Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Clash at the Coliseum Media Availabilities | Saturday, February 3, 2024
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Great Lakes Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT’S IT LIKE WHEN YOU’RE CELEBRATING A CHAMPIONSHIP COMPARED TO A TEAMMATE? “It’s kind of what I said before is Joey has won a couple there. I was just getting to the organization when Brad won his in ‘12 and it’s nice to walk around. You’re like, ‘Man, I feel like I’ve done something really nice for the whole company and organization, for RP and everyone working there.’ I don’t want to say you feel validated in being there because everyone always believes in you, but it’s just like a personal confidence-booster. It’s nice to feel part of that champion group that’s won for RP, so it personally makes you feel a little bit better and a little bit more certified in being there and racing for the cause each week.”
WITH PENSKE THERE IS A LONG LIST OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE DONE GREAT THINGS. “It’s just nice to be on that list. RP has had a big six months and really the past year. From 600 and 500 and Cup championship and winning Daytona, the 24, it’s nice to keep adding to that list. You want to do that. You want to add titles and wins and history for RP and that team, so that’s just nice to be able to have a small part in the historical side.”
WHAT IS THE MOOD LIKE AT TEAM PENSKE RIGHT NOW? “You’ve got to win the 500. You need to have a shot at winning the 500. That’s what’s next. Try to just keep getting milesones for RP and try to win historic races and bring more championships and stuff like that. That’s just the main goal. Them winning the 24 was great, but now it’s like we have to do it again in Daytona here in a couple of weeks. We’re usually fairly decent at trying to continue to stack on big wins from the other race teams that he has, so that’s top of the list right now.”
WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO SEE YOUR FIRESUIT WITH THE CHAMPIONSHIP PATCH ON THERE? “That meant a lot. It did mean a ton. It was one of those things that was like a month removed from all those celebrations and it’s in the new year, but you see that – you get the trophy, you get the Goodyear car, you get the ring and then once the banquet is done that stuff is over. You’ve got all of that stuff, but then it’s a nice little refresher for the new year when you pull out the fire suit from the bag and you see the champion logo beneath the NASCAR logo. That part was nice. You look at that every morning, at least I will on race day. You look at it and it’s one of those little things you notice. It’s kind of a nice little reminder.”
YOU WERE JOKING ABOUT GETTING CROPPED OUT OF THE SHOT OF THE KNICKS, BUT DOES IT SHOW HOW MUCH FURTHER THE SPORT HAS TO GO IF YOU AREN’T GETTING RECOGNIZED? “Personally, I didn’t care about it. I just thought it was funny to point out, but that was cold, man. That was cold of them. And the worst part was the photographer was like, ‘Bubba, Ryan, get in this photo’ and then the Knicks chopped me out. I’m not a Knicks fan anyway, but I just thought it was funny. I don’t care about that stuff. I just thought it was funny, so I put that out there. I think people took it as I was being literally upset with it and I wasn’t. I was just having fun with it. It doesn’t bother me any. They just missed it. I don’t think they’re used to having champions in there. They haven’t won one in a while (laughing). I’ve got to give it back to them a little bit.”
GIVEN THAT, IN THE LAST THREE MONTHS HAVE YOU SENSED ANY INCREASED LEVEL OF RECOGNITION IN PUBLIC? “Yeah, a little bit. I’m sure at the race track, too, but even just in public. I enjoy people if they call my name they call me, ‘Hey, champ.’ That part is kind of nice. It’s just those little tiny things that you appreciate and people have been great, fantastic.”
HAVE YOU WATCHED ALL FIVE EPISODES OF THE NETFLIX SERIES AND WHAT IS YOUR TAKE? “I thought it was good. It was nice to see that. It’s nice to see the positive response from it. I haven’t seen very many negative sides. I think everyone has really enjoyed it and it seems to be doing really well. I thought they did a good job of mixing the racing side with the personality side and showing what goes into it – the ups and the downs. It’s a lot of emotions positive and negative depending on how you’re doing in it, and I thought they did a good job with that. Hopefully, it continues to build and it gets picked up again. It was good to give access to those folks and just show the personal side and then the racing side, whether it’s your diehard NASCAR fan or someone who doesn’t know anything about the sport, I think it portrayed it really well. I especially enjoyed the ending, so that part was good. Gianna has a new quote in it now that people keep telling me, so that was nice.”
