Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Sunday, July 21, 2019
EVENT: Foxwoods Resort Casino 301, Loudon, NH.
KEVIN HARVICK WINS FIRST CUP RACE OF 2019 IN THRILLING FINISH AT NEW HAMPSHIRE
· Kevin Harvick won his first race of the season and 46th of his Cup career today.
· This marks the 16th win for Stewart-Haas Racing since joining Ford in 2017.
· The win is Mustang’s sixth of the season.
· Today’s win is Ford’s 683rd all-time in Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series competition.
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Beer/National Forest Foundation Ford Mustang – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – WHAT MORE CAN THIS WIN DO FOR YOU? “We’ve run well enough a few times this year to win, but we’ve just made mistakes and to finally battle and get over that hump is a great day for everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing and everybody on the 4 car. I was really questionable about how that was gonna go and the thing took right off. The only thing that wasn’t good was we got the traffic and my car started pushing. I knew that he was gonna take a shot. I would have taken a shot. I stood on the brakes and just tried to keep it straight. I just didn’t want to get him back from the inside and let him have another shot. I wanted to at least be in control of who was gonna have contact in turn three and four. It was a heck of a finish, closer than what we wanted, but it was our only chance. I would have never done it, but that’s why he’s on the box and not me.”
RODNEY CHILDERS, Crew Chief, No. 4 Busch Beer/National Forest Foundation Ford Mustang – WHAT MADE YOU KEEP HIM ON THE TRACK AND NOT PIT? “I felt like we had a great car all weekend and everybody had been doing a good job. We were just in a bad spot there with track position and I didn’t think we were gonna win from where we were at, so sometimes you have to make those decisions and Kevin did a great job on the restart and holding his own. That track position was key today and clean air and just really proud of everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing and everybody at Ford and everybody that has pushed hard for us all year to try to get our cars better and get back to Victory Lane.”
Ford Finishing Order:
1st – Kevin Harvick
4th – Ryan Blaney
7th – Ryan Newman
9th – Joey Logano
10th – Brad Keselowski
11th – Aric Almirola
13th – Paul Menard
17th – Michael McDowell
19th – Daniel Suarez
20th – Clint Bowyer
23rd – Corey LaJoie
24th – Matt Tifft
28th – Andy Seuss
34th – David Ragan
36th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang – “The 20 ran over us and cut our left-front, I guess. We were just struggling with our Fastenal Ford. I wasn’t happy with it at all the whole day, so it was a struggle for us. We were looking to just make it to the end of the stage and work on it again and make some more adjustments, but, all in all, a pretty frustrating day. We had a decent run here last year, but it’s definitely not the day we wanted. We didn’t want it to end this way, but we’ll move on and go to next week.”
WHAT HAPPENED? “The 20 ran over us. He’s been known to do that to us a couple times now lately. He’ll get one coming his way before it’s over with, or at least before I’m through with it. Our Fastenal Ford just wasn’t near as good as what we wanted it to be. I felt we were OK in practice. We qualified well and the first stage was going OK, but then we just lost the front turn in our car and never really could get it back. We were looking forward to hopefully making some more adjustment there before the end of the race and we just didn’t get the opportunity to after blowing that left-front. All in all it was a frustrating day for us, but hopefully we can learn something from it and come back with something better.”
DID YOU FEEL IT COMING WITH THE 20? “No, he was out front. I don’t know what happened to get him in the back. We had that restart with him up front and didn’t have any issues, so he’s run over us a couple times, but that’s his deal. He’s gonna have to deal with it at some point.”
DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE TO SHOW HIM TO PROVE HE CAN’T DO IT AGAIN? “I will – outside of the car or inside of the car – one of the two. I’m over it. We’ll see how it goes.”
RYAN NEWMAN, No. 6 Oscar Mayer Ford Mustang – “Honestly, it was the most fun I’ve had all year in a race car, and that’s mostly because we had a good, competitive Oscar Mayer Ford. I slid through the box. We had a bad coil wire. We had a bunch of things that set us back, being in a back-up car starting last and to have the finish that we did at a track that is usually difficult to pass at, but I will say that I did pass a few guys three-wide and that doesn’t happen very often here. I’m proud of the team effort and it’s something to build on for sure.”
WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS TRACK AND YOU? “I don’t’ know. There’s something about me and the Magic Mile, I guess. I don’t know. Today was kind of like a win for us to fight back from all the things that we did. I feel very emotional about how well we did today given the adversity we had in front of us.”
WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND ON PIT ROAD WHEN THEY WERE WORKING ON THE ENGINE? “I didn’t know what it was and I was thinking of ways to fix it without fixing it, and they found that they could physically fix it. I was thinking of ways to help it without fixing it, so they did an awesome job assessing the situation. We caught a couple breaks there with cautions and did all we could to stay on the lead lap and it worked. It was an awesome job. If we would have had one more decent run in there, we could have been up there racing with them for the lead, but the second to the last run we were just way too loose.”
HOW DID YOU GET THAT FINISH? “We just passed a bunch of cars. I literally probably passed the most cars today.”
WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT THIS 6 TEAM GIVEN HOW DIRE YOUR POINTS SITUATION IS? “It’s not dire. We’re just out there doing the best that we can and I don’t think of it as dire. I think of it as opportunity. We keep gaining. This is our first time at this race track. We’ve got a string of top 10s going here that we need to keep going and look forward to these next few races.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang – “We scored a lot of points, but we just got behind. It’s kind of a double-edged sword when the caution comes out late like that in the stage. You’ve got to make a decision on scoring points or trying to win the race, and we chose to score stage points and that paid off. We won the stage, but in the end we got behind and couldn’t recover from track position.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 AAA Ford Mustang – “We were off when we unloaded and we just kept trying to find a little something here and there to keep moving forward on things and never really did. We qualified eighth and ran about 12th to 15th most of the race. We grabbed some stage points in the second stage and came home eighth or ninth, so that’s kind of the best we had. I’m a little disappointed with that. I want to be better here, but we learned what not to do and sometimes that’s very valuable.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Sylvania Ford Mustang – WHAT MORE DID YOU NEED? “I didn’t think we had leader speed all day. We got better throughout the day for sure, but I thought maybe second or third. We got to second there towards the end and I was starting to fade a little bit, but I thought we could probably run second. The last caution when we started sixth, we got up to fourth and just kind of stayed there. We just needed a little bit more speed, but, overall, not a bad day.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT TODAY? “It was alright. We weren’t the fastest. I thought we were a fourth, fifth, eighth-place car. At times we were an eighth-place car. At times we were a second or third-place car and just ended up fourth, but we got better all day. There was kind of a middle point in the race where I didn’t think we were great, but we were able to drive back up through there. Overall, not a bad day. Obviously, you want to be fighting for a win, but I thought we did a good job of staying on top of the race track, which is something to be proud of.”
