NASCAR XFINITY SERIES
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2020
DRYDENE 200 – DOVER INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
FORD PERFORMANCE DRIVER – POST RACE QUOTES
FORD FINISHING RESULTS:
2nd — Austin Cindric
10th — Chase Briscoe
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 22 PPG Ford Mustang — “Track position was extremely important. The track didn’t quite move around. When we’d get a restart about 10-15 laps in you could be good being the first guy up or making hay in traffic, but we have some things we can execute better on, but it was a great points day and getting our PPG Mustang in the top three is great and hopefully it’s something to build on for tomorrow.”
HOW VALUABLE IS IT TO HAVE A SOLID DAY TODAY? “It makes it a lot easier for my team, I can tell you that. I had a great battle there with Justin. Obviously, he wanted it really bad. I knew that wasn’t gonna be an easy pass, so hopefully we can take it to him tomorrow. I mean, he drove the wheels off that thing. I don’t know if you guys watched my onboard camera much, but he was sideways from the beginning of the run to the end of the run, so props to him and those guys and we’ll try to do better tomorrow.”
CHASE BRISCOE, No. 98 Highpoint.com Ford Mustang — WHAT HAPPENED AND WHAT WERE YOU DEALING WITH? “The wreck, I haven’t seen it, but I felt like I was really loose as it was and it would just get so tight there off of two and arou nd the air it just spun me out so fast and it knocked the toe out and everything else. The wheel was going 11 o’clock to 1 o’clock and I was all but wrecking down every straightaway and we were burying the splitter, so to come back and run 10th is obviously really good for our Highpoint.com Ford. Obviously, I want a lot more. The way these last six or seven races have gone we haven’t been where we had been earlier in the year, so I feel like we can get it turned around tomorrow. We’ll probably go to a backup and hopefully it’s a little bit better.”
HOW MUCH OF A CHALLENGE COMING FROM THE BACK IN A BACKUP? “I didn’t even realize I was gonna have to start in the back. That’s gonna be tough, but we did it here last year. We qualified on the pole and still had to start last and came back and led a lot of laps. I think the biggest thing is you don’t know how that car is gonna drive. We can tune on what we thought this one needed, but that other car, even though they’re built the exact same, can always drive different. Hopefully, we’re a little bit better tomorrow. I felt like we were pretty decent today, but we just never got clean air and I think that would have made a big difference, so we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”
POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 22 PPG Ford Mustang — WHAT HAS MADE THIS TEAM SO STRONG THIS SUMMER? “I think we’ve honestly been strong all year. I feel like we’ve brought some incredibly fast race cars since the start of the season with Vegas as a great example all the way up to Kentucky and now. I’m proud of that effort and my guys have been working hard. I do the best I can to prepare. I love coming to this racetrack. I’m glad we had a really good run here today. Hopefully, we can learn from today, apply it to tomorrow and maybe execute just a little bit better. It was a little bit of a track position race, but you can’t get too caught up in trying to win every race because these things are pretty hard to do. To come away with a second-place finish and Justin was obviously really hungry. That was gonna be a hard pass to make if it wasn’t on pit road, so congrats to him and try and do one spot better tomorrow.”
HOW DO YOU THINK THE TRACK WITH CHANGE TOMORROW? “When we’ve done the doubleheader weekends at Homestead and Kentucky I’ve tried as best as we could as a team to use it as a learning experience. I mean, we know we don’t have practice for the rest of the year, so whatever we can do to make our race cars better between the two races, you’re never gonna have a better A to B. Now, I will say being where we’re located geographically that there’s a good chance the track will be wet and it will be green again, but that’s kind of how this racetrack ebbs and flows. I expect the racetrack to be starting about the same tomorrow morning as it is now.”
DID YOU GET A GOOD LAUNCH ON THE BOTTOM AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THAT LANE? “It was a track position race and if I was gonna give myself any shot to win the race, it was gonna be on a restart. Finishing second or finishing third nobody really cares. It doesn’t really matter. When you’re NASCAR racing you don’t get a trophy for it and the points are a small difference, so try and win races. That’s probably why I did it. That’s the conversation I had with myself. In Ross’ shoes, I probably would have done the same thing he did, picking the second row on the top, but obviously we were able to take advantage of it and still hold the second-place track position, but, yeah, I did it to try and give myself a shot at the win.”
THOUGHTS ON THE CHOOSE CONE? “At this track I’m not sure it affects it as much as when you’d maybe go somewhere like Michigan or maybe Texas at the latter part of the year — Martinsville. I saw it being 50/50 as far as your advantage to gain a whole lot, especially if you’re within the top five — you kind of just do whatever the other guy doesn’t do. But, it was fine. I think the communication for that, you have to really nail down with your spotter, especially as it gets more complicated, but I’m all for it.”
WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE IN THIS ZONE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW? “Honestly, some of it’s not up to me, but I’m the one driving the race car. I feel very blessed to be within a group of guys that feed off each other. My guys know how hard I work, whether if it’s working out in the middle of the week or preparation during the week. I know how hard they work at the race shop and the same thing applies when we hit the racetrack. We’re prepared and we feed off of each other’s talents. I’m surrounded by a lot of talented people, so when you put all that together and you execute on a race weekend and you have great equipment and great partners, a lot is possible. I’m glad that as my boss would say, ‘Effort Equal Results.’ I don’t expect it to be easy for the whole year, but not that this has been easy. I felt like I drove my butt off today and you’ve got to do that every race and that’s what makes this fun, that’s what makes it challenging, so it makes me look forward to tomorrow.”
HOW MUCH ATTENTION ARE YOU PAYING TO INDY RIGHT NOW? “I was almost late to the airport watching Carb Day practice, so if that tells you anything. I’ll probably be asking for in-race updates at the stage breaks tomorrow. This will be the first time in a really long time, probably since I was one or two years old, that I haven’t been at the Indy 500. That fact that one of my favorite racetracks turned out to be a doubleheader weekend and prevented me from going to the Indy 500 is kind of a bummer, but it’s obviously a strange year there anyway. It’s definitely a passion of mine. It’s definitely got a lot of family history for me. That’s a place where both sides of my family have a lot of history. For my immediate family, myself, my mom, my brother and my dad, that’s somewhere, whether my brother has been in college or he lives in England now — whatever the four of us are all doing in life we get to meet up there every year and sit on the pit wall during the grid walk and just kind of watch the world go by and watch a great race. I know there’s a lot of family traditions and that’s why I know it’s so hard for Mr. Penske to not have fans. There’s a loyal fan base for that race and obviously the spectacle that it is, but I promise you I’ll be watching on TV and rooting on our four cars.”
DO YOU HAVE A PICK FOR TOMORROW? “It seems like Newgarden is probably one of our best cars and Dixon is probably an easy pick. I think Rossi will be there at the end, but if I’m 100 percent honest I would love to see Helio win his fourth. I know it would be a strange year to do it, but that guy has worked so hard. He’s coming off his first rain win at Road America. I know how happy he was about that, so I want it really bad for him. Hopefully, he can find his way to the front and pull it off.”
