care who it is. You just want to stay in front of that person or pass that person. So I don’t really think of who it is. You just try to do your best no matter what.”
Q. Would it have mattered if it were Joey or Brad?
RYAN BLANEY: “No, they’re going to race me just as hard as anybody. They want to win, too, and I’ll say it again, Kevin was a really, really class act of not hitting me or getting me really loose, driving me really clean, and that was really cool of him. But it doesn’t really matter who’s back there. They want to win just as bad as you do, and you always have to think about that.”
Q. Ryan, now that you’ve won a race, what are some of your short‑term goals for upcoming weeks?
RYAN BLANEY: “Go try to win the next one. You know, Michigan is a huge race for us, having Ford and Motorcraft and Quick Lane on the car. They’re right down the road. That is a huge race for us, and we always have Edsel sit on the box, and that would be really neat to get him in Victory Lane. So we want to try to do that. Edsel actually just called Eddie. But that was ‑‑ like I said, our mindset doesn’t change. We just want to go out and keep trying to win races and carry this momentum as long as you can and just try to keep building. I don’t think we change up anything.”
Q. Jeremy, on the last caution there, how soon did you know you wanted to take the four tires? There’s a lot of strategy going on there, and how much did Kyle’s decision play into that?
JEREMY BULLINS: “It really didn’t. I think we knew ‑‑ I think we had 15, 16 laps on our tires and there were still 20 to go. Felt like we were not the best car. I felt like the 18 was the best car, so we needed another shot at adjusting it and we needed tires. The guys we were scanning, the guys we felt like we were racing around us were probably going to come, too. So honestly, as soon as the caution came out, it’s like ‑‑ I said, hey, I’m thinking about pitting, out the window, so it was like, okay, cool, here we come.”
Q. Ryan, the next time you meet Daisy Ridley, are you going to tell her what you do for a living?
RYAN BLANEY: “Maybe she watched the race today, and you never know. But you know ‑‑ it could be the difference. You know, I don’t know, if I ever meet her again. If I ever cross paths with her, I still won’t tell her what I do. That’s not cool. But you know, that was really neat. Maybe I’ll run into her again.”
Open invitation to the victory party?
RYAN BLANEY: She’d better get on a plane right now. It’ll actually be going on all night, so she’s got plenty of time to get here.
