Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Ford Zoom Media Availability | Wednesday, June 2, 2021
Cole Custer, driver of the No. 41 Autodesk Fusion 360 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing is a California native returning to his home state for this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series event at Sonoma Raceway. This will mark Custer’s first time on the road course after last year’s scheduled event was postponed. He spoke about expectations for this weekend as part of this week’s Ford Zoom call with members of the media.
COLE CUSTER, No. 41 Autodesk Fusion 360 Ford Mustang — YOU HAVE A NEW SPONSOR THIS WEEKEND AND IT’S YOUR FIRST TIME AT SONOMA. THOUGHTS? “I’m really looking forward to it. I think the road courses have been something that’s always kind of a wild card and it’s always kind of an equalizer for the field. For us, it’s a great opportunity to have a solid run and hopefully find ourselves with a chance to win by the end of it. It’s a really technical place that I enjoy at Sonoma. It’s a place I haven’t ran in the Cup Series yet, so it’s gonna be a little bit of learning, but it’s just one of those places you have so much elevation change and that carousel. It’s just a fun racetrack to run and we have Autodesk on the car this week. It’s really cool. We had them on the car at Texas a few years ago. I ran an XFINITY race and we won with them and from there it’s just been a great relationship and it’s been awesome having them on the car. We use their software a ton at the race shop to be able to design parts and do different things, so they’re a huge part of what we do.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT SONOMA? “It’s still about 10 hours from my home because Northern California is so far from Southern California, but whenever you go back to California it’s always special. You’re always trying to see family and it’s always a homecoming. You always get to have the In-N-Out, so I look forward to that, but going to Sonoma I’ve run a few K&N races there and I’ve always loved it. It’s just one of those places that it’s fun to kind of slip and slide around and be able to go up and down the hills and hit the curbs. It’s just one of those places that I think every driver loves to go to.”
WHAT’S THE TOUGHEST PART OF THE TRACK AND HOW HAVE YOU PREPARED? “I would say with how they’ve changed the course, one of the toughest turns now is that carousel. I think it’s just a really awkward corner and it doesn’t feel like a corner a race car should be going through. It’s really tight, really downhill, off camber. It’s just a really tough corner and it’s something that you never go through there and feel like you did it right. It never feels natural, so it’s one of those things you just kind of have to hit your marks and make sure you don’t overdo it through there.”
YOU’VE HAD SOME EXPERIENCE ON THAT TRACK. WHAT TAKEAWAYS DO YOU HAVE FROM THAT? “Like I said, it’s just such a technical racetrack and it’s definitely nice to have some laps around there. There’s so much fall off and so much you have to do to try and make it around those slick corners. It’s not an easy place to get around, so having those laps will definitely help, but I’m sure in the Cup car it’s gonna be a little bit different trying to figure out just a lot more horsepower, trying to figure out how you’re gonna work it through those corners and be more patient probably, so I’m sure it’s gonna be a lot of learning pretty fast.”
WILL EXPERIENCE ON THE CAROUSEL BE AN ADVANTAGE FOR THOSE WHO HAVE RACED THERE BEFORE? “Yeah, for sure — a little bit. Being able to kind of know what I’m looking for going through that corner and it leads into a great passing zone, so I definitely think it opens up some things. If you can get through the carousel pretty good, it opens up a lot of opportunities to pass. There are those cheap corners you’re always looking for to try and make sure you can pass good, and I think the carousel is definitely one of them.”
YOU’VE HAD GOOD RUNS ON ROAD COURSES IN THE PAST. HOW MUCH CONFIDENCE DOES THAT GIVE YOU? “I’ve always loved the road course races and I feel like I’ve actually been pretty close to winning a few and I still haven’t won one. That’s probably the one thing in my career up to now that I really want to try and check off is have a road course win because I feel like every single one I’ve been to we’ve run pretty solid and I’ve been happy with it. There are so many things that have to go right to win a road course race with the strategy and people are running off course and running into you and spinning out. It’s just the races are so crazy that you have to have a lot of things go right, so I definitely want to try and check off that road course win. That would be huge.”
IS THERE A WAY TO DESCRIBE WHAT THE CLOSING RATE IS LIKE AT CHARLOTTE WHEN YOU COME UP ON SLOWER CARS? HOW DO YOU MANAGE THAT? “The biggest thing is it’s just a little bit frustrating because you’re coming by them so many times and every single time it’s a way of how are you gonna manage to get by him. How are you gonna time it right and it’s hard to time something right when they’re going so much slower and then you lose spots, you lose momentum and it just costs you positions. For a race car driver that’s the last thing you want to have happen, so it just gets frustrating when it happens over and over and over again, but it’s part of it and we’ll work with it.”
DO YOU FEEL SHR HAS DONE ANYTHING TO COMBAT THE SLOW START TO THE SEASON? “It’s tough. There are so many different things to look at and there’s things we can kind of cypher through and try and figure out what’s worked and what hasn’t, but at the end of the day also every single track is different, so you can go and try and figure something out at Kansas and it’s completely different when you go to Charlotte. It’s always kind of a little bit of a guessing game with the no practice right now. You can go to the simulator and definitely work through some things and get some big picture ideas, but it’s tough to really correlate what’s gonna happen when you hit the racetrack with the certain conditions that you have and how every single one is different.”
