Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Sylvania 300 Advance – New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Friday, September 19, 2014
Aric Almirola, driver of the No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion, is looking to bounce back this weekend after finishing 41st last weekend at Chicagoland Speedway due to an engine issue. Almirola spoke to the media before Friday’s practice and discussed his team’s situation.
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – HOW HAVE YOU DEALT WITH WHAT HAPPENED AT CHICAGOLAND LAST WEEK AND WHAT’S YOUR OUTLOOK FOR THIS WEEKEND? “There’s really no good way to deal with that. The only thing we can do is forget about it, come to New Hampshire and try and rebound. We’ve got a really good race team. We had a really fast car at Chicago. We were running solidly sixth with just over 30 laps to go and I felt like maybe we were one adjustment away from being able to run top-five in those closing laps, and it just wasn’t meant to be. We don’t have anything to hang our heads about. I’m really proud of my race team for rising to the occasion. I think a lot of people in the media tagged us as underdogs and I was perfectly fine with that because we were, but we showed up at Chicago and we showed up ready to race this Chase. We were gonna get off to a good start and it didn’t happen, so we’ll have to come here to Loudon and try and score max points, whatever that is, and we’ll go to Dover and do the same and see what happens. Hopefully, we can transfer to the next round because I feel like we’re extremely capable of racing with the Jimmie Johnsons and Jeff Gordons and those guys. We proved that at Chicago and we proved that the last few weeks coming off top-10s at Atlanta and Richmond. We’ve dug ourselves a big hole and we’ve got a couple weeks to try and dig ourselves back out. Even if we don’t transfer to the next round, at the end of the day we’re still racing to try and be fifth in points by the time we get to Homestead. So we’ve got a lot to race for no matter what the circumstances are.”
DID YOU FIND OUT WHAT THE ENGINE ISSUE WAS AND WAS YOUR ENGINE SET UP TO BE MORE AGGRESSIVE THAN PAST WEEKS? “I talked to Doug this week and it ended up being a broken exhaust valve. It was the same thing that happened to the 22 at Kentucky and the same thing that happened to the 9 car at Atlanta. They’ve had a couple issues already this year and they thought they had it fixed. They changed the way the valves were designed and thought that it wasn’t gonna be an issue anymore, and I guess it was again. I talked to Doug and he was heartbroken for us. He was extremely apologetic, but it was nothing different than what we’ve been running the past couple months. My hat goes off to Doug Yates He builds awesome horsepower for us. We went back and looked and it’s the first time we have not finished a race because of an engine failure in the three years I’ve been at Richard Petty Motorsports. Of all weekends for it to happen the first race of the Chase, why could it have not happened at Atlanta or Richmond or wherever else, but it is what it is. It just wasn’t meant to be. The stars didn’t line up right for us at Chicago, but we’ll rebound.”
FOR THE RECORD, HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE YOUR LAST NAME? “I’m extremely used to that (people mispronouncing his last name). I think most people get offended when their name gets mispronounced, but my name has been mispronounced since I was in kindergarten. My kindergarten teacher had trouble saying my name. It’s Aric, just like with an e, but it’s spelled with an a, and it’s Al-muh-ro-luh. It’s pretty simple, but I guess when you look at it it can be confusing.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT ANY INPUT YOU’LL HAVE ON MARCOS’ REPLACEMENT AND THE IMPACT HE’S HAD ON THE ORGANIZATION? “Marcos has been fantastic for Richard Petty Motorsports. He was there a year before me, so he was there at probably its darkest hour with the Gillett split and bankruptcy and Richard putting a lot of his own money to keep the team alive, and going from four cars down to two. Marcos has seen a lot of that company and helped build it to where it is today, and I’m extremely appreciative of that because I get to reap the benefits of that. I feel like I was a big part of that, but I came in a year later. He’s probably been one of the best teammates that I’ve ever worked with. He’s such a fun guy and a lot of fun to be around, and he’s an extremely good race car driver. I know he doesn’t give himself the credit he deserves on the ovals. We all know he’s probably the world’s best road course race, but he’s damn good on the ovals, too. So it’s been a lot of fun to be a teammate with him and we do a lot of off-track stuff together, too. We went and have done numerous hikes around the circuit – California, Phoenix, Vegas – a lot of west coast races we go on hikes together. We’ve gone fishing here in Loudon and Michigan and stuff like that, so we spend a lot of time away from the race track together and we’ve become really good friends. I’m extremely sad to see him go as my teammate, but I’m happy for him and happy for his family that they’re gonna get to go back to Australia and now me and my family have a place to stay when we want to go visit Australia, so I’m excited about that.”
HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO HEAR THAT RPM IS COMMITTED TO TWO CARS FOR NEXT YEAR AND BEYOND? “It’s really important. You see most or all of the top teams in this sport are multi-car teams and that’s important to have that resource of teammates and more information. I think anytime you do things with just one person it becomes really easy to get stuck in your ways and not be able to see outside the box, but as soon as you get more information, more teammates, more heads thinking on the same thing, it opens your eyes to a lot of different opportunities as far as setups and people and ways to go about setting your cars up and processes in the shop. So I think anytime something like this is going down it’s important for the guys and first and foremost for the guys at the race team to know that, ‘Hey, you’re ok, you’re safe. We’re not shutting the car down. We’re gonna have two cars and we’re gonna go racing.’ So that’s first and foremost of the importance to let those guys know that they’re OK, but on top of that for everything that we’ve built over the last four or five years to this point and being a winning race team and a Chase contending race team, to let everybody know that’s still our goal and we’re not backing down from that. We have the best sponsors that are still with us at Richard Petty Motorsports. Smithfield Foods has stepped up and they’re already trying to figure out ways how they can help the 9 car. There is a lot of good talks going on right now with them and with companies that they deal with on getting sponsors on the 9 car. They’ve got Twisted Tea, I think, already signed up so there’s a lot of good stuff going on with the 9 car and we have a lot to be excited about for next year as well, so I don’t think anybody is worried. I think it was just for you guys to be able to put out that release and say, ‘Hey, don’t start speculating. We’re good.’”
HOW DO PEOPLE SAY YOUR NAME? “You name it. Amarillo is usually the number one go-to. I think that’s a city in Texas, right? I’m just kidding. That’s usually the number one go-to. Every once in a while we get Armadillo, that’s a rodent for those that are unfamiliar. Those are probably the two most common.”
THOUGHTS ABOUT DOVER. “I’ve actually run really well there. My first-ever Nationwide race there I showed up and had to start dead-last in a Joe Gibbs Racing Nationwide car and I think I finished seventh. My first time there in a Cup car I finished sixth in 2012, and I won my first Truck race there, so I’ve always had good results there and always ran really well and I’ve liked that race track. Of all the race tracks on the circuit, that one and Homestead are probably my two favorites, so if it doesn’t work out here at Loudon, I’m glad that’s kind of my last ditch effort to try and win a race. I couldn’t pick a better place for me as a driver of a race track that I enjoy going to.”
IN A WEIRD WAY DOES YOUR SITUATION GIVE YOU CONFIDENCE THAT OTHERS MIGHT HAVE SOME ISSUES THE NEXT TWO RACES BECAUSE YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE WHO DID AT CHICAGOLAND? “Maybe, but I’m not banking on that. It doesn’t give me any confidence, no. We have to go out, and we all know this, all the guys on my team and myself included know that we’ve got to go out and for our best shot – without winning for our best shot to transfer we have to run top-five the next two weeks. There’s no doubt about it and we’ve got to hope that the guys that are already down in points run 20th-25th. I think right now we’re 23 points out of 12th, so if we run fifth and Carl runs 20th that’s 15 points and that puts us within seven going to Dover. That makes it a reality getting to Dover, but we’ve got to take a big chunk out here. What we can’t do is come here and run 25th. I think the writing would be on the wall that we’d just have to go to Dover and win, so it is what it is, but no, I don’t feel confident (that other guys will have trouble.) I think that all the guys are gonna try to limit their mistakes, especially the guys right there eighth to 13th or 14th. They’re gonna try and not have any big mistakes and finish 40th because that just takes you right out of it.”
Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion, was part of a sponsorship announcement today at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in which Miller and the speedway announced a three-year extension of their partnership. Keselowski also answered questions around the Chase and what the rest of the season holds.
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – YOU’RE COMING OFF A SWEEP AT LOUDON IN JULY. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS FOR THIS WEEKEND? “It does. Concerning the partnership, I was looking at that picture on the wall of Rusty Wallace winning the first race here. Miller has some deep ties to this track and this region and it’s great to see that and be a part of perpetuating it. Hopefully, we can keep that up and get to victory lane this weekend. We’ve got a great car, a great shot. We’re in a great spot in the season and I think with this relationship and racing we go track to track and town to town for thirtysome races a year, and we go to some of the tracks twice, but often times you don’t really have a home track. For me, Michigan is the closest it comes, but I always feel like when Miller Coors sponsors a track it’s kind of like my own home track, so that makes Loudon a fun place to come when you see the billboard pulling in with the Miller Coors stuff. In some of the years it’s had the cars, and I know Las Vegas is that way as well, but that makes you feel special. Bristol, I think has the big billboard when you pull in, but all of these tracks with the partnership with Miller Coors that they have, I think is a win-win situation, whether that’s branding or consumption (laughing). I know the Lobster Lounge is a personal favorite of my crew guys. I might have conversation with Jerry (Gappens) about overconsumption Saturday night by a few of them, but either way we have a lot of fun with this relationship and we’re looking forward to getting racing here this weekend.”
