Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Ford Zoom Media Availability | Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 12 Menards/Richmond Ford Mustang in the NASCAR Cup Series, is coming off his first top-five finish of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The Team Penske driver was this week’s Ford Zoom guest and spoke about not only last week’s run, but what lies ahead on Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Richmond Ford Mustang — DO YOU THINK THE CHAMPIONSHIP RACE SHOULD MOVE AROUND AND IS IT BETTER TO HAVE A RACE THERE EARLIER IN THE OR LIKE AT HOMESTEAD, WHERE IT WAS JUST ONCE? “I’ve always said I think it should move around each year. I think you give other tracks and areas different opportunities to showcase a championship race. I think it’s good for the tracks, it’s good for the community, it’s good for the variation of you never know what you’re gonna get each year. You know what you’re gonna get, but it’s at a different place. If you look at every other sport and that’s what they do. You don’t have the Super Bowl in the same place every year, you move it around. I know we’re kind of limited. At that time of the year you can’t really have it east or north. You’re kind of limited to some of the tracks you can go to, but I’d like to see it move around. It’s cool that you go to Phoenix. As far as the championship race the only time you run at that racetrack a year, I don’t really have a preference on that. It’s nice to kind of build a little notebook. I really don’t think it’s a bad thing to go to a racetrack like Phoenix now. We race Phoenix this weekend and then we go back there for the championship race, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. You kind of get a little bit of an idea what you need and it really gives you something to work on if you do make it to the Championship 4. I tell you right now, every single team is really focused on Phoenix this weekend, just because if you do happen to make it to the Championship 4 you need a pretty good notebook going back there, so to answer your question I think it’s pretty neat you go to the championship track early in the year so you can kind of focus on it, but I’d like to see it move around to some different racetracks. I think it would be cool for the community and it would definitely help the track out too, for sure.”
DO YOU THINK PEOPLE FOCUS MORE ON PHOENIX BECAUSE IT’S THE CHAMPIONSHIP RACE AS OPPOSED TO LAST WEEK AT LAS VEGAS, WHERE IT’S JUST A PLAYOFF RACE? “I think teams focus on every track to the fullest of their abilities because you want to win. You want to win every single weekend. When you’re going to a track early in the year, just like Vegas, where we’re going to return to and it is in the playoffs, yeah, you definitely build your notebook up. You take notes after every single race and teams and drivers build off of that previous race. That’s how you adjust for the next one. It don’t matter if it’s a championship race or the playoffs if it’s the doubleheader at Pocono, you really focus on the previous race to build off the next one, so I don’t think there’s more emphasis on really paying attention to this race. I think it’s just like everyone else, you’re always focused and paying attention just to build your notebook up, but everyone knows going into this race that if we’re in the Championship 4 this year we really have to pay attention. So, I don’t think anymore than another race or racetrack, but you definitely have that in the back of your head.”
HOW DO YOU LOOK AT PHOENIX AFTER A GOOD RUN AT VEGAS? “It was really nice to get a good run at Vegas. It was our first good run of the year. We’ve struggled getting going this year, but just unfortunate things happened. It was nice just to have a solid run. I didn’t think we had a car that could contend for the win. The 5 was pretty spectacular, but it was nice to have a strong car that could run in the top five most of the day. I’m looking forward to Phoenix. We were really good there in the November race last year, not being in the Championship 4. We were in fifth or sixth all day long and ended up running sixth, I think. I’m looking forward to that one. Our short track program, we’ve put a lot of emphasis on that as a whole group for Team Penske, so I’m looking forward to that. This is the first, I’m gonna call Phoenix as short track, it’s our first short track of the year, so a lot of teams are gonna look at where you stack up. Every team looked at Homestead and Vegas as a mile-and-a-half to see where you stack up there to other teams and people are really gonna be focused on this one too, to see where your short track program is at right now, so I’m looking forward to it. It’s always been a good track for us and hopefully we can build on our solid run there in the fall last year.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT ATLANTA IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS? HOW QUICKLY DO TIRES GET CHEWED UP THERE? “Atlanta is up there with the roughest track we go to as far as how abrasive the pavement is. It’s old and worn out, and the bumps. It’s really bumpy there. You have a big tunnel bump in the middle of one and two, and then all through three and four it’s like a wavy set of bumps. It’s nothing really rigid, but it’s just wavy all the way through there and your car is all unsettled. You ever been driving down the highway or an old road and you’re like, ‘Man, they need to repave this road. This is getting really old. It’s cracked. It’s worn out.’ That’s pretty much what Atlanta is and we’re going 190 miles an hour around there. I’m not saying they need to repave it by any means. They don’t need to repave it. That’s like the biggest comparison I can do. If you ever find yourself on a back road, that’s what it is. We’re just going really fast around it, but I’d say Atlanta and Homestead are pretty similar as far as tire fall off. Atlanta actually might have a little bit more fall off, but it’s rougher than Homestead, so I’ve always enjoyed Atlanta. It’s a really great track, always get good fans out there that do a good job of promoting that race. I’m excited to go back there. I like old, slick, worn out racetracks where you’ve really got to search around, but tires definitely fall off very rapidly and you have to be aware of that. You can’t just go really hard every lap. You have to be conscious of having to save some stuff or I might be really paying the price here in 15 laps, people will be driving on by you on both sides, so you want to get all you can on restarts, but get all you can and then you’re like, ‘All right, I’ve got to go into a little bit of conservation mode and not abuse my stuff,’ because it’s a long 500-mile race that you have to be really aggressive, but be mindful of that. If you’re too aggressive, you’re really gonna pay the price for it late in a run.”
