Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Friday, May 10, 2019
EVENT: Digital Ally 400 Media Availability
DAVID RAGAN, No. 38 Mystik Lubricants Ford Mustang —
“The biggest difference between the two race weekends at Kansas is one is a Saturday night race and one is a Sunday afternoon race. The playoff race there is generally a little more momentum behind the season. Everyone has all their cars on deck and you are trying to get everything you can and are racing for a championship or a playoff round. Here in the spring I think there is research and development going on and trying to understand what these cars need to go fast and getting ready for the summer stretch leading into the playoffs. It is fun for me this weekend, I love Saturday night racing and the race track is great, in a great area of Kansas, the weather is generally really nice this time of year. It doesn’t get much better.”
DOES IT CHANGE HOW YOU PRACTICE DOING IT DURING THE DAY AND THEN RACING AT NIGHT? “Generally that is a variable that we have to work thorough but being that it is so cool this time of year you don’t have much of a delta swing when it is 65 during the day and at night when it is 55 or 60 degrees. I don’t think the balance will change a whole lot. The amount of rubber that gets laid down on the track will be a little bit of a factor but I don’t think it will be as big a swing as when it is 90 during the day and cools off to 70 at night. I don’t think the track will change much but there will be a small difference that our crew chiefs have to work on.”
WHAT IS YOUR CAMPAIGN PITCH TO THE FANS TO VOTE YOU INTO THE ALL-STAR RACE? “If you can’t win a race to make the All-Star race or win the showdown, I don’t want to be voted in. I don’t like the voting side. I have never really campaigned to be voted in. If I can’t race my way in, I want to go home and hang out in my misery. Vote for someone else, don’t vote for me.”
WILL YOU TAKE NOTES FROM THIS RACE TO THE OCTOBER RACE? “Absolutely. There are a lot of things that are similar. The race track, depending on what type of tire we have here in the fall. Anytime you are at a race track, even though you might have a temperature swing it is very important to take all the notes you can. It is an important race for everybody because we know the playoffs will be in the middle of it in the fall.”
PAUL MENARD, No. 21 Menards/Dutch Boy Ford Mustang
“You just try to beat the next guy. This package lends you to really not getting away. I think tomorrow night you will see that there are a couple cars that kind of stood out that could potentially get away from the pack but outside of that it is going to be double-file and three or four-wide on restarts and then it will start to single out. Tires will come into play. We put new tires on and it handled way better than it did with 30-lap tires. It is all part of the deal.”
HOW MUCH DIFFERENT WILL IT BE THAN WE HAVE NORMALLY SEEN HERE? “I am surprised we are running up by the fence already. We are wide-open around the bottom and you could go wide-open there and wide-open around the top but the top came in pretty good. It keeps momentum up. In the past you could run about three or four laps on the bottom and then stick it to the wall. I think you will have more options but I think the top will still be preferred.”
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST THING YOU HAVE LEARNED THIS YEAR WITH THE RULES? “Nothing really stands out. We are still learning. Our notes from last year at Kansas and years past – we have been racing here a long time – the track has certain trends and usually frees up when the sun goes down. With this package, we don’t know what it is going to do. It could free up or maybe the package lends itself to be tighter, we just don’t know. I guess what we learned is that we don’t know.”
HOW DO YOU ADJUST TO NOT KNOWING THINGS FOR A LOT OF TRACKS THIS YEAR? “You just do it. You take notes, you put yourself in positions in practice to try to make a good decision for the race and you just keep track of all that and try to come up with something that makes sense.”
HOW MUCH OF THIS STUFF THAT YOU WORK ON TODAY CAN TRANSFER TO A NIGHT RACE? “A lot of it. The big variable is what the track is going to do at night. We know what it has done in the past and we don’t know what it will do with this package but you put yourself in different positions in practice to be confident for tomorrow and make some changes to the race car.”
MAKING NOTES FOR OCTOBER? “Yeah, for sure. It is a day race and this felt like October weather here today. High 60s and sunny. The only thing we didn’t have was the wind. That will come in October.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT NEXT WEEK AND TRYING TO RACE YOUR WAY INTO THE ALL-STAR RACE? “I am curious to see how this new air ducts thing works. I have seen pictures of it being assembled on the race cars and it looks really cool. I really hope it works. Next week is just kind of going and playing around and see what we can do.”
WE HAVEN’T REALLY GOTTEN TO SEE THE NEW DUCTS: “They come in through the nose, through the radiator shroud and goes up into another duct that shoots out of the hood and blows on the windshield essentially.”
YOU HAD SO MANY FANS LAST WEEK AT DOVER. DO YOU FEEL YOUR FAN BASE GROWING? “Yeah, it is a really good feeling. Every time you go to a race track and you have people cheering you on is a good feeling. I don’t get to race at home, so it isn’t my family that is cheering me on. It feels good to start building a good fan base and people who follow me along and the 41 team as well. They are at some race tracks more than others. Dover is a good place for me. I enjoy racing there a lot and it is good to have some good fans there.”
