Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Cheez-It 355 at the Glen Qualifying (Watkins Glen International)
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Ford Qualifying Results:
1st – Marcos Ambrose
8th – Brad Keselowski
9th – Joey Logano
12th – Michael McDowell
16th – Carl Edwards
17th – Greg Biffle
21st – David Gilliland
30th – Casey Mears
31st – David Ragan
32nd – Aric Almirola
33rd – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 9 Stanley/CTC Jump Start Ford Fusion – WHY WAS THE TRACK RECORD BROKEN SO MANY TIMES? “This new Gen-6 race car is a lot faster for us, especially on road races. It’s got more downforce, it’s lighter and those two factors really help a lot – the center of gravity is lower – so all of those are good things for a race car to go fast. I’m just thankful to Stanley and DeWalt and everybody at Richard Petty Motorsports for giving me the opportunity to get this pole today. It’s a very special moment for me. I’ve never had a pole position here, so I dug deep and put down a solid lap and it was enough.”
YOU JUST WANTED THE CAR CLOSE AND YOU SAID YOU WOULD DO THE REST. IS THAT WHAT HAPPENED? “Yeah, I actually lost my cool yesterday afternoon and we made some changes because I just didn’t quite feel like we were good enough. The boys did a good job of listening to my rants and managed to calm me back down for today, so I’m really excited for the race. I think we’ve got one of the best race cars out there. I was a little worried about our qualifying form, so we’ve got that out of the way and we can really focus now on getting our car ready for the race and we’ve got a real chance to go three in a row here.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – WHAT IS YOUR OVERALL GUT FEELING OF WHERE YOU STAND RIGHT NOW? “My overall gut feeling is that the race to get in the Chase will go all the way down to the last lap at Richmond. We’re just gonna do what we can do to be the most prepared and put ourselves in the best position possible with solid runs over the next four or five weeks before we get to Richmond.”
WHAT DOES TONY’S SITUATION MEAN FROM A COMPETITIVE BALANCE OF THOSE TRYING TO GET IN? “That’s a really deep question. I haven’t thought that much about it other than I’m thinking about him getting better soon and comes back to the sport as soon as possible, but I haven’t thought about it to be honest. I’ve thought all along that if we just do our jobs, we’ll be OK.”
DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO WORK WITH TOMORROW AFTER YOUR QUALIFYING LAP? “Yeah, I think we’ll be OK, but I’ll know more on Sunday.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Best Buy Ford Fusion – “We were a little looser than yesterday. We were a little too tight yesterday during our qualifying run, so we freed it up and got it a little too loose. We’ll go into the race and make a lot of laps and see if we can’t keep getting faster and faster throughout the day, kind of like at Sonoma. We felt like we kept getting faster there, so I think we should be a little bit better here than we were in Sonoma. I enjoy Watkins Glen, but we’ve got to the Best Buy Ford running a little bit better. It should still be a lot of fun.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “We’ll see where the Shell/Pennzoil Ford ends up. I think it’s a decent lap. We didn’t make a qualifying run, so we were kind of shooting in the dark and going off what our teammate has there and tried to come up with something in the middle. It should be decent and be around 11th or 12th, but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS FORMAT? “It’s the first time we’ve done it here, but we did it earlier in Sonoma and it’s not bad at all. It just goes by a lot quicker and I think there are four or five race cars on the race track at the same time, so there’s plenty of room for all of us. It doesn’t really change much of what we were doing before.”
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion – “I’ve only ran here probably four times, so it’s been a tough track for me. For Bob Jenkins and all the guys at Front Row Motorsports to come out here and put the time in for testing really helped myself. Having McDowell as a teammate and David Ragan, they’ve really helped me a lot. I’m proud of our effort. That’s the fastest I’ve ever been around here for sure and the track, to me, felt like it had less grip than yesterday and we were faster than yesterday, so I’m happy with our run.”