WHY DIDN’T WE SEE THE LEADERS PULL AWAY FROM THE FIELD ON SUNDAY? “I think you see it at all the high downforce stuff nowadays. When you have a track that’s not as abrasive as others, let’s say Homestead, you could see the leader break away just because the track is worn out, you’re lifting more. Vegas, you could run wide-open around there for a while. I know when Brad was leading and I was second there, I think it was in the second stage, he was wide-open around the bottom and I’m wide-open running the second lane and the draft is so big that the little bit you lose in the corner with dirty air you just gain right back down the straightaways, so Vegas it was cool enough to where it wasn’t a huge grip penalty until you go 20 laps into a run, and then you kind of starting to lift a little bit. That’s why the leader couldn’t get away from anybody. Everyone is running wide-open and the draft is so big and you see that at some of these other — Kansas is another good one that I can think of, Michigan is obviously a little bit bigger, but Atlanta was just enough grip that day where it wasn’t too hot and a lot of people are running a lot of throttle to where it could handle pretty good in the corners and then the draft will make up what you lose in the corners until you have to start lifting when your tires get old. That was wild racing at Vegas. That’s what this high downforce package does. It’s fun to watch, that’s for sure. It can be frustrating at times if you’re running around there wide-open and not really going anywhere, but it’s just what it is. It’s exciting for people to watch and we try to put on a good show like we did at Vegas and I’m happy that people enjoyed that.”
iRACING RELEASED THE BRISTOL DIRT TRACK YESTERDAY. WILL YOU RELY ON THAT FOR PREPARING FOR THE REAL RACE LATER THIS MONTH? “I actually don’t iRace at all. I don’t have a rig at my house. Last year when we did those iRaces I had to go to my spotter’s house, Josh Williams is a big iRacer, and that’s what I used, but I don’t iRace. It’s a great program. It’s a great thing that gives a lot of people a chance to experience a lot of different cars and racetracks around the world, but I haven’t done much of that at all, except for when I have to do it — for a multiple of reasons. I think it can teach you some bad habits, but it’s a good time and it’s probably good to get some track time for some people. Mostly, I just do Ford sim stuff and we have practice there, which will be good and kind of relying back to the truck dirt race I did at Eldora a couple times. I’ll kind of think back on that a little bit and rewatch that race, but Bristol will be totally different — bigger, high-banked track, and the Cup car is gonna drive a little bit different than the truck, so that’s the biggest thing. But it’s nice we have practice and it’s nice to have a dad that I can maybe talk to about what he thinks. His sprint cars are way different than what we’re gonna be driving, but just as far as looking at the dirt track, if it’s slicking off, if there’s a little bit of moisture everywhere, that’s just kind of heads-up. You can expect all you want to, but until you get there and you see what the track is like and how much water they’ve put down on it, if it’s rubbering up, if it’s really slick — that’s just game time stuff. That’s what makes those dirt guys so great at what they do is they have to notice that every single lap and it changes every lap and they have great ability to really switch up what they’re doing. Dirt, sim and kind of going into it with high hopes and seeing what the track has in it.”
