Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Federated Auto Parts 400 (Richmond International Raceway)
NSCS Qualifying Quotes
Friday, September 6, 2013
FORD QUALIFYING RESULTS
3rd Brad Keselowski
8th Joey Logano
9th Greg Biffle
15th Aric Almirola
21st Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
23rd David Ragan
25th Casey Mears
26th Carl Edwards
32nd Marcos Ambrose
37th David Gilliland
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “I will be glad when tomorrow night is over. This is obviously a big weekend for us and we got a decent qualifying effort here. We are in the top-10 and that is what we need to do, be in the top-10 all night long. That will get us top-10 in points and that will get us in the Chase. We need to play smart here and do the right things and get ourselves in this thing.”
DO YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT THE CAR FOR TOMORROW NIGHT? “I feel okay about it. Not spectacular but not junk either. I am kind of feeling middle of the road with it right now.”
GREG BIFFLE, No. 16 Scotchgard Ford Fusion – ARE YOU GLAD TODAY IS OVER? “Yes. It has been a long day. We really struggled and believe it or not I think we got good right there at the end. I felt like I could get a lot more than I did and so I was careful about qualifying and felt like I really got all I could get.”
WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST STRUGGLE TODAY FOR YOU? “You get discouraged easily when you are not fast off the truck or you look at that board all day and you are 38th. But the reality is you get your fastest lap the first or second or third lap on the race track. Well, the first three of four laps I was on the splitter and I was trying to slow down for the corner and you try to slow down early and you are on it harder. I was trying to run a fast lap but I couldn’t. So we came in and fixed it and actually then I ran better than the 5 and a lot of other guys on a eight-lap run. We had good speed but I was still 38th and it just gets in your head when you are 38th or 37th or 36th or whatever. That is frustrating because we knew we had a good car, we just had to get it all right. We were all over the board and we got it right there at the end and I think we have a good idea of what it is going to be like tomorrow night. We will probably fire off from the top-15 or so, I don’t know how all these guys will end up. It is cooling off but that was a good lap for us.”
CARL EDWARDS, No. 99 Kellogg’s/Cheeze-It Ford Fusion – “The car felt really good. That surprised me actually because I thought they were going to say we were P1. We need to go figure out where we lost some speed there, but the car felt really good so that is a good sign for tomorrow night.”
DAVID GILLILAND, No. 38 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion – “We’ve been struggling with tightness across the center of the corner. We haven’t been able to fix it yet. Hopefully we have some time between now and the race starts and we will be able to get the thing rolling better. We definitely need to turn better.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 43 Gwaltney Ford Fusion – “Our Gwaltney Ford Fusion has been really good in race trim but not as good as we wanted to in qualifying trim. We made some changes for qualifying and it was better but still not where we wanted to be. We will take it. I feel really good about the car we have for the race tomorrow night. Hopefully that will end up top-20 maybe.”
DAVID RAGAN, NO. 34 Farm Rich Ford Fusion – “It was a good pickup for our Farm Rich Ford. We spent a lot of time in race trim, working on our car for the race Saturday night. So we had a lot of unknowns going into qualifying. But that was a good pickup and a solid effort for our Ford and hopefully we can race well as well.”
JOSH WISE, No. 35 The Pete Store Ford – “Our day went well. We came with a similar setup we ran in the spring. We qualified really well in the spring with it, so we’re duplicating everything with it and we worked on some things to just get it to turn better in race trim. So hopefully we’ll make some race trim improvements for The Pete Store Ford and we’ll be in good shape tomorrow night.”