ARE BRAKES THE BIGGEST THING HERE? “Brakes have always been an issue for me here. I never felt like we had the right braking package so we have a brand new braking package and, to be honest with you, the biggest thing that has helped me is Frank Kerr, my crew chief. He’s won races here with Marcos Ambrose in the past, so to have a guy like that come on board and have faith in me in being able to do this is a big deal and I appreciate his help.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL – No. 35 Dockside Logistics Ford Fusion – “I was hoping we’d back up what we did in practice. I didn’t get a great run up the esses, I missed the first apex a little, so I lost us a little bit of speed, but not much. All in all, it’s going to be a good starting spot for the Dockside Logistics No. 35 team. We thought we had a good shot at a top-10 or top-15. Anywhere in there is a good day.”
MARCOS AMBROSE PRESS CONFERENCE – “It feel great to be here. These days don’t come around that often and I just have to thank Stanley and DeWalt and Ford and Richard Petty Motorsports and everyone on our outstanding team to put us in this position to be able to through down a lap like that. It was a great lap. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t the cleanest lap I could have done, but it certainly carried a lot of momentum and it was enough to get the job done. These new Gen-6 race cars are a lot faster around here and the speeds are record speeds. The cars still handle with the same issues that we normally have here, but certainly we’re just going faster when we encounter those problems. I think the new car really suits this race track. I think it’s more comfortable for the drivers to be aggressive and today I was very aggressive today to try to throw down a fast lap. We were the lucky one on the day to get the pole, so I’m very proud of our day. I’m looking forward to the race and feel like we have as good a chance as anybody to win and go three in a row.”
WHAT WAS YOUR FRUSTRATION YESTERDAY WITH THE CAR? “I did apologize to my team and that’s because I did lose my cool a little bit yesterday. I was just frustrated with the second practice. It just didn’t feel like we made enough progress and I was just worried for the race and for qualifying. I know we were fast during the practice, but I just didn’t feel like it was feeling right for me. They did a good job to calm me down and not overreact to what I was saying and made some small adjustments for today and they’ve worked out really well, so we were just short on time yesterday. The second practice was really short. We had a lot of work to do because we didn’t test up here and we hadn’t done any testing on these style of race tracks, so we were catching up all day yesterday and it just got the better of me, but that’s what racing is about. It’s an emotional thing and you work together as a team. I had a bad afternoon, but the guys regrouped around me and supported me and I came back and delivered for them today, so it’s a good thing for us to be able to have that communication. It’s not cool that you can get upset, but it’s good that we can get it back together and keep the whole program moving forward. That’s what racing is all about. It’s communication as much as anything out there that makes these teams great. Drew and I have great communication. We’re very open and honest as well as everybody on our team, so no big drama, it’s just what racing is about and we’re looking forward to tomorrow. I think that getting through qualifying was a big thing for us because that was one of the areas I was really most worried about. I feel better about my race car, so I look forward to tomorrow’s race. I think we’ve got a good plan for it and we just have to execute that plan and get off the start line clean and see how the race unfolds. You can’t control the race, but you can certainly put yourself in the best position possible and we just have to wait and see how the cautions fall and see how the track condition grooves in by the end of the day and, hopefully, we have the car at the end that’s better than everybody else.”
HOW DIFFERENT IS THE QUALIFYING VS. RACE SETUP? “The setups are different from qualifying to the race. We had one shot at qualifying practice and we just got a lot of traffic and the car didn’t feel good, so there was a lot of drama there. I wasn’t sure what we had and you want to go into qualifying and go into the race feeling really good about what you got, and I just didn’t get that feeling at the end of yesterday’s practice. That’s what got me bent out of shape, but I proved to be inaccurate and I relied on my team to provide me the support to get out there today and get it done.”
MARCOS AMBROSE CONTINUED – WHERE DO YOU FEEL YOU COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER ON YOUR LAP? “I was a little cautious getting into turn one and lost some speed there and then getting up the hill I carried good momentum to turn two and then stayed in it up through turn three and that got me really up against the fence on the outside edge. I did all I could to hit the fence, but just managed to avoid it. That got me off position coming out of that corner. I had to feather the throttle even getting up to fourth gear, just trying to get back on the racing groove, so that kind of got me rattled a little bit, and then I wasn’t that clean through the bus stop because I was still stressed out about the corner before. The last third of the lap was OK, but I just didn’t get up through the esses as good as I wanted to and that just puts you on a bit of a negative to try to regroup, but it was enough. Obviously, I carried a lot of speed up there. Sometimes you can put down a lap that feels perfect and you’re two seconds off the pace. Sometimes when you get those laps that really are fast you’ve got to be right on the edge and sometimes past it.”
