Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Subway Fresh Fit 500 Qualifying (Phoenix International Raceway)
Friday, March 1, 2013
Ford Qualifying Results:
11th – Brad Keselowski
12th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
15th – Carl Edwards
17th – Greg Biffle
18th – Aric Almirola
22nd – Marcos Ambrose
24th – David Ragan
31st – David Gilliland
32nd – Joey Logano
36th – Josh Wise
39th – Scott Riggs
42nd – Ken Schrader
43rd – Casey Mears
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion – “The car drove pretty good. It was fast when we went all day in practice, but an early draw is not optimum. I was looking at what some of the other people ran around us and we’re closer than we’ve been here in the past. I’m looking forward to it. I think our car in race trim was very good. We spent 99 percent of the day in that, so we’ll continue to build on that and see what we’ve got. It’s slick out there, for sure. The first five to 10 cars that go out here is not where you want to be and today was just the luck of the draw. That’s where it put us.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Farmland Ford Fusion – “It was OK. The track was a little bit different than what we had in practice, so the car was a little bit different. That kind of caught me by surprise a little bit, but, all in all, it was a decent lap. We picked up about a tenth from practice, and it seems like Denny was a really good car in practice and he ran about the same, so I think as long as we picked up there we’ll be OK. That draw is just gonna hurt us real bad. All the cars that go out late are gonna pick up a ton.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford Fusion – “I think our Front Row Motorsports team did the best we could with what we had. We spent a little bit of time in race trim and made a quick qualifying run at the end. You have these new surfaces and you’re still going through whether or not you qualify on stickers or scuffs. This is a little bit of a different time than what we qualified for this race a year ago, changing it back to Friday qualifying, so we made some good adjustments. We picked up a little bit, but it certainly doesn’t help going out fairly early. I’m sure as the sun goes down the speeds will pick up a little bit, but we had a small pickup and we’re still learning about this Gen 6 car.”
JOSH WISE – No. 35 Blockbuster.com Ford Fusion – “We definitely wanted to have a better qualifying run than that. The track speed is still there. We just didn’t pick up as much as the other guys did. But we’ve got all day to work on it tomorrow, and we’ll get the Blockbuster Ford ready for Sunday.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Best Buy Ford Fusion – “The first lap was a little tight for us, but I definitely had really good grip on the second lap. It turned a lot better than I expected and we drove across the apron down in three and four, so we definitely left some good speed out there, but I’m happy with what the Best Buy guys did as far as getting the car ready from practice to qualifying. This is the first time as a team being in a situation like this, so I think they made some good adjustments from practice to qualifying and those are the things we have to look at to keep building this race team and making it stronger. I think they did an awesome job, it just turned a lot better than I thought.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – “It was OK. I wanted to obviously be on the pole if I could, but we just didn’t quite have enough speed to do that. It’s kind of disappointing because I know my car is so fast in race trim and I was hoping that would carry over to qualifying, but we haven’t been able to hit that for whatever reason. We’ll just go back to the drawing board.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion – “We were just a little bit tight. We expected it to handle a little bit differently there and it didn’t. Hopefully, we can get it better for race trim. I thought we were better than that in practice. The car has a lot of speed in it, but I think maybe I asked for the wrong thing balance-wise, but it should be good in the race.”