ARE YOU PLANNING ANY MERCH WITH THAT QUOTE ON IT? “I can’t put that word on a shirt, but maybe we can work our way around it a little bit. Yeah, I thought it was really good. It was nice to see and it was nice that people enjoyed it. That was the main thing, really.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY PRE-RACE RITUAL? “I don’t really have a superstition, but I think the only thing I have to do is I have to have a good meal before the race and a good dinner. Bland, man. It’s like chicken or steak and rice. It’s pretty boring, but it’s something I’m not gonna regret a couple hundred miles into this race. That’s like the only thing.”
HOMEMADE OR A RESTAURANT? “Homemade. I usually have some stuff in the bus that I cook that morning.”
WHEN IT COMES TO THE DAYTONA 500 HOW DO DRIVERS JUSTIFY THE FACT IT’S VIEWED AS THE BIGGEST RACE BUT SO MUCH OF IT IS OUT OF YOUR CONTROL? “I’ve always had the mindset of speedway racing in general is like a lot of times it’s not gonna be fully in control of your own destiny and I’ve just kind of accepted that. These races are what they are and I’m just gonna do my best to try to stick around this thing and if I get wiped out or something that’s not my fault, what can you do? But, yeah, that is the tricky side. It is such a crown jewel and it’s tough a lot of times, especially recently, I think you haven’t seen it since back in the eighties or something like that, like the fastest car is gonna win that thing for sure. You have fast cars that sit on the pole, but they might not win it now. They usually don’t win it just because you never know what can happen because a lot of people can win, but it is tough to win. I don’t want to take away from people winning that race is special because it definitely is and you’ve done a good job of staying in the race all night and putting yourself in a spot to win. It still is very hard to do, but you do have to have that factor in the back of your head that it’s not fully in your control, but that’s just part of it.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THE DAYTONA 500 AND HAVING TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE RACE ISN’T ALWAYS IN YOUR CONTROL? “It’s not a true measure of your career. It’s a huge race to win because of everything that goes behind the Daytona 500. Unfortunately, the race is kind of the way it is. It’s a speedway race. You would assume the biggest race of the year, the best teams and drivers would always win, but it’s not like that. Speedways have always been known as the great equalizer and it really is. With that said, you could still set yourself apart from the field and be better at it and help your chances of it, but you still can get caught up in something or something can happen. So, I don’t think it defines your career. It is an unbelievable stat to have on your resume. That part is fantastic, but I think if you never won the Daytona 500 and then you won 15 Cup races, you’d probably rather win 15 Cup races over one 500. I don’t know what that number is. Maybe it’s five to one, I don’t know, but I feel like winning at other tracks, personally, I don’t want to call it a bigger accomplishment, but it kind of means a little different things.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE NETFLIX SERIES? “I haven’t watched all of them yet. Honestly, I’ve been waiting to watch all of them with my son because he really enjoys watching them. We’ve watched three so far and it’s been really good. I think it’s been really entertaining and interesting to watch. I enjoyed watching it just to see how other people do things. I didn’t like reliving getting knocked out of the playoffs. That part really sucked, but I get they have to do that, but it wasn’t fun to relive that, I can tell you that much (laughing). I think the show is a great success and I think on Netflix it’s probably a big win there.”
DID YOU OR YOUR TEAM OK THE CREW COMING IN AFTERWARDS? “I didn’t OK them, it just happens. They just follow you everywhere you go (laughing). They were trying to film me changing and I said, ‘OK, I think this is probably enough.’ I don’t know how to say it politely, but…”
DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR FELLOW COMPETITORS YOU DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE? “Not yet. I’m only three episodes in, but nothing that’s really surprised me yet.”
DO YOU FEEL IT WAS PORTRAYED ACCURATELY? “Yeah. I think so. We didn’t open the doors as much as others. I mean, Denny really did. I don’t know if I feel really comfortable doing that just from a privacy and safety standpoint. That was my reason for kind of like, ‘OK, this is what I’m comfortable with.’ At the racetrack, everything was fine. You’ve just got to have some limits there for me. Maybe I’m weird about that stuff, but I didn’t feel like they said anything that wasn’t true, at least about me.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 6 Castrol Ford Mustang Dark Horse – THE DAYTONA 500 IS OUT OF A DRIVER’S CONTROL MANY TIMES. HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT? “It’s really difficult. I think you go to the Daytona 500 and you’ve done all of this preparation work. Some of it by the nature of it being the biggest race of the year, but a lot of it by nature of it being the first points paying race of the year that you spend so much time preparing for Daytona. You get there and the result kind of feels more often than not unearned either way, and so like many things in life you just have to recognize that it’s not always fair and accept it and move on, but it’s just difficult to reconcile for sure.”
