Ford Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Can-Am 500 (ISM Raceway, Avondale, AZ.)
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Ford Finishing Order:
2nd – Brad Keselowski
4th – Aric Almirola
5th – Kevin Harvick
7th – Matt Kenseth
16th – Michael McDowell
20th – David Ragan
21st – Matt DiBenedetto
29th – Paul Menard
32nd – Kurt Busch
33rd – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
34th – Ryan Blaney
35th – Clint Bowyer
37th – Joey Logano
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – YOU HAD FOUR TIRES AND A CHANCE. YOUR THOUGHTS ON HOW THE END PLAYED OUT. “We definitely made the right call. It just didn’t quite work out. Man, it was close. I needed to pass the 10 like a lap earlier and we were all racing for all we’ve got. It was close.”
DID YOU THINK YOU COULD GET THERE? “Yeah, I was trying. I was definitely faster, it was just too much.”
DID THE APRON GAIN GRIP AS THE RACE WORE ON? “Yeah, a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit for sure. I think probably just the surface was losing it.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Fusion – HOW DO YOU EXPRESS YOUR EMOTIONS? “I don’t know. I thought we were a seventh to sixth-place car and that’s what I thought we were yesterday too. Johnny and all these guys fought their guts out and I fought my guts out inside the race car and gave it everything we had. We took a seventh or eighth-place car and the next thing you know we were in position to win the race. I’m just really thankful for this group and these guys on the Smithfield team are awesome. This is our first year working together. You look at all the teams we’re racing and they’ve got four, five, six, seven years working together, so what we’ve accomplished in one year is a hell of a lot, but right now all I can think about is being inside of Kyle down there in the new one and two and just not being able to get the power down to get up beside him. It’s bittersweet. It was a good day for us, but today we needed to win and we didn’t win.”
IS IT ANY CONSOLATION THAT YOU WERE ABLE TO DO THIS IN THE FIRST YEAR AT SHR? “Yeah, I am surprised by this group. I mean, what surprises me the most is this group of people that work on this race car. All these guys on this team, they are amazing and what we’ve accomplished in one year together is pretty outstanding. I don’t want the season to end. It’s been a long grind and I’m tired and I’m ready for the offseason, but I really wanted to go to Homestead with a chance to run for a championship and oh so close.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Light Ford Fusion – WERE YOU STRESSED AT ALL IN THE CAR OR DID IT JUST FUEL THE FIRE FOR YOU? “Yeah, we’re happy about going to Miami and I think as you run you just want to make it lap by lap.”
ANY INDICATION THE RIGHT-FRONT TIRE WAS GOING DOWN WHEN IT DID? “Yeah, I felt it start to go down going into turn one there and just slowed down to the point where I thought I could at least make it back to the pits and not hit the wall. It came at an OK time because it didn’t tear the car up. It never really drove as well after that, but we kept ourselves in position all day and there at the end it was just like with everybody wrecking and all over the place, we just needed to stay out of trouble and try to find a safe spot there.”
KEVIN HARVICK CONTINUED — HOW DIFFICULT WAS IT TO KEEP THE EMOTIONS IN CHECK AFTER THE TIRE WENT DOWN AND YOU LOST A LAP? “There’s nothing you can do about that stuff. You just regroup, put four new tires on it and go at it again.”
ASSESS YOUR CHANCES AT HOMESTEAD? “I think we have a chance every time we show up. Our guys are doing a great job obviously to accomplish everything we did this weekend was quite the feat without your crew chief and car chief, but Tony Gibson and Nick did a great job filling in and everybody kept their head about them and we were competitive all weekend.”
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford Fusion – “It’s definitely probably the best run I’ve had here and I’m really proud of the guys. I made mistakes on pit road instead. It’s kind of a trick pit road now with curves and straights and I was just pushing it too hard. We were able to rebound. I wish we could have got that lucky dog a little bit sooner, but the 6 and I were racing hard for it and it was just a tough battle there. I’m glad to get a top 20 and get some momentum back going to Homestead.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI PRESS CONFERENCE
Q. Maybe I can clear up some confusion from my side. We saw a lot of problems with other drivers with tires. First of all, what’s your tire situation, and according to the media release of Goodyear, they gave recommendation how much pressure you run in the tire. Is your team following this recommendation, or you make your own calculation for tire pressure?
BRAD KESELOWSKI: Do you drive 45 miles an hour on a divided highway every time? Do you never go over the speed limit? Do you know American speed limits?
Q. No, I don’t.
BRAD KESELOWSKI: Okay, yeah. Then you might get the analogy I’m trying to say. There is not a single team following the Goodyear recommendations, so yeah, I’m pretty sure that that is just one of those things in the book. So I think that answers that question. But the other question was about whether changing the tire compound made a difference? Was that what the other question was? Oh, we didn’t have any issues. Yeah, we were really good. My understanding is the guys that had tire issues ran over debris. But I might be wrong. I don’t know. I had limited vision in the car to be able to see that.