WHAT ABOUT KANSAS? “It is a good place for me. Last time we finished in the top-10. I love racing at night. That is why I am so excited to come here for the second race of the year at night and am excited to come back and have some fun.”
WHEN YOU FIRST CAME INTO NASCAR, YOU HAVE COME SUCH A LONG WAY AT MAKING FRIENDS AND KNOWING WHAT IS GOING ON. I CAN’T IMAGINE HOW CRAZY THAT MUST HAVE BEEN: “Time goes by quick for sure. I am very happy where I am at right now. We have a great group with a lot of potential and there are a lot of different things that we know we can do better. We are getting better at knowing each other and that is good. Our expectations – we didn’t have expectations at the beginning of the year – right now we finish close to a top-10 and we are not very happy. Nobody on my team was very excited about the 11th place last week in Dover. I wasn’t happy about it. I few days after the race I look back and I know we were hoping to finish close to a top-10 earlier in the year and now we aren’t happy with it. So we are doing something good. We have a long way to go to keep improving but we are in the right direction.”
WHAT IS YOUR PITCH TO THE FANS TO VOTE YOU INTO THE ALL-STAR RACE? “It would be awesome to make it with the fan vote. That would be cool. I want to drive my way in, but I would like to have the support and know that I make it for the fans. I feel like we have a very fast race car and I feel like we are very capable to race our way in. We have done that the last three years. I would like to say that the fans got me into the All-Star race though. Hopefully we can make that happen.”
LOOKS LIKE YOU ARE SIXTH RIGHT NOW IN THE FAN VOTE: “Well, I will have to drive my way in then.”
WITHOUT CHASE (ELLIOTT) IN THE FAN VOTE, DO YOU FEEL LIKE IT IS MORE OPEN THAN THE PAST? “It could be. Chase is always strong when it comes to that. I wish I was spending a little more time with the fan vote and doing more noise about it. I just spend my time with my teammates and team. I love the fans and all the support and it is good to give them that reminder every day and I haven’t done that, honestly. Some people do a better job than others at that. I feel like my teammates are very capable of doing good things in the All-Star race and hopefully we can do what we have done in the last couple of years and drive our way in.”
HOW WOULD YOU EVALUATE THE FIRST FOUR MONTHS OF THE SEASON? “I think it has been good. I feel there is room for improvement but that it has been good. I feel like we are moving forward and it has been positive and better than what we were expecting. I am a race car driver, so it is never good enough. If we are not winning races then we are not great. We have to keep pushing and keep learning.”
DANIEL SUAREZ CONTINUED — WAS LAST YEAR MENTALLY CHALLENGING FOR YOU? “Every year it is mental. Being a race car driver is a mental game and it has been like this since I was 15-years-old. As a race car driver you have to be strong mentally. It is extremely important. Most of the drivers in the Cup series are very strong mentally. There is a reason why they are here. I feel like you have to be on top of your game and you have to know that you are going to have ups and downs and when you are up you have to work very hard to stay up and when you are down you have to work even harder to go up. It is a mental game in many different ways and the driver has the responsibility to carry that team. Somebody has to take the lead of the team and the driver most likely plays that role.”
IS THERE A ROUTINE YOU HAVE? “I just like to be in communication with them and be pushing and bringing everyone together. These guys make my job very easy on the 41 team. These guys are amazing and very good together and get along very well. We all hang out. Later tonight we are going to go bowling together. For me, it is very important to do our work in racing but to have fun at the race track.”
WHAT WOULD WINNING THE ALL-STAR RACE AND $1 MILLION DO FOR YOU? “Honestly, I will enjoy the trophy more than anything else. Money comes and goes and it is a big amount of money but to say that you won the race, as a race car driver that is all you care about. Everything else is what I call consequences. A consequence of something else. I care about winning the race. Last year I finished second and I wasn’t thinking about the money, I was thinking about the trophy and saying that I won the race. I feel like we will have a shot.”
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Rush Truck Centers Ford Mustang
“It is always fun to come back to Kansas Speedway and be home. Our schedule is so long and grueling and there is always a sweet spot when you look at the schedule and look forward to coming back to kansas and seeing family and friends and everybody that comes out in support of me and our Stewart-Haas cars. Our cars, you want to talk about confidence, this hasn’t been a good track for me. This has been one of my worst tracks statistically but we unloaded a very fast Rush Truck Centers Ford as did my teammates. All our SHR cars are fast. We left practice with a lot of confidence of our chances tomorrow night.”
IS THIS YOUR BEST CHANCE TO WIN AT KANSAS? WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO DO THAT? “I think it is the best chance I have had in a long time. That is no kidding. The old stopwatch is one that you can never lie about and when you look at the board, all our SHR cars are right up there at the top of it in both practice sessions. You have to try to figure out what you need. It is so drastically different, this package is, from other years here. Drafting, the more cars you have in front of you the worse you are going to drive. Qualifying will be a premium. Getting up front and getting that clean air, I think our cars will benefit from that a bunch. If we can get them up front, they are all capable of staying up front.”
