Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series
Kansas Midweek Availability | Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Ford holds down the top three spots in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series standings. Ty Majeski is currently leading the points while ThorSport Racing teammate Ben Rhodes is third. Both drivers participated in this week’s Ford media call to talk about Saturday’s scheduled race at Kansas Speedway.
BEN RHODES, No. 99 ThorSport Racing Ford F-150 – WHAT IS YOUR ASSESSMENT OF THE SEASON SO FAR? “There’s a lot of facets to this answer that I’m gonna put together. My assessment is rather negative, and I don’t mean for it to be that way, but a lot of it comes down to me and finishing the races a little bit stronger. The assessment for the team, though, is overwhelmingly positive. I feel like our mile-and-a-half program is leaps and bounds better, and whether I attribute that to Ford or my team itself – I’m with a new crew chief and engineer combo – some of the simulator stuff we’re doing at Ford. I don’t know if there’s one single entity or person I can peg that one, but I will say as a whole, as a group, as a big team effort, we are a lot better in those aspects and that was a place that we single-handedly struggled the most with last year, so I am very proud of that. However, we’ve probably been a third-place truck or so at these mile-and-a-halves and with that you can get into the hornet’s nest of the restart doesn’t happen properly and because of that we’ve had a couple bad finishes. The five top 10s out of seven races, that’s OK. I mean, that’s a more sunny stat than what I was aware of. I guess maybe my outlook is not as positive. The last two years at this point I was leading the points. I wasn’t third. I don’t like being third. My eyes are still firmly fixed on the top spot, but I guess our goals going into Kansas right now is we’re kind of trying to innovate. The third-place speed that we’ve been at these last couple of mile-and-a-half races, while it’s been good and historically that’s what you want is top-five speed, the series has just gotten so competitive and so close that now running third-place you have one bad restart or something happens and doesn’t fall the way you want it to, and before you know it you’re outside of the top five. So, we’re trying to find more speed to tip the table in our direction. We’re working on some things that I have not run in a long time and then some new innovations with the setup itself. We’re gonna see how it fares at Kansas. I’m not gonna say I’m nervous, but I am anxious to get there and see how everything we’ve worked on fares. I don’t want to unload and be like, ‘Man, I hope we don’t have to race this ever again.’ I want to unload and basically say, ‘We’re in the ballpark. Maybe we can do some small adjustments and make it work.’ My concern though is that maybe we’ll unload and we were too aggressive and there’s stuff that we can’t go back on in practice. The new practice sessions that we have now it’s a gamble. You can try to make changes like thinking about the big picture of the setup. You can try a swaybar. You can try different things. You can do springs and what-not, but once you unload that’s what you’re stuck with, so it’s a big risk to try and innovate these days. It’s kind of like what do you do? So, we’re trying to innovate and I think we’re making the right decision, but ask me after Kansas. We’ll find out.”
YOU HAVE ANOTHER FIVE-RACE IN FIVE-WEEK STRETCH. WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THE FIRST STRETCH LIKE THAT EARLIER IN THE YEAR? “Every year presents a new set of challenges, unfortunately. I wish the challenges would stay the same because once you conquer them, it would be really nice to just implement that strategy and just no uphill for a climber at that point. But that’s not the case. Every year is different. We have our own set of challenges and adversity that faces us every year at the race shop with production or with my individual crew that I’m now with that I haven’t had before, but it feels like we’re in the middle of race season. It’s literally now just May and if feels like it should be July the way that we’ve got so many races crammed so early in the schedule. You really have to be on your game and obviously with us joining Ford Performance this year, we had a lot more work on the front side of the schedule than most teams and we also have a lot more races on the front side of the schedule, so we’re all very aware at the race shop right now that this is as hard as it’s gonna get and once we get past this next five-race stretch, things are gonna slow down and it’s gonna get easier. Production as far as trucks should be getting caught up, but, right now, the last five races there was a big emphasis in making sure we don’t get in any wrecks. I don’t make any mistakes as a driver, not tearing up the right side of the truck for an unnecessary move or trying to get an extra 10 percent out of a truck for fifth-place. That doesn’t work. These are all things that I’ve worked on over the years myself, trying to be disciplined and look at the big picture while you’re racing, and in a situation like this with the schedule it’s more important than ever. Those same lessons from the last five are going to apply for the next five, for sure.”
WHAT IS KANSAS LIKE? “It’s a moving target. Kansas, when I first went there, was 2016. That was my first race and the asphalt was newer. It was like black asphalt. It’s what you would picture asphalt to be. It wasn’t bumpy. There was a lot of grip on the bottom, a very high-speed racetrack, a lot of on-throttle time and it just reminded me, like being there in the truck I was like, ‘Man, if feels like we’re Indy Car racing. This is a really fast pace.’ And now over the years it’s had those harsh midwest winters, which I think age a racetrack way differently than other localities. It’s been very interesting to watch the progression. Over the years now it’s developed bumps. It’s grayed out and you’re moving around a lot. Before it was on the bottom and now it’s up top by the wall and you know everybody is going to go to wall it’s just a matter of when that happens. The bottom will be fast for a few laps, but it’s a cheese grater now on the bottom. It will wear your tires out. We have significant fall off compared to other mile-and-a-half racetracks and to Kansas itself in the past, so it’s a totally different track. It’s been a moving target year over year and I think that’s good. I mean, I like to see racetracks change and be dynamic, especially as they get older the falloff increases and that’s a really fun challenge for drivers.”