HOW WOULD YOU EVALUATE THE SHR ROAD COURSE PROGRAM? “I would say for us as an organization we’ve been solid on the road course races. We’ve definitely wanted to be better, but I feel like we’ve been in the mix at least. I feel like we can run top 10 and from there it’s just a matter of one adjustment and one thing going right on pit road and you’re in the top five and looking for a win, so I think it’s just a matter of fine-tuning it a little bit, but I’ve been pretty happy with our road course cars, but it’s just a matter of having the whole race play out right.”
WHAT IS THE MOST UNIQUE TROPHY YOU HAVE IN YOUR COLLECTION AND WHICH ONE WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD? “For me, probably the most unique trophy I have is the Miles the Monster trophy and not only because it was that, but because it was the 50th year when I won, so I got a gold trophy out of it. That was the year I think everybody wanted to win. Everybody wants to win at Dover anyways because of the Monster Mile trophy, but that year was pretty special and we were lucky enough to win that race. One that I really want, I think everybody would probably say Daytona. I mean, that’s the coolest trophy you can have in your collection, but that would be a really cool one to add to the house.”
HOW MUCH DO YOU FEEL YOU’RE CONTRIBUTING TO HELPING SHR IMPROVE IN YOUR SECOND YEAR AT THE CUP LEVEL? “Nobody is happy right now is the thing. We’re all trying to find different things to try and make our cars better and it’s just, like I said before, there’s no good way to really go about it right now when you don’t have any practice. That’s the plain and simple point. When you don’t have any practice you’re kind of guessing and you’re thinking through things and trying things at the simulator and you think they’re better, but if you’re not able to do it at that certain racetrack that certain weekend, you really don’t know how it’s gonna work out when you don’t have any practice time. In the Cup Series the competition is so stiff that if you’re off for that first run, it ruins your whole day. It’s just a matter of keep working through things and eventually we’re gonna hit on it. We have some really smart people at SHR that are working really hard, so it’s just a matter of cyphering through it. That’s the biggest thing.”
WHAT DID YOU LEARN AT CHARLOTTE WITH PRACTICE COMPARED TO THE OTHER RACES THIS YEAR? “It points more to what your real problems are, I guess is what it helps you with. Are you gonna find the fix in a 50-minute practice session? Probably not, but it gives you an idea of those things that you did try — did they help you or did they not really make a difference. We tried a lot of different things and some things helped a little and some things didn’t, so now we can focus more in the directions we need to get better and from there it’s just fine-tuning it.”
THE 600 IS VIEWED AS A GOOD BENCHMARK. CAN YOU GIVE US ANY INSIGHT ON HOW SHR BREAKS DOWN THE SEASON? HAVE YOU SEGMENTED WHERE YOU WANT TO BE OR IDENTIFIED CERTAIN RACES WHERE YOU RE-EVALUATE THINGS? “I think during the summertime you just kind of have to dig in and grind it out. We’re racing for a long time in the summertime. It gets hot and I think it’s just one of those things you kind of have to stay focused on what your goal is and that’s making the playoffs, so, for us points-wise, the last few weeks haven’t been too good for us, so we’re gonna have to try and probably think out of the box and look for more wins, find out how to win a race here in the summertime and from there it’s just trying to grind it out. Every single race matters for us right now, so we have to make sure we’re bringing everything we’ve got.”
DOES IT HELP HAVING MIKE SHIPLETT TO KEEP YOU PUMPED UP? “Yeah, for sure. The thing is at this level everybody has had success before and you have to remind yourself at times that you were having those good days and that kind of keeps you going, but I think it’s just one of those things you just have to keep grinding and it’s not easy. Nobody likes to go through the dry spells and everything like that, but it happens and you just have to figure out a way to keep working at it and work with your team and having good people around you that want to keep working at it and keep pushing to be better, that’s what you need.”
WE’RE STARTING TO SEE SOME SPEED OUT OF ROUSH FENWAY, SO BEING ABLE TO SEE SOME BRIGHT GLIMMER OF HOPE OUT OF THEM WITH BUESCHER IS IT JUST A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE SHR TURNS THINGS AROUND? “Yeah, honestly it’s just the little things. I mean, I know at times it really sucks to run 20th or 25th, but if you can get yourself just a tenth or two better, you’re running around 10th. It’s just a matter of getting those little things better and the more and more you work at it, the more you fine-tune it and you figure out which direction you need to go in, you’re gonna be in the ballpark.”
THE CHANGE IN AERO PACKAGES FROM A COUPLE YEARS AGO. WHAT ARE YOU STUDYING FOR THIS RACE AT SONOMA? “That’s a tough one. I’ll probably go back to 2018 when it was the low downforce package and I’ll watch some of that for sure, but obviously you’re gonna miss a few corners with that, so in those corners that you don’t have you’re gonna kind of guesstimate to be honest, and you’re gonna use your simulator at Ford Performance, and we’re gonna get an idea of where we need to be braking and where we need to be doing things in those few corners where the carousel is and I think it’s turn seven after the carousel. It’s a matter of I think the Ford Performance simulator is gonna be a big part of being able to know where your lift point is gonna be and figuring out how you’re gonna attack those corners going into the weekend.”