ALMIROLA CALLED YOU A CLASS CLOWN: “I saw that. I need to have a word with him. I guess you can either be energetic and have fun or be boring. I chose to have fun and enjoy the sport. I enjoy our teammates. We are all so drastically different. Aric is such the quiet one and always down to business. If I can’t have fun, I can’t have success. Fit factor is so important in anything in life and I don’t think I have every fit in at an organization like I have at Stewart-Haas Racing. All us teammates have something different in common with one another and I think that is why it works.”
WHO IS YOUR CO-PILOT HERE? “This is Cash. I said I was going to the media center and he said he wanted to go so here we are. He is a bigger star after him and Owen’s interview at Daytona than I am anyway. Every weekend I walk around and all I hear is, ‘Where is Cash?’ So I just brought him with me to fix that.”
YOUR MOM AND DAD WERE COMING TO RACES WHEN YOU WERE ABOUT HIS AGE. COULD CASH BE A DRIVER SOME DAY? “Of course. Just look at the names of the first, second, third-generation drivers that have been in this deal. How can they do anything else? We are trying out the stick-and-ball stuff but still you find yourself in a parking lot making laps around the cones with a GoKart. I grew up racing motorcycles so naturally it was pretty easy to put him on a PW50 and make laps in the yard and stuff. At the end of the day you just want them to have fun, enjoy what they are doing and be passionate about it. I think the work ethic is something all our parents instilled in us and it is up to us to do the same for our children.”
HARVICK’S PAINT SCHEME AT THE ALL-STAR RACE: WHAT WOULD BE ON YOUR CAR? “Not millennial. It is a funny campaign and some of the sayings on the side of it are so true. You see all of that and see it on social media and stuff and half the time you are like, ‘What the hell does that mean?’ I think he has been doing the same thing. I am pushing 40 and he is well past that. We are trying to figure it all out.”
CLINT BOWYER CONTINUED — JOHNNY CASH? JACK DANIELS? WHAT WOULD BE ON YOUR RIDE? “I have had Jack Daniels on my ride before and it was a damn good time. You know it is all about the partners. I spent the week out with Rush Truck Centers in Vegas and had an awesome reception with all their refuse industry and selling trucks out there. I got to meet a lot of waste management people and all these big CEO’s and COO’s of these big companies. It was amazing to learn their world and break bread with them and enjoy some time out there. For me, I enjoy that almost as much as racing anymore. I love getting in the car and racing but I love the business side of this sport. It is a lot of fun and so important. You have to be good at that. You have to be attractive out on the race track but you also have to go out and stand in front of 600 people and have a good time and be relative and make sure they are all enjoying it because that is how you get them back to the race track.”
WHAT IS BIGGER, YOU TURNING 40 OR SMOKE (TONY STEWART) TURNING 50? “He is going to be 50? Are you kidding? Whoa. I can’t even imaging. I just hope I make 40, let alone 50. I have a month yet I gotta get through. It doesn’t matter. Getting these little things (pointing at Cash) keeps you young. Keeps you on your toes for sure.”
HOW MANY HOMETOWN MEMORIES START RUSHING BACK TO YOUR HEAD WHEN YOU COME TO THIS TRACK? “Here is the thing. We have a place near Lake of the Ozarks and spend a lot of time there and those are all Kansas City and St. Louis folks there and everybody starts reaching out to you. They don’t know. They just know you are in town and ready to race. Everybody is texting me during practice. I get back to my phone and I am like, ‘I am trying to work.’ Hopefully we get to see them and hang out. I wish we weren’t qualifying so late. I would like to be over at Kauffman Stadium watching the Royals. That looks like a hot ticket for tonight and everybody knows where to be tomorrow night.”
THE ALL-STAR RACE, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THAT NEXT WEEKEND? “Being a part of it, it is what it is. It is the all stars race and it is important to know that your team is a part of such a prestigious group. A million bucks are on the line and that is an opportunity. It isn’t everyday you get a chance to race for a million dollars.”
WHAT DOES A MILLION DOLLARS MEAN TO CLINT BOWYER? “Same thing it means to you buddy. I don’t know where you come from or how you would be any different but a million dollars is a million dollars. That opportunity only comes around once a year but we will all be ready for it.”
26 RACES HERE AND A LOCAL HAS NEVER WON THE CUP RACE. CARL EDWARDS COULDN’T DO IT. JAMIE MAC DIDN’T DO IT. YOU ARE THE LAST MAN STANDING: “Yeah, and we all, it means the same to all of us. We all want to win here something crazy. You know it, you feel it. Driver intros, everybody experiences a home race at some point right? You get out there and you hear the fans cheering pre-race and stuff like that. It is like, ‘Man, I want to go win in front of this deal because it would be big.”
HOW MUCH HAVE YOU TAUGHT CASH ABOUT YOUR ROOTS HERE? “For him it is about what is meaningful for me, being able to come back and see family and friends. Aunts, uncles, grandmas and people that we don’t get a chance to see very often are always here. It is important for me to have him here in front of them.”