NORTH WILKESBORO IS COMING UP. HOW EXCITED ARE YOU TO BE GOING THERE AND DO YOU HAVE ANY MEMORIES FROM WHEN IT WAS STILL OPEN? “That is the extremely disappointing part. I have zero memories of it. I wish I had some experience to fall back on. I don’t actually even have anything set up to run the late model race prior to our truck race, so I feel disadvantaged in a way. I know there are a lot of guys that will be in my field that have run there in late models and have done something at North Wilkesboro, so they have memories. I have nothing. I don’t know how to get to the track. I don’t know what the track looks like apart from pictures and videos, but physically, in-person, I don’t know what that looks like and I don’t know where the bumps are located. I don’t know what the proper line is. That’s all stuff that I’m gonna start learning here within the next week and trying to do simulation and trying to watch footage, but I’ve got no personal experience, which is disappointing – concerning, really.”
ANY CROSSOVER FROM VEGAS TO KANSAS? “Yeah, I think so with the setup in general, but Kansas and Vegas have both been dynamic racetracks. They have both changed a lot over the years and they both change a lot with weather and rubber and temperature, so there are similarities in that regard, but I think mainly the biggest thing is you’re just taking your base package and then you tweak it for each track. Then as you grow and develop and implement new innovations that evolves and it’s a moving dynamic that you’re living with throughout the season. So, we’re gonna take a very similar package to what we had at Vegas but with some innovations and I’m anxious to see how they work. We’ve worked pretty hard on what we think is right, but with the limited practice these days it’s just very hard to do it correctly and then not everything is gonna be perfect off the hauler, so trying to stick with different innovations that you’re bringing to your setup can be tough. You just don’t have enough time these days to really work on it.”
HOW HAS THE RELATIONSHIP BEEN WITH YOU AND YOUR CREW CHIEF, JERIOD PRINCE, THIS YEAR? “The relationship is good. What I really like about Jeriod is that he’s kind of a roundtable guy. He likes to sit down and talk to myself and the engineers. He talks to everybody to get their opinion and advice. Ultimately, he’s crew chiefing and he’s gonna act on what his judgment is, but he’s very open to others and doesn’t operate off of an ego. This sport is full of egos, so he’s fun to work with for that reason and very friendly. It makes it easy for a driver like me, who I’ve known him for a while, but we never really worked together. We never had gone to the track together. We never really operated on a level that would bring communication to what it needs to be, so he’s been fun and it’s been easy to get into a rhythm with him for that reason. I try to be as open as possible to things he wants to do because ultimately some of the stuff that I’ve liked in the past and expect out of a race truck he does different. That’s been the story with everybody I’ve ever worked with. I’ve been with quite a few different crew chiefs now in my time at ThorSport and it seems like every two years I get a new one. I’m in my first year with JRod and hopefully I can keep him for a while. He’s been very good, very fast on the mile-and-a-halves, very smart with trimming trucks out and making different things about a setup fast and maximizing them. I guess the frame of mind right now is, ‘Hey, ‘we’ve had a third-place truck, here’s some fruit that is maybe lower hanging that we think we can hit on, and get some speed.’ We think risk versus reward we can unload with it and it’s going to be OK. We’re fine with taking the risk because we think it’s skewed in our favor, but it’s always an opportunity for it to backfire on us and Kansas will kind of be that telltale. Historically, I’ve run some of these changes and the combination of them didn’t work well for me, so I’m anxious to see how it works. He’s smart and they’ve done a lot of homework to try and make this stuff happen.”
TY MAJESKI, No. 98 Road Ranger Ford F-150 – HOW DOES IT SOUND TO BE THE POINTS LEADER? “It’s been a really good start to the season. We’ve been super consistent. I think we’ve finished second through sixth, so just missing that win so far.”
DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING FROM THAT FIRST FIVE-WEEK STRETCH YOU CAN APPLY FOR THIS ONE? “I think the biggest thing with the first five-week stretch is it required our race teams to build our whole fleet of trucks within that five-week stretch. So, we had an intermediate, a road course, sort of a hybrid intermediate in Atlanta, and a short track truck and a dirt truck, so that first five-week stretch was incredibly hard on the teams. I think from my team’s standpoint it was good to get a couple weeks off, let the guys get home to their families and spend some time a little bit and just sort of reset. Now that most of our trucks are built and are in pretty good shape, we can now start recycling some of these trucks and actually run in them again instead of just trying to build them for the first time this season. This five-week stretch won’t be quite as grueling as the first stretch, but we were able to go to each different type of racetrack so far, build up a notebook and hopefully apply some of those things that we learned in that first five-race stretch into this one. I feel like this is probably the best five tracks that we have on our schedule that we have circled. They’re really good races for us and good tracks for us, so we’re excited to get going for it.”