HOW DO YOU ASSESS YOUR CHANCES ON SUNDAY? “I think we’re definitely gonna have a lot of speed. I would be surprised if we didn’t, but winning here at New Hampshire isn’t all about speed. The strategy end always seems to come into play. I think more often than not this turns into a bit of a fuel mileage race for whatever reason, I’m not sure why, and that can really shake it up. It’s so difficult to pass that being the fastest car here is probably more so than most other places not always the strongest indicator of success.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED — WHAT TRACKS IN THE CHASE DID YOU FEEL LIKE WERE IN YOUR WHEELHOUSE AND WHICH ONES GAVE YOU CAUSE FOR CONCERN WITH WHERE THEY’RE STRATEGICALLY PLACED? “My first thought is looking through the first six Chase races we’ve won in the last two years at every one of them, so in that sense I’m as comfortable as you can be. But that second bracket, as we discussed on Chase Media Day, I think it’s called the contender bracket or contender round, but I think it should be called the heartbreak round because it’s gonna break someone’s heart in the sense that a really good team will probably not make it through that bracket because of the random factor of Talladega and Kansas. To answer your question, that bracket is probably the most concerning to me, and then obviously being able to perform at Homestead. The reality is that with the resets our success today means nothing more than getting us to the next round, and we have to keep it going. We could win nine races here in the Chase and not win Homestead and not be the champion, so Homestead and that second bracket, I think, are the biggest challenge.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS ABOUT TONY’ SITUATION THAT THE GRAND JURY WILL HEAR HIS CASE, THAT SOMETHING MIGHT HAPPEN THAT NOBODY THOUGHT MIGHT HAPPEN? “The only concern I have is that it sounds like there’s a second tape that they haven’t released and I don’t understand why. Beyond that, it kind of feels a little bit like a cop out that they send it to the grand jury, but I think everybody is wishing Tony the best and supporting him, and that’s probably the most important thing.”
WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES A TRACK YOUR FAVORITE TRACK? “I like tracks we win at. Those are always my favorite. I tell people all the time when they ask what my favorite track is it’s always the last one that I won at, and it seems like a cheesy answer, but as a driver we’re very self-serving and right now my favorite race track is Chicago, and a few weeks ago before we won Richmond I would have said Loudon was my favorite race track. So it’s time to make Loudon my new favorite race track again.”
DOES IT FEEL DIFFERENT THIS YEAR IN THAT YOU’RE EXPECTED TO BE A CONTENDER FOR THE TITLE WHEREAS IN 2012 YOU WERE SORT OF UNDER THE RADAR? “Yeah, it does feel a little bit different. We’re certainly garnering more attention. I feel like we’re at the second race in the Chase and we’re receiving the level of attention we received in 2012 in probably the seventh or eighth race of the Chase. So it’s not different in the sense of the attention, it’s different because it’s so early and I know that we have so much further to go and so much more work to do. In that sense, it’s a compliment, but it’s kind of scary because you don’t want to get overinflated as a team and think you’ve done what you needed to do when there’s so much work left to be done.”
IS IT TIME TO MAKE DRASTIC CHANGES TO THE CAR FOR NEXT YEAR AFTER THE WAY YOU PULLED OFF THE WIN LAST WEEK? “That’s a tough question to answer. Last week was pretty cool. I’ve heard Brian France sit here and use the term ‘Game 7 Moments’ and that might not have been Game 7, but if it was Game 7 I don’t think you could have asked for much more. I think the key is a mindset, not necessarily to undercut what we have now, but I think the mindset should always be to never stop improving. Not to steal Jimmie Johnson’s Lowe’s slogan, but I think that’s what our sport should have as a mindset and if that guides us, then yes the racing can be better and that’s not a dig on the racing we’ve had, but it can always be better. I think we should always keep working towards that.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED — WITH A WIN IN THE BANK PAUL HAS A CHANCE TO EXPERIMENT FOR TWO RACES. DOES HE TELL YOU WHAT HE’S PLANNING? “I don’t think from an experimentation end the only thing we would experiment with is something that has the potential to break. Other than that, I don’t see anything or crazy ideas because you want to stay in a rhythm and work with the pieces you know and not get lost. So it’s more or less if we have a part that is a quarter of a pound lighter and we’re like, ‘Oh, we think it will work, but we don’t know. It might break in the middle of the race,’ and we say, ‘Alright, just throw it on there.’ Where probably last week it was the opposite mentality – you have a part that’s a quarter of a pound heavier and you’re like, ‘Well this we know is not gonna break.’ So I think that’s probably the biggest change in mentality.”
DO YOU FEEL THE SAME SENSE OF FREEDOM FOR THESE NEXT TWO RACES THAT YOU DID WHEN YOU WON EARLY IN THE REGULAR SEASON? “I kind of feel exactly like we did at Richmond. We’ve got two races to, I don’t want to say goof off, but with no consequences and that’s enjoyable. Everybody loves it when all you can do is win. It’s like getting a free lottery ticket. If you lose it doesn’t matter and you have the potential to win something big. We’re gonna have fun with it and I think we have the ability to capitalize with it with strong cars and a great team, and hopefully pull off a sweep here.”
