Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
5-Hour Energy 400 (Kansas Speedway)
Friday, May 9, 2014
FORD QUALIFYING RESULTS
2nd Joey Logano
3rd Brad Keselowski
4th Carl Edwards
10th Greg Biffle
12th Aric Almirola
20th Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
21st Ryan Blaney
25th Marcos Ambrose
38th David Ragan
39th David Gilliland
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 SKF Ford Fusion – QUALIFIED 21st
“It feels good to make it. It is a shame my dad couldn’t make it. I felt we had a good car the first session and it got a little cooler going into the second session and the track picked up a little bit and got a little bit tight. We stayed about the same speed, everyone just got faster. We just needed to free it up a little more in that second session. I think we have a pretty good race car for tomorrow. Hopefully we can execute tomorrow and run all 400 miles. I think we will have a pretty good race.”
YOU BROUGHT UP YOUR DAD. HOW BUMMED ARE YOU THAT YOU CAN’T RACE AGAINST HIM? “Yeah, it sucks. It is a shame they couldn’t make it. I really did want to race out there with him. It would have been really cool but hopefully we will get another chance.”
CARL EDWARDS, No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – Qualified 4th
“It was a good run. That is going to be key here because we are going so fast. Track position will be important here and we will get a good pit stall and a good starting position, so that will be great. I really want to win this race. There is no secret to that, and this qualifying effort today puts us in a good position initially to go out and do that. It is going to be a lot of fun.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI AND JOEY LOGANO PRESS CONFERENCES
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Wurth Ford Fusion – QUALIFIED 3rd
“We were fortunate to have some fast Fords out there today. I didn’t think we were very fast for much of the day and our first run we weren’t but this knockout qualifying gives us an opportunity to work on it and get better and that is what we did with our second, third and fourth runs. I feel like I ran a race out there. We got it better each time and climbed up the ladder. I think we were probably 35th or 40th our first run and 15th on our second and somewhere around ninth on our third. We were third on our fourth and that is great progress. That is how this format works. I am very proud of our team and their effort to get better every time.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 AAA Insurance Ford Fusion – QUALIFIED 2nd
“We have another good AAA Fusion this weekend. Like Brad, we were able to pick up speed every time. We didn’t have to come from 41st but we were able to pick up speed every time. The Stewart-Haas cars are really fast. We made the right adjustments and I feel like my car, through one and two on the third session was really good. I talked about in the second session how I could drive in a car length deeper and apparently I couldn’t. That blew up in my face. I got tight and wasn’t able to hold the speed to get the pole. Overall it is a good starting spot and we are qualifying well. If you count out the restrictor plate stuff we are still the only car to make it through every session and we are proud of that and ready to go for another win.”
DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING THAT WILL BE BENEFICIAL TO YOU AT THE VERY START OF THE RACE DUE TO THE TIME OF QUALIFYING? “It is hard to learn a lot about the race track when there are only a few cars out there. The sun, like you said is going down, but I am running Brad’s truck tonight so I will get all the info I need right there. Give me about 45 minutes and I will know all about this place. Right now I think we are shooting in the dark and don’t really know what we will get for tomorrow night quite yet. Hopefully after this race I can go back to Todd and tell him what we fought and worked with through the truck tonight.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED – WHAT HAS THE LAST WEEK BEEN LIKE FOR YOU AFTER WHAT HAPPENED AT TALLADEGA? DO YOU IGNORE TWITTER AND IGNORE THE FANS AND THE PRESS? “I don’t know. I feel like people know something I don’t know. I got in a wreck at a plate track and I caused it. Like I am the first one to ever do that or something. Wrecking is never fun but it happens and that is just part of racing. Anyone that doesn’t see it that way, obviously has a set of biases that they can’t make a rational judgment so I don’t worry about their criticism.”
WHY RACE THAT HARD IF YOU ARE SIX LAPS DOWN? THAT SEEMS TO BE WHAT PEOPLE WERE ASKING ABOUT. JIMMIE SAID EARLIER TODAY HE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN RACING THAT HARD, HE WOULD JUST BE LOGGING LAPS. WHAT IS YOUR ANSWER TO THAT? “My answer would be that that is his right. We all hold the steering wheel and there are 43 of us and we all hold it differently and make different decisions. It would be quite lame to watch if we all did the same thing and had the same ideas and personas. That is his right. I would say in most cases I probably wouldn’t have done that but in that case I felt like it was the proper thing to do with having the potential to race the 1 car and get back in sequence. If we would have gotten back in sequence we could have had a shot at winning the race with three or four yellows. I wasn’t ready to give up. I don’t feel like my team gave up on me and it is my job to not give up on them.”
WHAT HAS IT BEEN LIKE LATELY WORKING WITH RYAN BLANEY AS HE MAKES HIS DEBUT TOMORROW? “I think it has been really rewarding. To see him, much like Kyle here, progress over the last two or three seasons and play some kind of small role in it. I can remember when I was racing for Dale and the smile on his face when we would run well and how that made him feel proud to be a part of it. I didn’t really know what that meant but now I kind of see it with Ryan. When he runs well and how that feels to be a part of someone elses success, it feels like good karma but it is more or less kind of one of those things where there are always those clichés about happiness is best when you make someone else happy, that is true happiness right? I wish it would have worked out for him to get to race with his dad but seeing him in the sport and grow up and seeing his dad being so happy and being a part of his first win, that was really cool. I just really hope I am a part of his first championship this year on the truck side. That is a huge goal of all of ours. It is one of those things that is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I feel like I am kind of paying back some favors that I was given and that makes me feel pretty good. It is hard to put into words but Ryan is his own future superstar and for me, I want to be out there racing against the best drivers at the Cup level and Ryan is going to be one of them. Knowing that I had some part in that will make it that much more rewarding.”
DO YOU FEEL WITH THE HIGH SPEEDS OUT THERE THAT YOU WILL GET A WIDE GROOVE? “It is doubtful. This track will widen out to the high line but I remember one year at Richmond, I think it was 2008. I wasn’t driving but was watching the Cup race. It had rained out and the groove got all the way up to the wall. We had never seen that before and haven’t seen it again. I think that shows how unpredictable a track can be. It is dependant on the tire and other variables on the rules packages on the cars. Never say never to that but it is always interesting to see tracks that widen out top to bottom. I think that is the best racing we have. I don’t expect to see that this weekend.”
WITH THE TIRE GOODYEAR BROUGHT HERE AND SPEEDS PICKING UP THE OLDER THE TIRE GOT, HOW DOES THAT AFFECT STRATEGY FOR TOMORROW NIGHT? “I gotta be careful what I say here. It is not ideal by any means to have a situation where the tire doesn’t degrade and it really factors into the strategy. It is part of the situation. I would expect to see a lot of different strategies and guys that push their fuel to the limits because fuel is now the fall-off factor, literally, when you run out of gas your car shuts off. I have seen other situations where I think stock car racing is most known for tire degradation to the point where someone can put on new tires and beat you with it and in this case, the prevalence of clean air kind of dictates that is not the case. It is certainly a huge factor in the race, I think more so than the strategy is how unbelievably treacherous the racing is once the cars get side-by-side. All those things factor in and the tire plays a huge role for what you see in the racing this weekend.”
