Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Brickyard 400 Qualifying – Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Ford Qualifying Results:
3rd – Brad Keselowski
8th – Juan Pablo Montoya
9th – Joey Logano
18th – Carl Edwards
19th – Greg Biffle
20th – Trevor Bayne
21st – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
22nd – Marcos Ambrose
34th – David Gilliland
38th – David Ragan
41st – Aric Almirola
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Eckrich Ford Fusion – “We’ve struggled all weekend being really tight and right there I got really tight on our second run off of turn two. I got up in the gray and I had to catch it, but I got in the fence. It stinks. I’m disappointed for sure, but it is what it is. We’ll get the backup out and get ready for tomorrow.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – PRESS CONFERENCE — WINNING HERE WOULD LOOK GOOD ON YOUR RESUME. “Yeah. I’ve been very fortunate to win a championship, but at this point in my career I don’t think I have any of the marquee race wins, and when you think of marquee races you think of Daytona, you think of Indy and places like that. So it’s definitely something that sits on you and makes you feel like you need to get it done and I think we’ve got a great opportunity for that. I think I figured out why Kevin was so fast he’s working harder than everybody else. He’s got sweat all over here (the table). It’s always scary when Kevin is fast in qualifying. Kevin, when he qualifies well, you know he’s gonna probably be a dominant car in the race and they have been really fast all year, so we’re gonna have to work hard to beat him and obviously Jeff has been really fast, so we’ve been right there. We’ve got to keep working on it and I think we’ve got a chance of pulling off a victory here this weekend, so I’m very excited for it.”
HAS ROGER PENSKE TALKED TO YOU ABOUT HOW BADLY HE WANTS TO WIN THIS RACE? “Oh yeah. It’s the last thing left on the Penske bucket list and I think that’s why you see a third car here with Juan Pablo Montoya. He wants to make it happen and Juan is certainly known for his talents here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, so he’s all-in as much as you can be and it would be a huge honor to be the guy that pulls it off for him. We’re gonna give it our best as we do every year. It’s not just this year that it’s important to him, it’s every year that it’s important to him.”
CAN YOU BRING MOMENTUM FROM OTHER TRACKS HERE OR ARE ALL BETS OFF? “I think it definitely applies to a track like this. Race cars, it takes the same basic things most weeks – some weeks different categories more than others with the exception of those tracks you mentioned, the road courses and plate tracks which seem to be a little bit more of an outlier, but if you’re fast at a place like Pocono, you’re probably gonna be fast here. I thought we were great at Pocono and if you’re fast at a place like Kentucky, you’re probably gonna run well at tracks like Chicago and Texas, so that’s a good omen. Loudon, that’s a race in the Chase so obviously that carries over directly, but I think we’re in a good position to run well here and to run for a championship and that’s something I’m very proud of.”
HAVE YOU SEEN ANY SIGNS OF OTHER TEAMS CLOSING THE GAP ON PENSKE AND HENDRICK? “It’s hard to answer. When you think you really understand what’s going on you never know what somebody else has in their hand, much like if you’re playing a game of poker. You think that we have the two strongest hands with Penske and Hendrick and that certainly has been the case to this date in the season, but you just don’t know what’s out there. I find it hard to believe that Gibbs is gonna go a whole year without having a dominant car. It’s not like them, so I’m sure they’re gonna catch on as the season progresses. Add to that mix and maybe even someone else, maybe an MWR or an RCR, who knows? But we’re a long ways from over and I think you can look at the past. It’s an indicator to the future, but not a complete premonition.”
ARE THERE THINGS THAT CAN BE DONE TO BRING BACK SOME OF THE JUICE AND INTEREST WE HAD HERE IN THE FIRST 5-10 YEARS? “There’s a whole list of things that can be done, it’s just getting the whole industry together to do it. That hasn’t happened so far, so when it happens we’ll get there.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED — WE’VE HAD RAIN AND SUN AND CLOUDS. WITH SO MANY DIFFERENT CONDITIONS DO YOU REALLY HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT TO EXPECT TOMORROW? “We have no idea. We don’t. That’s kind of what Jeff and I are probably secretly both hoping – I don’t mean to speak for you Jeff – that maybe Kevin has something that’s not gonna work when it’s 90 degrees tomorrow and the track temp is 120 because right now they look so good, but usually that’s not how it goes. I haven’t run here for 20 years at Indy, but in the four or five years I have run here I know the 9 a.m. practices are a lot of fun to drive but not a good indicator of what you’re gonna see and I would assume it would be the same thing this weekend. As the track gets hotter the surface really loses grip and as the cars – with 43 instead of 15-10-20 – the air becomes such a premium and gets all mixed up, it’s gonna be a little different game. These cars are generating a majority of their grip with the help of aerodynamics and when they lose that they’re not as much fun to drive that’s for sure and that’s part of it. That’s what makes talent stand out right now in NASCAR racing is how you handle that.”
HOW CHALLENGING IS INDIANAPOLIS COMPARED TO OTHER TRACKS? “The challenge of Indy on a scale of 1-10, I think it’s one of the hardest tracks we run. The tracks that come to mind when you say that I think of Sonoma is probably the hardest place we run. I think of the plate races and trying not to make a mistake for so long and cause the big one, which I’ve done. I think of those type of places, but Indy is right up there with them with the challenge of trying to get yourself to keep up with the track as it’s changing. The track has so many spots where you can get in trouble. Pit road stands out being so narrow and always an issue. Restarts in turn one are blind and guys going through the grass. There are a lot of challenges here at Indy and I would say it’s definitely in the top five or 10 percentile of difficult tracks. It’s maybe not the hardest but right up there.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “It’s been a tough weekend so far. We’re trying to get more speed in our car. We’ve got the balance somewhat close, but we still don’t have a whole bunch of speed, so that’s kind of frustrating when that happens. We’re just trying to figure it out. We’re getting closer. This is the best we’ve been and that’s good and bad. It’s the best we’ve been, that’s good but it’s bad that we’re not first for that reason. We’ll keep working on it and get there eventually.”
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA – No. 12 Penske Truck Rental Ford Fusion – “I was disappointed in the last run. I didn’t push real hard the first two runs thinking there was probably more potential in the car. On that last run I had a huge moment in two and I was really slow on the back straight. I did a good job in three and four, but I think there was a lot more in the car. It’s disappointing, but we’re eighth and made it through all three rounds of qualifying today. I think we have a really good race car, so from there we can do a lot.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Fastenal Ford Fusion – “Obviously, we want to be faster than that. These guys really worked hard and we made a very small amount of progress, which is still progress. We just need to keep moving forward and hopefully it races well.”
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion – YOU DIDN’T THINK THE LAP IN THE FIRST SESSION WAS THAT GOOD, BUT YOU ADVANCED. “Yeah, it wasn’t that good, but I guess nobody else was either, I guess. We were really loose that first session and somehow we laid down a pretty decent time there. I just wish we could have backed it up the second run and been in the top 12 because I felt we were as competitive as anybody with that lap time in the first session and if we could have repeated that we’d have been in the top 12. So we just have to figure how to do that. Some of these guys pick up their second and third runs and we don’t, so we’ll just work on it and see what we can do.”
