Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Friday, March 29, 2019
EVENT: O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 Qualifying
FORD QUALIFYING RESULTS:
4th – Daniel Suarez
8th – Joey Logano
12th – Brad Keselowski
13th – Ryan Blaney
14th – Paul Menard
15th – Michael McDowell
17th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
18th – Ryan Newman
21st – Aric Almirola
23rd – Kevin Harvick
25th – Clint Bowyer
28th – David Ragan
29th – Matt Tifft
31st – Corey LaJoie
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Mustang – “You just can’t qualify these cars this way. I love group qualifying, but I just laughed all the way out to the race track.”
BOWYER SAID YOU HAVE TO LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES. “We did this five or six years ago. We just all keep doing the things that we have to do in the positions that we’re put in and you hope for the best. It is what it is, I guess.”
IS THERE A WAY TO DO GROUP QUALIFYING WITH THIS PACKAGE? “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask somebody that’s much smarter than me, obviously, because we’re not smart enough to make the rules.”
DID YOU THINK YOUR LAST LAP COUNTED? “I thought the rules didn’t get enforced again for all those cars stopping in the middle, but I’m not 100 percent clear on the rules.”
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Rush Truck Centers Ford Mustang – “I guess this a make-up-the-rules-as-we-go event in qualifying. It’s sad. Those people up there paid a lot of money to bring their families here to watch a qualifying session where people try to go out and do their best and you’re just sitting around waiting because you know your best is only good enough if the guy in front of you does a good job. That’s not qualifying. Whatever.”
IS THERE SOMETHING THAT CAN BE DONE TO MAKE IT BETTER? “Yeah, learn from your mistakes. That’s how you get better. Learn from your mistakes. We already had this failure and here we are doing it again. Come on.”
WHAT COULD THEY DO NOW? WHAT’S THE NEXT STEP? “What they should have done when they did it. You’ve got to figure something else out. When it doesn’t work you just can’t keep trying it. We’re lucky that these keep happening. Wait until a wreck happens on pit road. We all know it’s coming. You can’t go too fast because you’ll be caught speeding, but you can’t go too slow because it’s discretionary. Well, what the hell speed am I supposed to go? Just tell me when to go and maybe I’ll just do that.”
PAUL MENARD, No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Mustang – “We’re gonna see this at every mile-and-a-half track or every intermediate track. I’m not gonna waste any brain power on it. They’ll tell us what the parameters are and we’ll work within them.”
WHAT WAS YOUR THOUGHT PROCESS BECAUSE YOU WERE UP FRONT ON PIT ROAD? “I want to be up front because you have way more options. If you’re in the back it’s hard to get around for two laps, so if you’re up front you can kind of force your way in the line where you want to be. Blaney went and I wasn’t sure that we were gonna make it back for two laps. We were just too loose in qualifying. We were really good in practice and just too loose in qualifying, so we’ll just go back and look at it.”
DANIEL SUAREZ, No. 41 Ruckus Ford Mustang – “I was planning to go by myself without helping anyone, so I waited until everyone was shut off so I could go quick and they didn’t have time to re-fire and then go. That part played out well. The part that we just missed a little bit is that we were expecting them to make more mistakes or to wait a little bit longer, but they didn’t. It was a good effort. That was our gamble. We were out of trouble and the car was good, fast and we didn’t have to work as hard as they did that’s for sure.”
ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR CAR? “I feel pretty good, but not for the race yet. I feel good about the speed our car showed today, but tomorrow we’re gonna focus on the race and see what we’ve got. But for today the guys did an amazing job. The car had top five, top 10 speed all day long by itself and that’s what counts.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang – YOUR THOUGHTS ON QUALIFYING PROCEDURE AND HOW IT WENT? “As expected. I don’t think there was anything surprising. My question was is everyone gonna wait to try to get one lap in or is everyone gonna go to get two. I figured we were on the back side of the two and we were the first car not to make it, I think, so we missed it just by a little bit to the line for the second lap. We still got one in and I think that was kind of the safe bet for everyone is to get one in and no one’s second lap was faster anyway, so, yeah, kind of expect. The rules are new and helped, so it wasn’t a complete logjam down there at the end. It still was a little bit, but it wasn’t as bad. That was better, so there you go.”
ANY IDEAS ON MAKING IT BETTER? “I think it’s pretty entertaining. I don’t know. From my seat there’s a lot going on and you’re trying to position yourself in the best spot. Every situation is different. We’re all learning as a driver. I made a mistake getting where I was in line to make sure I got to the second spot. I got fed the right information I just didn’t execute correctly, so we’re all still learning the process on how to put up the fastest lap because there is a lot in the car to go fast and the 48 showed that all day, but there’s also a little bit of something to making sure you’re in the right situation and set yourself up in the right spot. It’s probably 50/50 right now.”
DO YOU FEEL AFTER QUALIFYING THAT EVERYBODY FORGETS ABOUT IT OR THE NEXT 1.5 MILE EVERYONE WILL BE, HERE WE GO AGAIN? “I don’t think anyone forgets about it. This is the top level, so these guys just don’t do something and forget about it. We all go out back and we’ll study everything that just happened there and try to find new ways to juke out our competition, and we’ll end up juking ourselves out again. That’s how it works. We outsmarted ourselves today.”
