Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Sylvania 300 Qualifying – New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Friday, September 19, 2014
Ford Qualifying Results:
1st – Brad Keselowski
7th – Joey Logano
8th – Carl Edwards
19th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
20th – Marcos Ambrose
21st – Aric Almirola
26th – Greg Biffle
29th – David Ragan
34th – David Gilliland
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “It was just OK. We weren’t as good as we thought we would be and thought we would have been a little faster than where we ended up. I had to make another run there in the first segment to get in the second and was just a little too free. We’ve got to find a little more speed here.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – “That was a good day. We got a lot of race trim in and qualified top 10, so that will be a good starting spot. I’m happy.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – HOW TOUGH WILL IT BE TO REBOUND FROM CHICAGO? “It will be tough, but we don’t have a choice. We have to dig deep and try to rebound, but that was a heartbreaker. We were running really well at Chicago and that’s what we’re capable of so now we have to figure out a way to do that again here this weekend. We didn’t qualify that great at Chicago either. I think we qualified 23rd and we drove up through the field and were sixth with 30 laps to go. We qualified 21st here and we have just as many cars to pass this weekend.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Ortho Ford Fusion – HOW TOUGH IS PASSING HERE? “It’s pretty hard to pass here, but if it gets strung out you can run different lines and use the apron getting in or on exit, or you can run up high on the race track. So there are other things you can do to pass, but this is one of the more difficult places to pass when you’re the same speed as the car in front of you and you’re just trying to get beside of. That makes it more difficult, but we have a much faster car than where we qualified in 26th. We just didn’t tighten up enough for qualifying. We were too loose and it got sideways on me there and we didn’t get our fast lap. Times are so tight that a half-tenth puts us up in the top 15, so it’s unfortunate but that’s the way it goes.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – POLE-WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE – IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE YOU’VE LET UP. “No, I think Paul and the team brought a great car here, much like what we had in the spring race. I say spring race, I guess it was in June or July, so the earlier race, and I think the core temperatures and all those things I think that’s why you’ve seen an increase in speeds and certainly the guys have worked on horsepower and all those other things, but the cars are really good. This kind of track is kind of right in my wheelhouse, right in our team’s wheelhouse. We had this race circled before the Chase started and we felt decent about Chicago, but really felt like this was a race of emphasis for us to get a win and get out of the first bracket. With last week considered it’s even a stronger position for us to be pushing hard. It’s good. We just want to keep it going.”
ARE YOU READY TO SAY THE CHASE IS OVER AND YOU’RE A LOCK TO WIN IT ALL? “No. We’re so early in this thing and with the resets that there are the success of today really means nothing come Homestead. Each bracket with each reset it looks like an NCAA bracket. In that sense to compare it, it would be like if a great NCAA team beat a lower ranked team it doesn’t really matter when you get to the next round. It’s great. It’s positive momentum and everything you want to do and think you should do, but when it resets it resets and nothing that you’ve done in the past really matters as long as you’re eligible for the bracket. I’m a long, long ways from using the word favorite or feeling overly confident.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED — YOU SAID YOU WOULD BE DEVASTATED IF YOU DIDN’T WIN ANOTHER CHAMPIONSHIP IN YOUR CAREER. WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT YOU SEPARATE YOURSELF THAT WAY? “It’s hard to answer without really sitting down and putting a lot of thought to it, but long story, short. I feel like what we’ve been able to do to date is incredible, and I’m very proud of it, but 2012 was such a blur for me that it almost feels like a dream. I feel like winning a second title would feel real and it could eliminate any doubts that I would have or anyone else would have for the remainder of my career, which would be incredible. And to go with that I think I have an incredible opportunity with some amazing people working on my team and the cars and what-not, and I want to make the most of that. I don’t want to waste the opportunity. That’s probably my number one pet peeve in life is people that waste their opportunity and I have a phenomenal opportunity. If I could add a couple more adjectives to that I would, but it’s beyond a phenomenal opportunity. I don’t want to waste it, I want to make the most of it and this is our opportunity to strike.”
WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO PROVE THIS TO? ARE THEY PEERS OR FANS? “There’s always yourself, which is the most important thing. There are the people I work with and then your peers and certainly the fan base is a part of it too. I think it’s anyone and everyone, but at the end it’s ultimately yourself. I feel like winning the first championship, like I said, almost feels more like a dream than a reality and I feel like a second one would feel like a reality. It reminds me of a quote Mark Martin had about winning his first race when he was in victory lane. He said that his first win was great but winning a second race would be a much more significant achievement because of what it means to you personally and what it means to everyone else – that no one can ever sit back and say, ‘Well, on that day or in that year things just all fell your way,’ when you win more than once.”
HOW IS YOUR CAR COMPARED TO JULY? “I don’t know. We haven’t done anything in race trim, but in the spring we felt our car was not where we wanted it to be in qualifying trim and felt like that handicapped us in the race and made us have to drive through the field a couple times, whether it was the start of the race or through the pit cycles because of pit stall location, and we put an extra emphasis on it today and it’s great to see us get rewarded for that. The cost for that is to not have a great read for where we’re at in race trim, but we’ll just work on that tomorrow.”
HOW MUCH DO YOU TAKE A CHANCE ON SUNDAY THAT YOU MAYBE WOULDN’T DO IF YOU HADN’T WON AT CHICAGO? “That’s certainly a very common question and my first thought to that is the last thing I want to do is go out there and wreck somebody for a win. The win would mean something, don’t get me wrong, but in the sense of the championship it would mean nothing and know that there’s probably somewhere down the road where you’ll have to pay for that. So in that sense you want to be respectful. I think more or less the opportunities or the doors that are opened up with having a first win and being locked in to the next round and these two races notwithstanding, I think those opportunities are in reliability and strategy and that’s probably all.”
IF YOU WIN THIS WEEK OR NEXT IS THERE AN INTIMIDATION FACTOR FOR EVERYBODY ELSE? “No, I don’t think so. I put myself in everyone else’s shoes and if I was everybody else I’d say I just want my cars to be fast for the last four races because that’s when speed enters the equation. The first three races are consistency. The second three races are survival and the three races in the Eliminator Bracket are gonna be speed races, and then the fourth race you’re gonna have to be fast at Homestead, but you’re gonna have to be clutch with no mistakes and rise up to the opportunity under high pressure. In that sense, we have a lot of speed and we’re executing very well. I wouldn’t be intimidated personally, but I can’t speak for anyone else.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED — DOES IT STILL FEEL LIKE YOU’RE LIVING IN A DREAM? “The great weekend seemed to go by like a dream really fast and you can’t get enough of them, and that’s a good thing. I know they spoil you, that’s for sure. You look at weekends where everything goes right like Richmond, I think Kentucky was that way, and you think to yourself, ‘Well, we should do this every weekend.’ If you have the smallest hiccup in the weekend proceedings you start to question everything, so in some ways they’re really dangerous, but when you get them you have to be thankful for them and make the most of them and we’ve been able to do that so far this year and I hope we can continue to do so.”