Q. Brad, you were up there on that final restart with a loss of playoff drivers around you, obviously Almirola trying to win his way in, Harvick trying to point his way in. How do you balance that late‑race aggression of trying to win the race but trying to not ruin it for the playoff contenders?
BRAD KESELOWSKI: Shoot, I don’t know. I’m the last person to ask about that. I think we had a shot to win the race, and I was going to do what I could. Just felt like our car was in a really good spot. Gosh, I feel like without that last yellow I could have ate those guys up and gone, but the last yellow ran off too many laps on me. I needed those laps to be able to get there. But our car was pretty strong, like you said, and I was really proud of that.
Q. Brad, we go to Homestead every year the last several years and it seems like everybody has got to win in order to win the championship, but you run awfully good at Homestead, you were strong in the past. Should the Championship 4 be concerned about you there next weekend?
BRAD KESELOWSKI: Yeah, I feel like we’ve had a chance to win three of the last four, four of the last five, and they just keep slipping through our hands. But we’ve certainly been right there, and I would expect similar in Homestead for sure.
Q. Did you think the new start‑finish location had a bigger impact on this race than expected today?
BRAD KESELOWSKI: I didn’t expect anything, so the answer would be no, but I do think it had a pretty good effect on the race with entering Turn 1 on the old track, which is now Turn 3, you just couldn’t pass, and so this corner down here, you can pass on a restart, and I think that changes the game a lot.
KEVIN HARVICK POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE
Q. Kevin, a comeback today that saved your season. Where would you rank this, and did you think that you had a chance when everything had gone wrong in that instant?
KEVIN HARVICK: I never really thought about it like that. I just thought about ‑‑ my main job was to try to get it back to the pits without crashing into the wall or having a tire blow out and rip the fenders off. I felt it go down going into Turn 1 and just kind of tried to nurse it into Turn 3 and back around. I couldn’t get down over there, and I just drug everything all the way around. I drug the splitter off. It never really handled as good after that, but we made some adjustments to our car and got ourselves back in contention there in the second stage staying out, and it worked out okay.
Q. Kevin, would you describe your emotion as relief, excited, the fact that you get to go vie for a title?
KEVIN HARVICK: Just another day.
Q. It’s not just another day, it’s a day where you could have been knocked out of the championship ‑‑
KEVIN HARVICK: You don’t do anything different. I would prepare no different next week if I was out as I would if I was in. That’s what I always tell you guys; win or lose, it’s the same prep every week.
Q. Kevin, what did you feel like was your biggest challenge today then with everything that you kind of had to go through?
KEVIN HARVICK: That flat tire. Just leading the stage there, coming to the white and the tire goes flat. That just put us behind and drug the front of the car off and the splitter and everything up front was drug off, and it just ‑‑ that was really the turning point in our day, to not have everything go right. I mean, we got ourselves back in contention there, and we’re going in the right direction and wound up just finding a spot at the end to just survive there and get to the finish.
Q. Kevin, do you know ‑‑ Goodyear said it was likely a puncture but they weren’t sure. Do you have any idea what caused the ‑‑
KEVIN HARVICK: I don’t.
Q. On the restart with Kyle leading and Aric second and you third, did you feel your car was good enough that you had a chance to win, or did you feel like your championship bid was more on how Almirola was going to run?
KEVIN HARVICK: I just needed to get my car set on the bottom and try to get everything so that I could get a good exit off the corner, and that was really all I was worried about.
Q. Kevin, when the tire went down, you said already, if I understood it correctly, the splitter was damaged or broken or whatever. Did you know what the feeling was when the tire went down, when you had the tire problem, that maybe some more serious damage could be done to the suspension, for example?
KEVIN HARVICK: You know, in that instance you just hope that the sway bar stays connected, and that’s really the biggest worry. I hadn’t looked under the car and seen how bad it drug it all off, but it was good enough to keep going, so that was ‑‑ and the sway bar was still hooked up, so that was the main thing.
Q. Kevin, what was it like to work with Tony in this way since you guys hadn’t done that before?
KEVIN HARVICK: Really the biggest thing that Tony brings is just a ton of experience. Obviously a familiar face to the NASCAR officials, and he’s been with Stewart‑Haas for a long time and worked with all those guys and worked with everybody in the shop. He’s very calm sitting up on the pit box, unless he’s winning the Daytona 500. Then he gives us something that we all remember. But for the most part on the radio, he was just dead calm all weekend and just pretty laid back with everything, and everybody just did their jobs.
The thing you’ve got to remember is those guys have all been together for five years, and there’s ‑‑ the internet works well from Phoenix to North Carolina, as well, too.
Q. Kevin, I’m curious why you have such success out here in Phoenix.
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, this has just been a great racetrack for us through the years, really, in everything that we’ve ever raced. It’s just a place that I like coming to. I’ve been coming here since the mid ’80s, late ’80s to watch races, and started racing here in the mid ’90s. So even since they’ve changed the track, it’s just been a place that I feel like I know well and enjoy racing in front of these fans and on these types of tracks. Just a good place for us.