THIS IS THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY WHEN NASCAR SHUT THINGS DOWN. CAN YOU LOOK BACK TO THAT WEEK AND WHEN YOU FOUND OUT? “Gosh, it doesn’t feel like a year ago. I was actually in Georgia. I was at Chase Elliott’s house and we were gonna ride over to the speedway together that day, and we were about to head out the door and I got some messages saying, ‘Hold up. Hold tight.’ And we were reading things of NBA shutting down and things like that, so we didn’t really know what was gonna happen, so we were about to head out the door and they said it got cancelled. And then you don’t know what to expect. I mean, OK, the Atlanta race is cancelled, but surely not the next week. We’re gonna figure it out, but then everything go shut down, so, yeah, it was a difficult thing for everybody on the teams and things like that, but in the bigger picture it was very difficult for people around the world — any job. It changes everyone’s lives, so it definitely doesn’t feel like a year. Hopefully, we’re making progress on this thing of getting the world healthy again, but it’s changed the way that our sport has operated. It’s changed the way everything has operated from sports to businesses and things like that, and I”m looking forward to the day we can all get healthy again and put this all behind us and get back to normal life. I think everyone is, but it doesn’t feel like a year and it’s changed the way we’ve done it, but, like everyone around the world we’ve made the best out of it and I think NASCAR and the teams have done a good job, and the tracks of making the most of the situation that we’re in.”
HOW HAS THE PJ1 COMPOUND CHANGED THE RACING AT PHOENIX? “They started doing that two years ago. In ‘19 I think they first put it down. I may be wrong, but I think that’s it, and I thought it helped it. I thought the racing at Phoenix, it got repaved in 2012 I think, 2011 or 2012, and it’s just one of those things where fairly new repaved racetracks it takes a while for the asphalt to get to where it need to be, to where the main groove, which is the bottom there, to get worn out enough to where people will start searching around, and I think they did a good job with the PJ1 of putting it where it needed to be. We worked on it for a couple races of, ‘OK, maybe it needs to be a little lower here. It needs to start here and here,’ to try to make the lanes even, but it just gives you options. That’s what you need. When you have a track that is limited on options, whether it’s the shape, the asphalt on it, the VHT stuff is good because it gives you those options if you do it right. I think they’ve been doing a good job of getting it right and getting it better throughout the years, for sure. But I think it’s helped the racing. It gives you multiple lanes to run in and that’s what people want to see, and not only the fans, but the drivers. The drivers don’t want single-file around the bottom either. That’s not fun for anybody, so I think they did a good job of opening that up and putting it down where it needs to be and I think it’s in a good spot.”
YOU’VE HAD SUCCESS AND GONE THROUGH A CREW CHIEF CHANGE DURING THIS TIME. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR TEAM AND THE SUCCESS YOU’VE HAD? “I’m really proud. Obviously, you want to be doing better and better, but I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to do — the whole team. Really, all of Team Penske with everyone getting new crew chiefs and teams and the 2 and 22 made the Championship 4 last year and I thought we had a good year last year, we just didn’t quite put it all together, which limited us. But the first four weeks last year I thought were awesome. We showed great speed. When Todd and I were able to work together through practice, and then everything shut down I thought we did the best we could of still communicating and unload with no practice and trying to make the most of it, so it’s just nice to build off of last year, coming back with the same people on your team I think really helps figuring out what you need to do to be better. The benefits of the offseason you can sit down with me and Todd and say, ‘OK, what did we do well and keep doing and improve on and what do we really need to improve on and put an emphasis on?’ And we’ve been trying to apply those things this year and I think we finally made a step in the right direction last week and hopefully we can keep carrying this momentum. It’s been a blast to work with Todd Gordon. He’s a very smart guy, a great crew chief, a championship crew chief with Joey and I hope to try and replicate that success with him.”
HOW MUCH DOES PHOENIX CHANGE FROM ONE RACE TO THE OTHER? “It’s all weather dependent. It’s all temperature driven. I feel like this time of year in Phoenix and then in the fall it’s almost the same temperature. We’re getting there early enough in the year to where it’s still fairly cool and I feel like in the fall it’s the same way, so it would be different if we went to Phoenix in August and then we went back there for the championship race. It would be a completely different racetrack, but it being the same temperature, I think it pretty much puts on the same show and then having multiple races there and the XFINITY guys running this weekend, and then we run after them, and having one or two more races before ours in November, I think, rubbers the track in a little bit more, so the only difference would be maybe we get to that VHT a little bit quicker in Sunday’s race in the fall than we would this weekend just because the bottom is more rubbered in, but I base tracks on temperature and I feel like it’s gonna be pretty similar between the two races.”
