Ford Racing NNS Notes & Quotes:
Jeff Foxworthy’s Grit Chips 300 (Bristol Motor Speedway)
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Ford Finishing Order:
4th – Sam Hornish Jr.
7th – Chris Buescher
12th – Trevor Bayne
15th – Brad Keselowski
16th – Travis Pastrana
18th – Reed Sorenson
SAM HORNISH JR. – No. 12 Alliance Truck Parts Ford Mustang – “We had some kind of issue with the power-steering on the car. The handling was pretty good, but it gave me a workout today. The Alliance Truck Parts Ford Mustang was really good through traffic. On the longer run I got stuck on a couple of inside restarts, I think about the last three or four, so that’s one of those things you can’t really help when that happens. We weren’t as good as a couple of those guys ahead of us, but for the amount of laps that we had on tires to be able to stay within sight of the 32 and the 54, I felt pretty good about that. I didn’t get a very good restart on the last one. I spun the wheels and had to come from about sixth to finish fourth, so it was all good.”
HOW HARD WAS IT DEALING WITH LAP TRAFFIC? “The toughest part about it was they would let one guy go by on the bottom and then they would try to move up to the top and we just didn’t have any consistency with where they were at, but they did the best they could.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE LAST 20 LAPS? “I didn’t get a good restart. It was my bad and I had to try to make our way back up through it. We had a really good car over the long run, but I just didn’t have enough for them when we needed. To be able to stay within sight of the 54 most of the day was pretty good. I just need to make sure that we thank everybody at Alliance Truck Parts for helping us out. All these guys on the 12. There was a lot of moving around with lap traffic today, which definitely made it interesting. I think about every accident that happened we were within eyesight of it and trying to get slowed down, so there ought to be some good in-car footage of it.”
YOU HAD A SPIRITED BATTLE WITH THE 2 AND 33 DOWN THE STRETCH. HOW INTENSE WAS IT? “It was so hard to pass today. You either had to get it done in traffic or on restarts, so everybody is leaning on each other. You’re trying to take advantage of what they could and I’m just really happy with the way our car handled over the long run. We could get a couple people and hold our own on the short stuff, so you just needed to be in the right lane on restarts. Greg Erwin and all the guys who work on this Alliance Truck Parts Ford Mustang did a great job for me today. It’s one of those days where I wish we could have got a little bit more, but starting third on that last restart and being on the bottom with 120-some lap tires, it was real easy to spin them. I can say whatever I want to about that, but the 54 and 32 didn’t spin their tires, so I’ve got to work on that a little bit.”
CHRIS BUESCHER – No. 16 Ford EcoBoost Ford Mustang – “That was really cool. I learned a ton out here today. I’m really appreciative of this opportunity. Jack Roush and Robbie Reiser and everybody at Roush Fenway – about four or five years ago they put the effort in to support me in all the ARCA stuff with the Roulo Brothers and then this deal. It’s an absolute blast and I’m so appreciative of it. I’m glad we came out here and ran as well as we did with the opportunity. This is a very new team, which, for the most part, was assembled on Monday of this week and to come out here like this right out of the box, I think it’s awesome. There should be a lot of good things to come, whether it be me racing or Ryan Reed in the seat later on.”
WHAT WAS THE KEY TO YOUR DAY? “Patience and a lot of it here. It’s kind of similar to some tracks I’ve run at in the past, and I think that helped me. Seth Barber did a great job keeping me calm as well as the spotter, Jason. They just had to keep me at ease and make sure I didn’t do anything crazy so we could be there at the end. We had a good pit call with taking no tires and getting our track position back. That really put us up there in the running at the end and that’s how we got as good of a finish as we did.”
TRAVIS PASTRANA – No. 60 Roush Fenway Racing Ford Mustang – “I felt good all day. We were planning on the long runs, but the car really came in about 40-50 laps in, which was great, except we went a lap down. That was a little frustrating because the yellow came out and I actually thought we were gonna get the lucky dog, but the 99 ended up getting it. I thought he was ahead of the leaders until that point, but it was cool. Trevor Bayne, I wasn’t happy that he was back with me, but he was a lap ahead and then the 22 was Keselowski and we were all running right there. It felt really good there at the end, so I learned a lot. I feel like if we could start the day over again with the knowledge we have now, we would be better but that’s my goal – more knowledgeable at the end of the day.”
WHAT’S IT LIKE TO GO TO ALL THESE DIFFERENT TRACKS FROM WEEK TO WEEK? “It’s wild because all of these first four tracks are so different. I hadn’t driven the Nationwide car on the tracks yet. The first one was my first restrictor plate race and the next one in Phoenix, there’s no track like Phoenix. And then we get to Vegas and it was good to get a mile-and-a-half under my belt. The Roush car felt really good. It took us a while to get up to speed, and finally at the end I felt pretty good. It was the same deal here. It took us about three-quarters of the race to really find where we were going and, unfortunately, we were about a lap down at that point. It is what it is. Outside of the top 15 is not where I was hoping for, but as much as I want to be winning we’re learning. If I can leave today saying I could do better now than I could at the start of the day, then I’m excited for next time and hopefully we’ll be in the top 10.”
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 6 Ford EcoBoost Ford Mustang – “That wasn’t what we wanted at all. I thought we were gonna come here and win this thing this week, which is even more frustrating, but to finish 12th isn’t the end of the world. The car was really tight all weekend long and we thought in race trim it would free up, but you can see that the track didn’t take any rubber with this tire and it stayed tight all day. Nothing really helped it, so I hate that we struggled so bad, but we’ll figure it out for California. They’re gonna go back and check the car and see if there was one little thing that was off or what it was because it just didn’t feel like our race car, so we’ve got to go work on that.”
CAN YOU ASSESS THE FIRST FOUR WEEKS? “They’ve been great up to this point. This is the first one where we’ve actually struggled. Even Daytona, where we didn’t get a good finish, we were fast. We sat on the pole and ran up front, but just had a part break, but here, this was the first one where the car was off a little bit and we could never fix it. It’s frustrating, but we’ll go to California and hopefully be fast there.”
REED SORENSON – No. 43 Pilot/Flying J Ford Mustang – “We just got in a wreck. The car was awesome. We made two pit stops and got the car better both times and got up to eighth. The car was really good and I felt like we were moving forward, but there was a wreck going into one and the spotter saw them up against the wall and said to go low. By the time I committed to going low they were sliding down. I guess they weren’t holding the brake, so I got into them and then we were pretty much done from that point on. I was just trying to ride around and salvage the day.”
