Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Sunday, March 24, 2019
EVENT: STP 500
Ford Finishing Order:
1st – Brad Keselowski
4th – Ryan Blaney
6th – Kevin Harvick
7th – Clint Bowyer
9th – Aric Almirola
10th – Daniel Suarez
15th – Paul Menard
19th – Joey Logano
23rd – Ryan Newman
25th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
26th – David Ragan
29th – Matt Tifft
31st – Michael McDowell
33rd – Corey LaJoie
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Libman Ford Mustang – ASSESS YOUR RACE TODAY. “Long runs, that’s what I needed. I needed long runs and I didn’t want to see that last caution. For like 110-lap run to the finish is what it was gonna be, 120, I was like, ‘Man, that’s perfect. We’re gonna get them here.’ Our car was just starting to come to us. We just got to third and the caution came out and I was like, ‘I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to fire off alright,’ and we didn’t and we kept losing spots on pit road and you can’t have that We would lose at least one or two spots every time we’d come down pit road and you can’t win races like that. We’ve got to clean that up, but, overall, a solid day, it’s just that those guys had a good short-run car and that’s just what it came down to. I was more 50 laps or more, but the last three weeks have been pretty smooth for us. We just have to keep having weekends like this and maybe we’ll be able to win one of these things.”
IS PIT ROAD WHAT YOU HAVE TO CLEAN UP THE MOST? “Yeah, Atlanta and Vegas we had trouble on pit road and it took us out of both races. We had fast enough cars to win, and we’ve cleaned that part up the last three weeks, but today we didn’t have any detrimental things happen on pit road, but it was enough to really hurt us. Coming in second and coming out sixth after the second stage you can’t do that. So some things we have to clean up a little bit and get our cars a little bit better. It’s little things here and there. We’re just working on little stuff, which is nice. You’re not completely overhauling everything, just need to be a little bit better. But, overall, a nice day. It’s nice to have Brad win it. If we couldn’t get it, it’s nice to see him do it.”
KYLE BUSCH SAID IT WAS HARD TO PASS AFTER FIVE LAPS. WHAT DO YOU THINK? “I thought it was easier to pass after five laps. It was kind of hard to pass everybody on restarts because you were hammer down. I didn’t think the cars drove much different. I felt like the rubber laid down a lot quicker than what it has here in the past. It got black really fast and chunked up and I tried to pass Kyle there toward the end of the race before that last caution for 15 laps and he just had to run the top and your right sides if you’re on the bottom you just ding that chunked up rubber and you’d just have no drive, so that’s what made it tough to kind of pass car. You could defend really well. I thought that was neat. There were two lanes to the race track. You could run first or second lane or in the middle. It was kind of neat, so I just felt like the rubber clumped up a little bit more for some reason. I’m not sure why.”
WHAT ABOUT YOUR TEAMMATE DOMINATING LIKE THAT? “He put it on them today. It looked like from the drop of the green flag he was great. Him and the 9 looked like they had some really good racing going on for a while. They swapped back and forth, so that was good for him. He’s great here. He’s proven to be one of the best guys out here. They were on it all day. Like I said, we were kind of swapped. He was better than me short run and I was a little bit better after 50 laps, but it didn’t come down to that. It’s nice for him to get the Penske group another win and get Ford back to Victory Lane.”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED — HOW CLOSE ARE YOU TO WINNING? “We’re right there. We just need a little bit more. It’s so hard to win these races. You’ve got to do everything perfect. You’ve got to be good on pit road. You’ve got to restart good. You’ve got to have a good car on both ends of a run and I feel like we’re really close to where we need to be, just haven’t put it all together. If we keep running top three, top five, you eventually try to put one of these things here together and try to figure out how to break through and get it done.”
IS THERE A LITTLE MORE PRESSURE WHEN BOTH OF YOUR TEAMMATES HAVE WON? “Not really. I don’t feel pressure. Yeah, I want to be part of the club, but I just think we do the best we can week in and week out. This team is capable of it, it’s just that they’ve done some things better than us this year that has worked out for them, so, no I don’t feel pressure. I just want to be part of the club for Penske. I want to win another one for Roger and John Menard and everybody right there, but really no pressure.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Mustang – “It was an OK day for us. I think as you look at our Martinsville stuff it’s been hit or miss. I feel like I was a little better than the 11 and the 12, but you’ve got to be able to get by them on the restarts. We just never could get the car right all day and be able to let off the brake and roll to the center of the corner. It was definitely not what we wanted, but not a bad day for us at Martinsville.”
“I don’t really compare notes and I just worry about the day and our Mobil 1 Ford was OK this weekend. We just were a little bit off rolling speed to the center of the corner and I couldn’t quite get to the throttle like I needed to and kind of just, I don’t know, we could kind of hold our ground on the restarts, not really gain anything, and track position was a big deal.”
DANIEL SUAREZ, No. 41 Haas Automation Ford Mustang – “We were good in the long run, but, unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of longer runs the rest of the day. I felt like in the long run maybe my car was the best, but the short run wasn’t as good. It’s funny because yesterday it was the opposite, but something good to build on and hopefully we can keep going in the right direction.”
A SOLID DAY ALL AFTERNOON WITH CONSISTENCY. “Yeah, the consistency was good. I wish we had a little bit more speed on the short run, but it was a decent day. It’s something good to build on and hopefully we can keep getting better.”
YOU HAD SOME GOOD RACING WITH YOUR SHR TEAMMATES IN THE TOP 10. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? “It was good. We raced hard. We wouldn’t race that hard in the beginning of the race, but with 30 laps to go we raced very hard without wrecking each other, which is fun. That’s the way to do it.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 SHAZAM/Smithfield Ford Mustang – “We just lost a lot of track position on pit road today and then the 18 got in my left-rear quarter on one of those restarts. I got together with the 19 off two and had to check up a little bit and the 18 kind of bonsai’d it down there into turn three and about wiped me out. I lost 10 or 15 spots and then we fought track position the rest of the day. Every time we’d pass a bunch of cars and get back in the top six or seven we’d have a horrible pit stop and come back out 13th or 15th. It was just a long, long, tough day.”
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Mobil 1/Rush Truck Centers Ford Mustang – “I guess we need to get our stuff together on being on the same page with that pit road speed. It’s such an important thing and such a big part of this style of racing, where track position is everything. We push it to the limit, but it’s so hard to practice pit road speed. You’ve got trucks on pit road when you’re trying to practice that. I’m not making any excuses, it’s just when you’re trying to pinch every little thing out of it, it was hard this week to practice pit road speed because of all the stuff on pit road.”
IS THAT SOMETHING YOU FIND A SOLUTION FOR WHEN YOU GET BACK? “It’s obviously on us. We just weren’t on the same page. It’s frustrating.”
HOW FRUSTRATED ARE YOU TO HAVE THAT GOOD A CAR? “It is what it is. We just have to quit beating ourselves.”
DID YOU HAVE A WINNING CAR? “I don’t think anybody obviously had anything for the 2 or the 9 made some adjustments there early and was really fast. I think we were a top three car for sure, but we kept beating ourselves.”
