Ford Performance NSCS Notes & Quotes:
2015 Daytona 500 Media Day
Thursday, February 12, 2015
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Fastenal Ford Fusion – HOW MANY GUYS ARE CAPABLE OF WINNING THIS RACE? “I think 43 are capable and I think that is what a lot of the fans enjoy about Daytona or Talladega for that matter. I think you see it throughout years past, different winners getting to victory lane that normally wouldn’t. Just being able to do that – we haven’t gotten a win in the Sprint Cup Series so you could put us on that list that could get your first win at a speedway. Yeah, it is just the style of racing that anybody can win and it is frustrating for some of the guys that win all the time and have really fast cars but it is just a product of this racing.”
DOES IT FRUSTRATE YOU EVEN MORE THEN IF A GUY LIKE JIMMIE OR JUNIOR WINS THIS RACE SINCE THEY GET WINS AT OTHER TRACKS? “Yeah, give it to someone else. C’mon. You know what I mean? He’s already won two here I believe and sometimes I feel that goes through your mind a little of like, ‘Let someone else win cause you have plenty of other opportunities.’ We all try to win at every race track but I have a little better chances than others to win every week and that kind of goes through your mind for sure at Daytona and these superspeedway tracks.”
YOU AND TREVOR ARE NOW THE YOUNG FACES OF ROUSH FENWAY RACING. ARE YOU GUYS READY FOR THAT? “I think we are ready for it. It is kind of scary at the same time. I don’t think Roush Fenway has been not as dominant in the Sprint Cup Series the last three or four years and it felt really good on the Nationwide side of things, now the XFINITY Series, we felt really good about that but then coming over here to Cup with the struggles that I have had and the team and organization have had with Matt and Carl leaving, we still have Greg that has been at Roush his whole career which is really good to have. The experience he brings is great and I think we look forward to the challenge and we also are a little bit scared of it as well as you feel like you are somewhat responsible to get this thing turned around. Whether it be giving good feedback to Jack and to Robbie and Mark McCardell and Kevin Kidd to make the right changes to get the cars running better – when you get them running better you turn the organization around. We have a lot of work to do but are looking forward to the task.”
JACK ISN’T ONE TO PUT ANY PRESSURE ON YOU IS HE? “He is pretty laid back lately. I think he feels really good about the people we have in place now. I think he is more relaxed and at ease with that. He can be tough. I have seen him tough. He expects the best but he is the one that gave me the opportunity to race stock cars and allowed me to win two championships in the Nationwide Series and I definitely feel like I owe him a lot to make sure we get his Cup program back on the right track.”
THERE IS A BIG CROP OF YOUNG GUYS COMING IN. WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE TO THEM? “I feel like I have been doing this awhile but I am not old at all. There are a lot of things. You can come in and have a rookie season like Kyle (Larson) had this year where everything goes good or one like mine which was decent but it wasn’t stellar or terrible. This year I felt like my season was terrible. You just have to keep working hard and plugging away. When you do have good cars you can’t take them for granted because it is tough to get those every week.”
DO YOU HAVE THE SAME KIND OF FUN RACING NOW AS YOU DID AS A YOUNG KID? “Yeah, you have fun when you get things right. It is frustrating a lot of times over this last year getting things – getting your cars to be good. So we have struggled with that. There were a few races we had really good race cars and finished well with them but they were few and far between. I think those races remind you that you can do it and have fun doing it but when you have so many in a row that aren’t as good as you want then it is a little frustrating.”
WHAT HAS BEEN DONE WITH THE NEW FOLKS DURING THE OFF SEASON? WHAT HAVE THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS BEEN SO FAR? “I would say they did a lot of analysis on the cars we have been running on the past. They went back two and three years to see where we started getting off track. I think they have found some low hanging fruit that I think would be easy to pick up on and change but at the same time I think it is a combination. It wasn’t just one thing. I think it was our aero side, chassis side, geometry and suspension and some of our steering components that were feeling in the seat as the drivers. Some of the things they found and are explaining to me in a lot of the meetings were things that I could feel. That was found through their research. We didn’t just start building new cars like we used to do at Roush Fenway. We used to build new cars just to build new cars without reasoning or a direction to why we were building them. Now all the research we did over the off-season shows us what we need to do. That is why we won’t start with a brand new car in Atlanta – we couldn’t get it built in time. They did so much research during the off-season to make sure we build the best possible car we can. It is not one thing but I hope that we have hit on enough things that it will point us in the right direction. I think the aero changes of the race cars will help as well.”