ARE YOU DOING A CARS OR ASA RACE AT NORTH WILKESBORO? “I am, yes. I’m gonna try to pursue the ASA STARS National Tour for points, so that will be the third race in that series, but regardless of whether I was running that for points, Wilkesboro was a race that I wanted to do just to get some seat time for the truck race. I haven’t been there before. Not too many people have, so to have that opportunity to go there before the truck race, at least know the racetrack and some of its characteristics and how it progresses and transitions from day to night will be valuable come Saturday for the truck race.”
WILL THE LATE MODEL RACE HELP TO UNDERSTAND TIRE FALL OFF OR ARE THEY TWO DIFFERENT TIRES AND IT WON’T MATTER? “It’s definitely completely different tires, but I think you get a general idea of how it’s gonna trend. I think we’re gonna see tire falloff probably something similar to Richmond or maybe even a little bit more, so I can kind of cross reference that with some of the tracks that I’ve been to in a late model and kind of compare them. They are totally different animals, but I’ll have a general idea of how really abrasive the track is when I do run my late model. It’s hard to correlate it. We’ll just have to go off of past experiences and kind of cross reference it to sort of come up with an idea of what we’re gonna have for the truck race on Saturday.”
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM LAST YEAR AT KANSAS TO HELP THIS TIME AROUND? “I think we over adjusted a little bit. I think the biggest thing for my team was understanding the differences in the racetrack from the spring to the fall. I feel like what we sort of fought in the fall was not what we fought in the spring. I thought we were pretty good, just a little bit on the free side in the spring, and then we came back in the fall a bit tighter to compensate for that and I just think the way the weather is and the rubber having been laid down throughout the season with multiple races we didn’t find it in the fall last year. That’s why we probably didn’t run quite as good. Every time we go to the racetrack we’re learning. I’ve been working with Joe now for almost a year-and-a-half and we’re going to all these places twice now, so we actually have a notebook to go off of, whereas last year we were building that notebook. So, we’re able to go back and look at the places where we feel like we can get better and I feel like Kansas is a place we’re capable of getting better coming back a second time through having a notebook.”
WHAT HAVE YOU ENJOYED MOST ABOUT WORKING AT THORSPORT? “I’ve said this before. The culture at ThorSport, I feel like, is different than I’ll say some of the corporate NASCAR teams in Charlotte, so to speak. I feel like if you’re working at ThorSport it’s because you want to be here and you’re a racer. I feel like in some instances people are in racing in Charlotte because it’s a job. I feel like up here you’re here because you actually want to be here. You want to go to the racetrack and race and not just do it for a job, so I think that goes a long ways into building the culture here. I feel like I’m a little bit more of an old-school racer and working with the guys, being at the shop, and being a strong part of how the truck goes to the racetrack. Just to have that mentality up here at ThorSport fits me well and we have fun doing it. Obviously, Joe and I hit it off right off the bat, both being from Wisconsin, big late model guys we have a lot in common. We’ve bonded at a really rapid pace and I feel like the results showed it last year.”
IS THERE ADDED PRESSURE BEING THE POINTS LEADER RIGHT NOW? “Being the points leader is nice. It definitely rewards consistency throughout the year. One goal that we had coming into the season was really to get more playoff points. Last year, I think we went into the playoffs with two playoff points. We won two stages throughout the year, so I think the goal for me was to try and knock off a couple wins early and a few stage wins and try to build up that buffer for hopefully when we do make the playoffs. We haven’t been able to do that yet. The points lead is nice, but we really want to focus on winning some of these races and winning some stages just to make our playoff run and our path a little bit easier to Phoenix.”
DO YOU TAKE ANYTHING FROM THE OTHER 1.5-MILE TRACKS TO KANSAS? “We took an experimental setup to Kansas last year in the spring and felt like we hit on something and then we brought it back to Kansas again with some small changes and didn’t like the direction we went. Going to Homestead, we were sort of in a bind and said, ‘OK, if we were to go back to Kansas for a third time, what would we do to the setup?’ And that’s what we took to Homestead and we won with it and it was probably one of the best trucks I’ve ever had, so we’re gonna take that same truck, that same setup back to Kansas from Homestead this spring. That’s just kind of the mentality where we’re at from a package perspective and sort of the racetracks we’re using to correlate. I feel like Vegas is more so like a Charlotte type of racetrack, and I feel like Kansas and Homestead you can get a little bit more aggressive with how smooth they are. We have two different intermediate packages that we play with, so we’re gonna go with something similar to what we had at Homestead last year.”