HOW DIFFICULT HAS IT BEEN TO COME HERE AND MISS THE SHOW? “It’s not good, but the great thing about it is both times we’ve went straight to Daytona and led a lot of laps and been up front and, I think, got a little bit of leniency from our partners, but we can’t rely on that. We need to come here today and have a good race and be very competitive for sure.”
WHERE DO YOU STAND AS FAR AS THE CHARTER NEGOTIATIONS? “The good thing about the charter negotiations is the reality is we don’t have to have anything done until February of 2025, which is a year almost exactly from today. Obviously, you always want to get those things done sooner rather than later because of the ramifications they can have to everybody, but there’s quite a bit of time. I think there’s a lot of work to be done to get everybody to come together, but I’m still optimistic.”
WHAT KIND OF MINDSET DO YOU TAKE TO DAYTONA THIS YEAR? “I would trade all the laps led for a lead on the last lap, I can tell you that. Nobody ever seems to care who has led the most laps, but I appreciate you bringing it up. It just hasn’t come together. I always feel like on plate tracks there are races that I’ve won that maybe I didn’t earn and just things came together, but then there’s races where you feel like you’ve earned the win and it doesn’t come together. Daytona has been that way for me the last three races, where I feel like we made the right moves, had a great team, great car, I feel like I made all the right moves and happenstance didn’t play in our favor. It’s frustrating, but there’s nothing I can do about it. You keep moving on and keep pushing forward. I want to make sure if I go to Daytona and don’t win, whether it be this year, year’s past or year’s to come, that I did everything. I put in all the effort, made all the right moves, studied all the right things to study, worked with the team to bring the best car and have the best pit stops, and then there comes a point where you just have to accept the fact that if you don’t win it and you’ve done all those things at the highest level possible that it just wasn’t meant to be.”
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE AND LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT THE DAYTONA 500? “My favorite thing about the Daytona 500 is, hands down, the walk down the stage for driver intros. That’s one of the few things that I’ve been in the Cup Series for 13, 14 years now and it still gives me chills. I’ll carry that with me to my death bed is that memory and feeling, and then the least part is almost always the same – it’s leaving the Daytona 500 and driving out of the tunnel having not won it, and how deflating that is, but that’s what it is.”
WHAT TRACK DO YOU LOOK FORWARD TO AFTER THAT? “I really look forward to a lot of them. I don’t know how to weigh it. There are certain places that you fly into or drive into and you pull into the racetrack and you just feel the fan atmosphere and it feels really cool. It’s hard to pick one because I think it changes year to year. I’m gonna guess this year it’s gonna be Iowa because I just feel like we’re gonna go to Iowa this year and that community is gonna go crazy and it’s gonna be contagious, but in a normal year I would say it’s probably that way at Talladega.”
HOW HAVE YOU SEEN RYAN BLANEY EMBRACE THIS CHAMPIONSHIP? “It’s great. He was made for this moment in so many different ways, from his upbringing to the people he’s surrounded himself with. If I’m NASCAR, it’s a dream for Ryan Blaney to win the championship because he’s willing to put in the work and effort and he’s just a good person.”
HOW HAS THE MOOD CHANGES AT RFK FROM WHEN YOU TOOK OVER TO WHERE IT IS GOING INTO THIS YEAR? “It’s really high. We have a team that I think feels like we can go compete for the championship this year – both cars. We have phenomenal pit crews. We’ve put in the work on the engineering side to where we think the race cars will be fast more often than they’re slow, and then it really is just a matter of going out and executing it. The company is in a really good place.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang Dark Horse – ANY THOUGHTS ON THE CLASH POTENTIALLY GOING INTERNATIONAL NEXT YEAR? “Man, it’s a perfect opportunity to do it and move around. I think when it first came here the word was it would be neat to see it move around some and try to break the mold. I’m excited to see if something comes around. I know Canada was really close to happening for a road course event this year and it didn’t quite come around, but I’m equally excited about Iowa. It doesn’t hurt my feelings too much, but for this event I think it’s the perfect chance to go try something and move around a little bit and see what we can do.”
WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR DAYTONA? “To win the 500. For RFK, we’ve had such fast Ford Mustangs every time we go down to a superspeedway that I don’t see that changing for us. The new Dark Horse Mustang, we’re very excited about it for our mile-and-a-halves and some of our larger short tracks, but where we’re standing at right now, and I’m not the most intelligent person to be able to say this, but from the talks we’ve had and what i’ve gathered is we don’t see any penalty coming for us when we go superspeedway racing, so I think we’re still gonna have the speed there. We’re still gonna have the ability to push. We’ve worked hard to be able to have the handling to go with that, so nothing from my point of view changes going into the 500 that says we won’t be just as competitive and be able to be in the hunt with all three of our race cars heading into the 500.”
