Ford Performance Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Cup Series – Food City Dirt Race (Practice Quotes)
Bristol Motor Speedway | Friday, March 26, 2021
Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 12 Advance My Track Challenge Ford Mustang, posted the fastest time in Friday’s final NASCAR Cup Series practice session at Bristol Motor Speedway. Blaney, who is going for his second straight win, participated in a post-practice media Zoom session to talk about today’s action.
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Advance My Track Challenge Ford Mustang — WHAT IS IT LIKE OUT THERE? “It’s rough, slick, really rough actually. The track is kind of coming up and just crazy big divots. It’s definitely not smooth. It’s rough, but you just run through things that you think will work and there wasn’t really much lane changing going on. Larson and Reddick could kind of run the top for a little while and then it kind of went away after a handful of minutes, but just seeing how straight and smooth you can be and trying to keep tires on it. We’re seeing a lot of tires getting corded pretty quickly, especially right-rears, even right-fronts started to go pretty quick, so that’s something that’s gonna come into play is saving your tires when the track is probably gonna be like this come race time.”
IF YOU HAD ANY SUGGESTIONS ON WHAT THEY COULD DO TO THE TRACK BETWEEN NOW AND SUNDAY WHAT WOULD YOU SAY? “I don’t know. When I looked at it today, granted it rained really hard here yesterday. There was a big storm, so maybe they couldn’t work on it as much as they wanted to, but it was like a really thin layer of flaky dirt on top of the black, hard-packed, rubbered down dirt when I walked on it this morning. Then that went off pretty quickly. The trucks run that off fast, so I’m not sure what they could do, unless you water it and till the whole thing and just kind of churn all the dirt over that you can to try to make it last a little bit longer, but you’re kind of handcuffed because we’ve got windshields in these things. You can’t make it super tacky to where mud is flying everywhere, so I’m not sure. I just wish it was a little bit smoother because there are so many ruts and things like that, but maybe they’ll be able to put their heads together and work on it.”
WHEN YOU HIT A RUT ARE YOU MORE CONCERNED ABOUT DAMAGE TO THE CAR OR SPINNING OUT OR IS IT JUST TEETH CHATTERING? “They’re just hard to get over and be smooth. You kind of try to set your car in there and it depends if you kind of hit one with your right-rear or your right-front first. It’s just really rough to kind of be smooth and hit your lane, so that part. Everyone kind of got their car’s travel to where they need to be to get over them, but it’s just hard to be smooth.”
WHAT WAS THE VISIBILITY LIKE? “It was better when the sun went down. Right before that it was pretty dusty and the sun was hitting it and it was hard to see, but not bad.”
YOU START 7TH IN YOUR HEAT RACE. IS THAT GOOD FOR PASSING POINTS OR BAD BECAUSE IT COULD BE CHALLENGING TO GET TO THE FRONT? “I don’t know. I don’t know how difficult it is gonna be to pass tomorrow when it comes time for our heat races. If it’s gonna be just like this today, it wasn’t impossible to pass. If someone missed the bottom and hit a rut wrong or something, you can kind of have forward bite and drive under them. It was tough, but it is what is. You can’t be happy or mad about it. You just try to make the most of it.”
WAS IT FUN? “I had fun, yes.”
WHAT WOULD YOU PUT THE OVER/UNDER AT FOR CAUTIONS AND WILL THERE BE MORE CAUTIONS OR ANGRY DRIVERS AFTER THE RACE? “I’m not really sure on that one. I don’t bet, so I can’t help you.”
WERE YOU ABLE TO TAKE ANYTHING FROM THE IRACING EVENT THE OTHER NIGHT? “No, I didn’t make the main the other night, so no. I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I’m better than iRacing.”
DOES BEING AT THE TOP OF THE BOARD MEAN ANYTHING WHEN YOU CONSIDER THE TRACK COULD CHANGE AND CONDITIONS COULD BE DIFFERENT? “No, honestly I don’t think it means anything to be the top Ford. I think what means the most is how your car drives after 5, 10 laps as you’re trying to save tires, stuff like that. How does it drive when the track gets slicker? How did it drive at the end of practice because that’s probably what we’re gonna have in the race. We just cut a good lap there. I don’t think it really means much. You have to be good in the long run. That’s really what we worked on and we got OK at it, just need some more work to do.”