WHERE IS THE NEW CAR FASTER HERE? “It’s certainly not the straightaways because we have more downforce. The car’s alive and that helps. The c.g. is lower and that helps, and we have more downforce, so all of those things are a plus on a race car. We’re going around the corners better. We’re braking a lot later than what we have done here in year’s past. The brakes were really good to be honest with you compared to the old car that we had here. The old car just didn’t have a lot of downforce and didn’t slow the car down. With this car you can actually get off the gas pedal and you can feel the air trying to slow that car down just a little bit and that helps the brakes because brakes are marginal around this track, so I think all-around this is a good track for these Gen-6 race cars and we’ve proved that by going under the lap record.”
CLINT EXPECTED YOU TO WIN THE POLE. DO YOU COME HERE EXPECTING TO WIN IT? “For anyone that wanted to look at the stats this has not been the best qualifying track for me, so I’m proud of today. I think that getting the pole was awesome. The car certainly felt great and felt like it was up to the challenge, so I think that bodes really well for tomorrow. I felt better about our race car in qualifying after practice, so if we can keep this form going, I think our car will be good for the race. We have track position now that’s going to help us a lot and we just have to see how it plays out. There are no guarantees in racing. That’s one thing I’ve learned in the Cup Series is anything normally does happen out there and we just have to be ready for all those circumstances and hopefully keep the nose clean, keep the brakes under control, and look out for the engine gear box until the end.”
HOW DOES THE POLE CHANGE YOUR STRATEGY? “It’s not gonna change it that much. It actually just helps our situation. The last two years here I’ve had to come back through the field to get the win and we’ve had luck on our side and circumstances that have worked out. Not that we backed into the wins, we deserved to win them, but certainly it was doing it the hard way. This year, if we have a really good day we might be in control a little longer and be able to dictate the race a little better. I felt like the last two years we’ve been coming back through the field through cautions falling at the wrong time or fuel strategy or tire strategy or whatever. So, for us, we’re very focused on staying at the front and hopefully the race will go our way and we can manage our race a little better than the last two years.”
MARCOS AMBROSE CONTINUED — WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO WIN THREE STRAIGHT LIKE JEFF GORDON AND MARK MARTIN HAVE HERE? “ Those two names are awesome names in NASCAR competition and it would be fantastic, but we haven’t won the race yet so there’s no point in even thinking about it. I’ve just got to go out there and do the best job that I can and the team can put their best foot forward as well and see if it goes our way. I hate putting that kind of pressure and I hate thinking about that kind of stuff – I really don’t. I’m just gonna go out there tomorrow and enjoy the race, enjoy the opportunity that it is, it’s an opportunity to win for Stanley and DeWalt and Ford and Richard Petty – get him back in Victory Lane. Those are good days if you can do that, so I’m just gonna enjoy it for what it is. It’s a chance for us to win and a chance to enjoy what NASCAR is all about in road racing. I like road racing. I tend to like it more and more when I can run this well. We’re just gonna have fun tomorrow and enjoy it.”
CAN YOU REFLECT ON THIS TRACK AND WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU? “It certainly has been a great track for me in both Nationwide and Cup. I could be wrong, but I think I won the last three Nationwide starts that I had here, so that’s pretty cool too. I’ve carried that over to the Cup competition, so it’s just been a great track for me. It’s probably been my best track that I’ve ever gone to. I like it. I love the area and I like the history of this place. This place feels like a European race track. I’ve raced a lot in Europe and it’s just got that feel to it and the old books I’ve read and history of all the F1 guys coming here and stuff makes it a pretty special place for me. Some guys have home tracks. I obviously don’t not being from around these parts, so when I come to a track like this it actually does feel like the track that I grew up on. I like racing on these kind of circuits.”
