Ford Performance NASCAR: Clint Bowyer Claims All-Star Pole

Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Friday, May 17, 2019
EVENT: Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Open Qualifying

Ford Open Qualifying Results:
2nd – Michael McDowell
4th – Daniel Suarez
5th – Paul Menard
9th – David Ragan
13th – Matt Tifft
15th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
16th – Corey LaJoie

MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 Dockside Logistics Ford Mustang – “We have a really fast Ford Mustang. Everybody at Front Row Motorsports did a great job. We brought a new chassis here, a new build, a new spec for us and it’s been fast all day. I’m really excited about tomorrow night. We came up a little bit short there. We wanted the pole, but I’m happy that we’ve made such gains. We knew in practice we had a shot at it, so you’re always hopeful, so I’m really proud of the guys and everybody at the Roush Yates Engine shop and Roush Fenway. We’ve all been working hard and it’s nice when you unroll something new and it works, so that gives us confidence and momentum, not just this weekend but moving forward into the 600 as well. It’s a good step for us. We want to get in the All-Star Race and race for a million bucks. We’ve got a few guys to beat tomorrow night to get there though.”

DANIEL SUAREZ, No. 41 ARRIS Ford Mustang – “I’m pretty happy. If I wasn’t in the front row, I wanted to be fourth, so I’m happy with it. I feel like the car has been driving OK. It’s not the most comfortable car I’ve ever had, but everyone is in the same boat. Hopefully, we’ll be good tomorrow and have a nice day.” IS THE FIRST STAGE KEY WITH WHERE YOU’RE STARTING? “I’ve been in that position a couple times the last few years and we’ve done a good job of being calm and being smart. We just have to go out there and have fun and kick some butt.”

PAUL MENARD, No. 21 Menards/Knauf Ford Mustang – HOW WERE THE CARS WITH THIS PACKAGE? “Last week at Kansas I thought the cars raced really well. You still get aero-tight and all that stuff, but you could poke a fender and still make moves and things. Today, I don’t know if it was my car or the heat, it’s a lot hotter obviously than it has been all year, it was really hard to pass and really aero dependent, so we’ll see once the sun goes down how it all shakes out.”

Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Friday, May 17, 2019
EVENT: Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Open Qualifying

Ford All-Star Qualifying Results:
1st – Clint Bowyer
3rd – Kevin Harvick
6th – Ryan Newman
9th – Ryan Blaney
10th – Joey Logano
13th – Aric Almirola
14th – Brad Keselowski

CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Toco Warranty Ford Mustang – POLE-WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE – “It’s just so challenging. You think about it, we live and die by pit road speeding penalties coming onto the pit road week in and week out. You’re getting the most out of that line, that yellow line. Do not cross that yellow line speeding. Now, tonight, you cross that yellow line going as fast as you possibly can speeding as fast as you possibly can, so drastically different. You go up on top of that building and you watch your peers, you watch yourself, you make mistakes, you watch them make mistakes, you learn and put that in the bank and try to make the best of minimizing those mistakes. In a deal like that it’s so easy to psych yourself out. I walked out there with Austin Dillon and he’s like, ‘Man, I hate this. This is all I’ve thought about all day long.’ I was like, ‘Dude, I’ve been there.’ The more you think about something like that, the more you psych yourself out. I mean, I went over to Bass Pro Shops in between and did some shopping. I got a new fishing rod and got caught up on my outdoor stuff. I’m going on vacation in a couple weeks, got some flip-flops and just kind of chilled out and drove back over here, rolled through Camping World and looked at some motorhomes and daydreamed over there a little bit and then came back over and put your firesuit on and go out there and just kind of put a lap in. Our Fords are extremely fast, frustrated that we haven’t been able to break into victory lane. We’re poised to do that. I’m telling you, the Stewart-Haas cars have been extremely fast. Kevin showed his muscle last week in Kansas, had a mishap and didn’t get his win. We’ve been knocking on the door at Richmond and Bristol and Martinsville. With our 14 car I’m very proud of the job that Buga and everybody has been doing. That was the difference tonight. Tonight was all about going fast and getting the most out of three laps and I do love the aspect that you add that pit crew. It gives them a time to shine. My pit crew has been doing a jam-up job all season long and they were a big part of that. I call that a win. That is a victory. That’s something that’s not just a qualifying lap. It’s a total team effort and that’s why I feel like that’s a victory and everybody has to do their job. You have to have a fast car. We checked that box off. You have to do a great job coming on pit road and getting into the box, getting the most out of that, we checked that box, and those guys laid down a good pit stop, checked that box, and we rolled over here and checked another one off with a trophy, so there’s only one more and that’s to take Marcus’ million bucks and go to the house and have a good time with it.”