HOW DOES THIS WEEK CHANGE YOUR TEAM’S PERSPECTIVE FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR WITH HOW YOU PERFORM? “Like I said, I feel like this is really your first short track race. It is. I mean, the only other low downforce race we had this year was the Daytona road course and that’s obviously different, so we’ll really get a good feel on where your teams stack up. Every team in the offseason they try to improve from last year with the low downforce, high downforce speedway road course package, no matter what it is you’re working on your stuff and the thing is you don’t know where you’re gonna stack up. That’s kind of the beauty of racing, you don’t know where you’re gonna stack up until you unload on the certain weekend and now it’s just how you start the race off, so you put a big emphasis not only on this one for the championship race, but it’s for where you stack up on all the short tracks that are coming up, so that’s a big thing to know where you think you’ll be and if you’ve got some work to do. If you’re behind the eight-ball here, you’re leaving Phoenix with a lot of work to do before Martinsville would be the next race with this. It’s where you stack up, just like the mile-and-a-halves we just had. You see where you’re at, if you need to put some work in. We all thought at Homestead our mile-and-a-half cars weren’t great and we put a lot of work in before Vegas changing some stuff up and it showed, so I apply that to both packages and definitely do that here this weekend for Phoenix going forward.”
DOES DOING SHOWS LIKE THE CREW WHET YOUR APPETITE TO DO MORE OF THAT IN THE FUTURE? “If you’re talking about quitting racing and going acting, no. I know what you mean, but, that stuff is fun to me. I enjoy doing it, the small stuff. I’ve always said as long as it doesn’t take away from racing that stuff I don’t mind doing. I don’t do a lot of it, maybe one a year, but it’s not gonna take away from racing. If there’s a conflict, if I have to go film something for some show or anything and I have to fly right to the track and it’s taking up a couple days of prep, I’m not doing that. We did The Crew in December last year and it was just not working, so didn’t have any conflict. I enjoy it. I really enjoy seeing the behind the scenes movie or TV sets. It’s actually really fascinating if you’ve never seen behind the scenes sets of how many men and women are involved in production and preparation that are never on screen. Everybody from the writers to the director to the light person. There’s a lot of people that are involved with that that never get any recognition that aren’t on the TV, and it’s kind of the same with racing. There are a lot of people in these race shops that are never at the track, things like that, but they do a lot of work, whether it’s building chassis or putting body on the car, engineer work. I kind of compare it to that. There are a lot more people than you think than the finished product, so I enjoy that stuff. It’s been a pleasure to do and I’ll do a little bit of it here and there, it’s got to be the right stuff that I enjoy and doesn’t interfere with my job.”
DID YOU AND CHASE GET OUT THE DOOR TO AMS OR WERE YOU STILL AT HIS HOUSE? “We were still at his place. We were sitting around waiting to go and I forget who texted me, but I was like, ‘Let’s wait here for a second. There might be something going on here that we might not have a race.’ So, yeah, we were still sitting there but we were less than 30 minutes away from leaving when we heard about everything.”
WHEN YOU GOT THE NEWS WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND AT THE TIME? DID YOU HAVE AN AWARENESS IT COULD BE A WHILE BEFORE RACING STARTED AGAIN? “Man, I don’t know. I can’t quite recall what exactly I was thinking, but right when they postponed those two I don’t think, at least I didn’t, completely understand what the Coronavirus was at the time. I don’t think a lot of people really quite understood the severity of this disease and how widespread it was gonna affect the world because it was pretty early stages in America of us really learning about it, at least me. More people might have known more about it, but I was like, ‘We’ll see how long this goes.’ They postponed it for two weeks, maybe it’s just something we’ll get fixed up for right away and we’ll go back racing here in two weeks and we’ll make this stuff up here whenever. But then you don’t know. You get through one week and then you get through the second week and it’s like, ‘Well, how long is this gonna last? How long are we gonna not have anything to do and everything is gonna be shut down?’ So there were just a lot of unknowns and I think everyone was in that boat of ‘how long are we gonna be not working and everything will be shut down where we can’t see our families’ and all that stuff. So, all that stuff was kind of going through my head and I think a lot of people. It’s just you don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know and just try to figure out all you can by watching whatever you need to or reading it on the web, but, a huge change in everyone’s lives at a rapid pace. I think it really took everyone by surprise when stuff happened like that.”