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO BUY INTO BRAD’S VISION? “I was onboard from the get-go. I know when he came in there were a lot of changes that were cumbersome for everybody in the weeds in the shop. There was a lot of work to make things just physically look nicer. For me, it’s a little easier because I’m not having to do all that, strip stuff and paint. I’m just watching it get nicer, so it’s a little easier for me. It’s hard to get everybody to buy into that being a solution, but it was just the first puzzle piece of it, I think. To see it evolve into what it has become now and kind of just that pride that everybody has in what we’re doing in the organization, I think it certainly has caught on at this point. I was on board from the get-go. I would say that I love the organization. I love the cleanliness of it. It’s bled over into my life and I’m sure Brad is happy to hear that. I’ve been building a shop at home and now everything is black and white and clean. I used to love some color, so I don’t know what’s going on, but you see how it operates and how it works and I think it’s just that idea of you’ve got to start somewhere and now we’re sitting here looking at detail work and everything we do, and they have been for a long time, but that’s what it’s come down to, especially with this car is it’s the little details that are making big differences on the track. It just started with something way more basic than the small parts on the race car.”
COULD YOU HAVE ANTICIPATED A THREE RACE WIN SEASON AT ROUSH BEFORE BRAD CAME ON BOARD? “I always wanted to get there and felt like we would have that opportunity, but the small gains we made year over year made it frustrating that we weren’t making bigger strides. I won’t say you got used to the small gains, but Brad coming in and being very optimistic and saying big gains are gonna happen quick, you love to hear it but had watched it fall a little bit short for a long time, so to see it happen as quickly as it did is amazing. I mean, you’re talking about within the first 12 months being able to win a race at Bristol was big, but the next year being able to have a season like we did is amazing from where I’m at. I don’t think you could have anticipated it, but was certainly hopeful of it and now that we’ve been able to do that and show what we’re capable of, it puts us in a good spot to say, ‘All right, that’s our new floor. How do we improve on that?’ A lot of that starts by making the race at The Clash, but knowing that once we get going in the season we’ve got to fire off a little stronger than we have. If we can do that, then that will make our summer a little easier on us and we can be able to take some more chances to win even more races.”
WHAT IS THE MOOD LIKE AT RFK AS YOU LOOK AHEAD TO THE DAYTONA 500? “I would say that it’s not a whole lot different than it’s been going into Daytona or really any superspeedway because we always have a shot to do that. It’s just a matter of executing it correctly, having a little bit of good fortune on our side. We’ve been more times than not able to have that kind of result and not been able to put it all together at the right time, so that was finally that moment that says, ‘Man, we’ve got to figure out how to do this every time.’ It doesn’t work like that when we go to speedways. I know that there are a lot of people in our sport say there’s no such thing as luck, that you make your own – whatever. I don’t buy into that. There is a certain amount of luck you’ve got to have, but you’ve got to work hard to be in the right spot. There’s a lot of things that can happen. I know going back into it there are gonna be three RFK Ford Mustangs that are gonna be capable of winning that race. We’re gonna have three of us that are gonna be able to work really well together. David being a good friend and a fantastic superspeedway racer as well, I was able to learn a lot from him early in my career and a lot from Brad as of late, so I feel like I’ve got good people around to study and talk about this thing and be able to put up some pretty awesome results to get the season fired off on the right foot.”
WHAT’S IT LIKE GOING INTO 2024 AFTER THE BEST SEASON OF YOUR CAREER? “It’s more fun. I mean, for simplest terms it’s just want racing was always supposed to be. It’s what you enjoy doing growing up when you went to the track and they saw your hauler roll in there and everybody said, ‘Man, that’s who we’ve got to outrun.’ That’s fun. That was always the joy of it and so we’re certainly as close to that feeling as I’ve been in a couple decades at this point. For me, I look at our season, I look at the wins and look at the successes at different styles of racetracks. The ones that weren’t wins but were strong showings and I don’t sit here and look at weak points in the schedule for us. That’s kind of what I’m talking about is unloading and feeling like we’ve got a chance wherever we go. There are three or four racetracks that I’m sitting here from a personal side saying I have a lot of work to do to get us to that point, but I think that the team being in such a better place and being a little ahead of me at some of those is really gonna help me turn the corner at some of those places, no pun intended. I’m excited about the season and I’m really not looking at any one track as this is our potential, this is where we can get it done. I think we go in every week right now and say this is another chance to go win more races and that’s fun to sit here and think about and talk about.”