WHAT DO YOU ATTRIBUTE THE POLE TO THE MOST? “That’s what I like about it, it’s a total team effort. It’s not any one of those things, it’s all of them. It’s a fast hot-rod on the race track. We were definitely fast, everybody saw that. The technology that we have today I don’t like it. I love it as a fan. You can sit there, but as a competitor I can just sit there and pick a guy apart and they can you. You’re watching the ghost car. I mean, it’s like, ‘Well, I can’t make that mistake,’ or ‘That’s where he beat me.’ Or this is where I beat him. I don’t like that. I like getting out on the race track and figuring that out the old-fashioned way. Call me old-school or whatever, but you watch those things and everybody saw that our cars are extremely fast and the ghost car and our lap and then I didn’t give up much at all coming onto pit road and getting into the pit box, and then all of a sudden you see the guys it’s their turn to shine, just like I said, and laid down a good pit stop, I got out of the box good and we sat on the pole. That’s a cool team effort and that’s why I was saying, ‘Hey boys, don’t go run off. I know you’re going to get a beer somewhere, but come over here. This is an effort and if they’re gonna want me in victory lane, let’s go over here and take a picture together.’”

IT’S A 15-LAP SHOOTOUT IN THE FINAL STAGE. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT STRATEGY? “Today was such a drastic different day that we’ve had. I mean, this is the hottest day by far that we’ve had with this package and it presented its own set of challenges. When you have a package or call it a package or program or whatever we’ve got here, when you have this new form of racing that we have right now, we have always lifted out of the gas. You run around here, you’re unable to run around here wide-open, and when you do that you don’t unlock the locker, you don’t allow the car to free up the way that it has typically standardly always done over the years at a track like this. When that happens you’re asking a lot out of the front tires as you get past the apex of the corner. Them things hold on, hold on, hold on and then you can kind of just feel them start to, ‘I can’t hold on anymore,’ and they start to give up a little more grip, you slip that thing, slide it up the least little bit and then it’s like, ‘Uh oh, boom, boom, boom, boom,’ and it keeps falling off more and more and more. Clean air is a big part of that, having clean air on the front of your race car and that’s why I was so excited about the job we did tonight. We put ourselves in position to take their million bucks tomorrow night and that’s all you can ask for for tonight.”

DO PEOPLE UNDERESTIMATE HOW CHALLENGING THIS QUALIFYING FORMAT IS? “Yeah. There’s an excitement level. I guess it’s just an appeal to danger. There just is and that’s a dangerous qualifying format. I don’t mean that as a knock, or as a knock that I’m scared of it the least little bit because I’m not. But it also gets the hair on your back raised up and it gets your attention and you’re nervous. It’s fun to be nervous. It is. I think nervous is a healthy thing in competition. If you don’t roll up to the starting grid or the starting line like I grew up racing in motorcycles if you don’t roll up there nervous, something is missing. Tonight, with this qualifying session, you roll up there and you’re nervous. You’re nervous that you could slip up and maybe wreck. You’re nervous that you could slip up and cost yourself a chance at a million bucks. When the stakes are high like this the nerves and tension go up too, and I think that’s where the appeal comes from.”