SO IT WASN’T SOMETHING EASY TO FIX? “If it was quick and easy then we would have hit on it. Jack and Robbie and them aren’t scared to build new race cars. They aren’t scared to change anything. I don’t think we ran two weeks with the same stuff last year. We were just changing and changing and changing but we didn’t hit on anything because it is a combination of everything. You aren’t going to fix one thing, especially if your aero platform is off. If your aero is off you can change as much as you want suspension wise but the car will probably still react the same. I think our aero is one of the biggest things we have changed.”
GIVEN WHAT HAPPENED AT TALLADEGA LAST YEAR, HOW DO YOU APPROACH THIS QUALIFYING HERE? “I am definitely worried about qualifying. I don’t think anybody was really worried about it until the fiasco at Talladega. I think everybody will approach it a little different. I don’t think anybody will be hanging around and waiting and trying to get a good lap. I think everyone will go out there and basically race for five minutes and see where you stack up. We have tried to come up with different plans of what we need to do but really we just have to go make fast laps. That is definitely in the back of our minds of making sure we get a decent lap in. If we can make that top-24 and move on to the second round I think that would be a lot of weight off our shoulders.”
“The qualifying races aren’t easy either. I have messed it up the last two years. I have sped on pit road and didn’t get a good finish. We’ve qualified in the top-10 every 500 qualifying but end up starting 24th or worse because of mistakes in those Duels. You are really going to have to be on your game for this qualifying session. It will probably be the most nerve wracking qualifying session you will ever have because it sets you up for the Duels and those can be pretty hairy as well.”
TREVOR IS THE NEW GUY BUT HAS BEEN AROUND AWHILE. HOW IS HE FITTING IN AND CHANGING THE DYNAMIC? “He fits in great. Obviously him and Greg haven’t had a lot of experience working together but he and I have. We feel really good being back as full time teammates. We had been on the Cup side when he was running the Wood Brothers car but never that real full time teammate feeling. I am looking forward to getting that back together. It has been since 2011 that we were full time teammates and I know he is excited about it and willing to put a lot of work and effort into making sure that we get things going in the right direction.”
WHAT IN YOUR VIEW HAS DANICA BROUGHT TO THIS SPORT? “If you take a big picture view she brings a lot of attention of people outside of our sport. You have Dale Jr. that brings a lot of attention from people within our sport but as far as people not being in our sport I think she brings us up to a lot of different media outlets that NASCAR would not generally be associated with. More brand awareness of what we are doing over here I think is one of the big things she brings over.”
DO YOU THINK IT IS EVER A BURDEN FOR HER? “No, I don’t think so. Us drivers always put a lot of pressure on ourselves and she is no different. She wants to win every race she goes out in and it is not realistic to win every race and it is tough to even win one but we all go out with the same mindset. Just because you have a good solid top-10 day doesn’t mean you are going to be happy with it. There are a lot of disappointing races but I don’t think there is added pressure. She is just a racer like us and she feels like she is wanting to win every week and that is the pressure she puts on herself.”
IS THE MULLET A CONSCIOUS DECISION? “Yeah, it has been awhile. I just saw they posted a picture of Chad Little and Elton Sawyer as they got their new directing roles and I saw some older pictures of them and I thought, ‘Man, that needs to come on back.’ Jeff Gordon is the same way. It is his last year so maybe I will keep it for him.”
DANICA LIKE IT? “Ehhhhhh. Not so much.”
WOULD SHE CUT IT IF YOU LET HER? “Oh, 100-percent.”