IS THERE ANY SOLUTION? “Who said there’s a problem? That’s my opinion. I think it’s entertaining. There’s a lot to talk about for you guys. You guys all have microphones out and there’s a lot to talk about, so I think it’s OK. There’s a lot of action and it all happens very, very quick. Maybe the biggest problem is how you show it on TV. That might be really hard to do because there is so much action happening at one time I don’t see how a camera can get it all, but outside of that I think there’s a lot going on.”
YOUR HEART IS BEATING? “Yeah, it’s intense. It’s intense while you’re sitting there at the end of pit road and the time is counting down and you’ve got to go. It’s pretty intense when you’re thinking about all that.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Mustang – WHAT DID YOU THINK OF QUALIFYING? “I probably could have timed it just a little bit better. It was real close, but that’s where I went.”
DO YOU LIKE THIS FORMAT? “If I’m fast and if there’s a lot of fans in the stands and a big rating, I think it’s great. If it’s none of those things, I hate it.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Cardell Cabinetry Ford Mustang – “We talked about it before qualifying of when you have to roll off pit road to make two laps and it was like a minute, five going hard. It got to be like a minute, ten and I pulled out and I was just kind of slowly chugging along trying to bottleneck it a little bit, but you can’t do it too much, you’ll get in trouble and they’ll make you go to the back. I don’t know. We got far enough and I thought time was short enough to where I could just go and try to haul butt. Some cars didn’t make the second lap, but they were fast enough their first lap to get in. They had a huge pull, so it just didn’t work out. I wish I would have waited two seconds ore and then maybe more people wouldn’t have got in. I don’t know. I just didn’t not want to be able to make two laps, so at that point you kind of just bite the bullet. It’s a shame you don’t make the last round to give yourself a shot, but that’s the way it is.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Prime Fresh Ford Mustang – “Lap one my spotter said that the NASCAR tower said we didn’t cross the line, so I quit and did the right thing, and I guess I should have just kept going. I learned some things today. I learned that we can clog the middle and that’s OK, and they’re not going to enforce that and they won’t penalize anybody for that, which I thought was gonna be pretty strictly enforced, especially this weekend with the new rules rolled out. I’m confused. I’ve got to go up in the hauler and ask some questions because I did what I thought was “the right thing” attempting to leave pit road with two minutes to go and not even being able to leave the exit of pit lane with less than a minute left. I’m just frustrated. It’s chaotic. It’s silly.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford Mustang – “I don’t know if I had a philosophy. It was chaotic. I felt like I was positioned good on pit road around the cars I wanted to be around. I was behind the 9 and the 48 and a couple other really good cars, so I felt like if I could roll with those guys I would have a decent lap, but everybody just drug their feet so long that eventually you just had to go and unfortunately when that happens you’re two or three-wide coming to the green trying to get to the line. It was a solid effort. Qualifying top 15 with the Love’s Travel Stops Ford Mustang is a good starting spot and we’ll take it and go work on race trim.”
MATT TIFFT, No. 36 Surface Sunscreen/Tunity Ford Mustang – “Everybody is trying to gap the right amount after pulling off the pit road. The rules, you can’t stop or anything really, so once everybody commits to the middle and you start rolling the train doesn’t stop. Our second time out we just got in a little bit of traffic and you try to gauge that run the right way, but it’s just so tough. It’s the best qualifying handling we’ve had all year, I just wish we could have capitalized a little more on it.”
DAVID RAGAN, No. 38 MDS Transport Ford Mustang – “I think it’s filled with a lot of drama. Timing is everything. You still have to have a fast car. Our car was too loose and we just couldn’t hold it wide-open. I had to lift on both ends and didn’t go as fast as I did in practice.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang – “I felt like we timed it right, but by the time I got to the end of pit road everybody was four-wide, so I couldn’t get a lane to go and get two laps in, and then the 10 was slow in three and four, so I don’t know if we made the line to make our second lap anyway. That’s just part of it.”
IS THERE A SOLUTION? “Yeah, single car. That’s about the only solution because at this point we all want to draft, so I mean Suarez and his guys showed you could do it without drafting. They had a really fast car and I was surprised nobody went with him when he went, but once we’re into that time crunch we all get really close and some guys get good laps and some guys don’t. We didn’t get quite fast enough of a lap, but I feel really good about our Fastenal Mustang. I feel like we’ll race good. I’m looking forward to practice tomorrow and getting it dialed in a little bit more and I was really happy with it right there during qualifying.”
COREY LAJOIE, No. 32 PROSPR Ford Mustang – “Our philosophy was we were just gonna go out there and try to drag some guys with us and get a little bit of heat in our car and then try to catch on the back end of the front pack, but I don’t know I’m not a big fan of this qualifying package. I don’t think you should be at the mercy of how many cars you’re around or how big of a tow you get that it depends how fast your car is gonna be. You can hold it wide-open, but if you’re around 10 cars you go fast, if you’re around one car you go slow.”