DO WE STILL NEED A 600-MILE RACE? “Yeah, absolutely. I wholeheartedly believe that it does. That’s a grueling race, but we’ve been all across the board with it. We’ve had races where it was like, ‘Man, where did it go? It seemed like faster than a normal race,’ and then all of a sudden we’ve had other races where it was maybe strung out or green flag stops or whatever. That’s racing, man. I’ve watched my dirt late models. That’s the thing about us racers is we don’t just race Cup cars. We’re involved in so many different forms of racing. We grew up in different forms of racing, different platforms, different stepping stones in getting to where we are today. We don’t use the benchmark of Sunday afternoon racing on a mile-and-a-half speedway at Charlotte Motor Speedway as the only information that I only ever have towards a direction of what I feel like a good race is. I’m acclimated to racing my whole life. I’m acclimated to racing. As soon as I get out of here I’m going to watch my dirt late model guys race. I’m watching the sprint car guys race. We’re racers. That’s what we do and last night was a hell of a race with the late models. You might roll over into a different track in Iowa and it might be dry, it might be a different circumstance, it might be not the best race you’ve ever seen, but I guess the anticipation and the unknown is what’s always been appealing to me is you don’t know what that 600 miles is gonna give you. You could go out there and sit on the pole of that thing next week and the next thing you know make a mishap get caught speeding on pit road next week and that could be the very difference between winning and losing and putting yourself a lap down and never being able to get that lap back. That’s the crazy thing is when all the different challenges come because of the length of that race, a lot of different things – attrition with your equipment, attrition with your team, communication, any kind of weak link in the chain and you’re out, and that’s why I feel it’s important to have at least one of those long races. I’ve always said it. I’m all for a 24-hour race in our sport. I think it would be totally cool.”

CAN YOU DO ALL 24? “I would. I really honestly think I could, but I know I could do it with maybe just one other one. I know a lot of those sports car racers would probably think I’m a complete idiot right now, but I honestly think, I would love to try. I might fall asleep halfway through the middle of the night and pile it up in the wall, but I’d try. Maybe a 24-hour race with a break, with a potty break.”

IT’S BEEN 417 RACES SINCE YOUR LAST POLE. HOW MUCH DOES THAT BUG YOU? “It did, man. I don’t know. Any paycheck I’ve ever had I never got paid on Friday. They never say anything about Friday, but it’s so important to go in and having a successful weekend on Sunday. I’ve tried. It’s not like you don’t try. I talked about it, getting yourself psyched up. I don’t know what it is about me, but I can tell you in a format like this since I was a little kid I would be better at that than I would be at the standardized same thing every week. I feel like I’m a better short track racer than I am on a mile-and-a-half, but I don’t know why. I just am. My dad would tell me, ‘Get your head right. It’s your mind.’ No, I come into a mile-and-a-half thinking I’m gonna win just like on the short track it just doesn’t seem to happen very often, just like a pole. My father reminds me of that as well, so I can’t wait to call him and tell him that it happened. I’m sure he’s watching. He’s probably on his third beer, but excited about tomorrow night. The other thing that pisses me off is when somebody asks you what does a million dollars mean to you? Are you out of your damn mind? It’s a million dollars. That means a million dollars. I don’t care if you’re Warren Buffett or the guy that’s gonna pick up the grandstands after tonight. A million dollars is a million dollars and if you think that it doesn’t mean anything different to me than it does to you, you’re crazy.”

JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang – “I haven’t seen the pit stop part yet, but the driver missed it by a little bit. You’re trying to get so much and it’s just different than what it is when you practice, so you try to go more and it wasn’t there. I just barely missed it. I thought for a minute I was really gonna miss it and then I got really close to making it, but wasn’t quite there. That’s OK. I don’t know where we’ll end up. We didn’t lose a whole bunch of time, but probably a couple seconds worth trying to do it, but didn’t quite make it.”

KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Beer Millenial Ford Mustang – PIT ROAD LOOKED SMOOTH. “Yeah, it was just a little bit here and there. I think I could have got a little better in the braking onto pit road was OK, a little better time in the braking and I spun the tires a little bit too much leaving the stall, but in the end you don’t want to make any big mistakes and I think we accomplished that.”

BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – THAT WAS QUITE A PIT STOP. “It’s a lot of fun doing this, a lot of pressure too, but it’s supposed to be hard. That’s part of it.” DID YOU THINK IT WAS PRETTY GOOD? “I couldn’t ask for more. I thought I got in really good and hated that it wasn’t good enough.”

RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 BodyArmor Ford Mustang – “We didn’t even get a practice run at it in practice, so you can’t do that cold turkey. Obviously, I wish I could do it again. I wish I could have practiced it and I would have had a better idea of what I needed to do, but it was so hard to kind of just judge everything. You need a run at it. It just stinks. I wish we could do it again, but hopefully we’ll be able to drive up through there.”

RYAN NEWMAN, No. 6 Acorns Ford Mustang – “That’s better than what I was last year, and I feel like we’ve got something that will race. It still seems like we’re lacking some raw speed, but I don’t know what the race is gonna bring tomorrow night. We’ll take what we’ve got, tune on it with what we can and what we have to and go from there.”

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of SpeedwayMedia.com

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