Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Saturday, August 3, 2019
EVENT: Go Bowling at The Glen, Watkins Glen, NY. (Qualifying)
Ford Qualifying Results:
9th – Aric Almirola
10th – Brad Keselowski
11th – Michael McDowell
12th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
13th – Clint Bowyer
15th – Kevin Harvick
18th – Daniel Suarez
19th – Ryan Blaney
21st – Joey Logano
22nd – Paul Menard
25th – Ryan Newman
26th – Matt Tifft
31st – David Ragan
33rd – Corey LaJoie
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Autotrader Ford Mustang – “It was an OK qualifying effort. It wasn’t great, but we haven’t qualified very well here in the last few years, so it’s nice to be a little better.”
HAVE YOU WORKED WITH AUSTIN CINDRIC MUCH? “By the looks of it he didn’t need my help. I’m happy for him and I’m happy for that team. I know they’ve been fighting pretty hard, so that’s good for them.” WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN IN AUSTIN? “He’s definitely made a lot of progress from when he first started. This is a tough learning curve and when you can win that proves that you’re learning. He’s definitely come a ways.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Acronis Ford Mustang – “It was really good for us. We normally don’t make the second round here, so we’ve shown some speed in practices here but never really translated it to qualifying. It was good. We picked up that second run out, good enough to make it to the second round, and then probably got a little greedy just trying to push it too hard in the second round, on the third run on our tires, but all in all a really good start for us and I felt OK with our car in race trim. I didn’t feel like it was stellar, but I didn’t feel like it was bad, either, so we’ve got good track position. Hopefully, we can keep that throughout the race.”
WAS YOUR CAR JUST BETTER THAN USUAL HERE? “Yeah, definitely. We worked on a couple things in the simulator that picked up speed in our car and I think that translated to here. Anytime we go to the Ford simulator anytime that can translate to the race track – us, myself and the Front Row cars when they went and did it in the simulator they felt like it was better, so I felt like it was a good collaboration of all the teams, making sure that we brought the best pieces that we could to the race track. I think this downforce package helps me a little bit here because you can be a little bit hard on the throttle through the esses and stuff like that, so, all in all, I’ve had a fun weekend so far.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 Long John Silver’s Ford Mustang – “We always have high expectations coming to Watkins Glen or any of the road courses, but you get here and reality sets in that there are a lot of fast race cars and a lot of fast drivers. It’s tough to overcome that speed, but we did a good job today just executing, getting the most out of our practice, our time. We didn’t start off great, but we made good gains and felt like we made gains again going into qualifying and normally that will translate into the race here. It’s not so different where on an oval you might be good in qualifying, but not the race. Usually here if your car is good, it’s good, so I feel like we made gains and hopefully we can have a solid day tomorrow.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL CONTINUED — RICKY SAID YOU GUYS COLLABORATED IN THE FORD SIMULATOR WITH GAINING SOME SPEED. DO YOU AGREE? “I work really hard with everybody at Roush Fenway and Front Row Motorsports on the simulator weekly, but in particular for the road courses. It’s just a lot of pre-race, post-race evaluation and there’s just a lot of work that goes into it so that your teams, your engineers, your crew chiefs that they trust it. In year’s past, the simulator for the road courses a lot of times was just to get the drivers up to speed and kind of comfortable going up through the gears and the lefts and rights, where now it’s a tuning tool. Everybody at Ford Performance, there’s a whole team of people that that’s all they do all day long is make tracks and tires and models and I spend a lot of time with those guys at the simulator and it pays off. It’s something that I take pride in, that I help with that and feel like I can contribute to the overall program – not just for Roush Fenway or for Front Row, but for all of Ford Performance and it’s something that I still enjoy too. Some guys dread going to the simulator, I like it. I really enjoy it. I like the technical aspect of it, so I try to make it a tool where we can all use it and feel like we’re getting something from it, and obviously the resources going to it are paying off.”
