Ford Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Bojangles’ Southern 500 (Darlington Raceway, Darlington, SC)
Sunday, September 2, 2018
Ford Finishing Results:
1st – Brad Keselowski
2nd – Joey Logano
4th – Kevin Harvick
6th – Kurt Busch
12th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
14th – Aric Almirola
15th – Ryan Blaney
17th – Paul Menard
18th – David Ragan
20th – Michael McDowell
25th – Matt Kenseth
36th – Clint Bowyer
38th – Matt DiBenedetto
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Carolina Ford Dealers Ford Fusion – “I hit the 31 really hard. I don’t know. I guess he was pitting or something and it’s a product of this place, I guess. There are lapped cars that are 50 laps down all over the damn place. That’s pretty frustrating. I’m about tired of that. This track is too narrow for cars to be that far off the pace. You’re in and out of those guys, diving all over the place, trying to navigate around them, trying to figure out where the hell they’re going, and then you come up on somebody trying to actually compete in the race and you’re not on the game — he’s pitting or something and I run over him. I didn’t see him wave, but, like I said, when you come off of two and you pass 37 lapped cars and you get your bearings and everything else – maybe he waved, maybe he didn’t – I didn’t see it. He just stopped right in front of me and I hit him hard. I’m obviously pissed off and frustrated, but it seems to be that way for me every time I come here. We run decent. We had a frustrating night, just mistake after mistake and obviously we ended up wrecked.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI SWEEPS DARLINGTON; GIVES FORD SERIES-BEST 12TH MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES WIN OF THE SEASON
· Brad Keselowski claimed his first win of the season tonight.
· The win today is the 25th of his Cup Series career.
· Ford leads all manufacturers with 12 victories this season.
· The victory marks the 60th win all-time for Team Penske with Ford and the 16th for Keselowski.
· Of Team Penske’s 60 MENCS wins with Ford, 33 have come since rejoining Ford in 2013.
· The win is Fusion’s 101st Cup Series triumph since becoming Ford’s flagship vehicle in 2006.
· Today’s win is Ford’s 670th all-time in Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series competition.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Genuine Draft Ford Fusion – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – “I’ve got to give a lot of credit to my pit crew. We were running second and that last stop they nailed it and got us out in the lead. I thought Kyle was really good, and he was flat-out flying. I know how it goes. In 2015 we led a bunch of laps and lost it on the last pit stop and today my team won it on the last pit stop. Then it was just about me hitting all my marks and not screwing it up. How cool is this winning in Rusty Wallace’s Throwback car, the Southern 500, Throwback Weekend.”
HOW ABOUT THESE FANS? “The Southern 500 has always been a major deal and credit to the whole team that runs the track here at Darlington. They’ve made it even bigger yet.”
KURT BUSCH, No. 41 Haas Automation Ford Fusion – “We’ve got sixth through tenth covered. We had a good car, we just got pinned a lap down with 80 miles to go and that’s happened to me a lot here. We just end up on the wrong sequence and we got pinned a lap down. Then we had some overheating issues. I guess our grille screen – there’s an outer and an inner – and the inner got clogged, so we had to come in. Luckily, the engine held together over 300 degrees, so thanks to Doug Yates and those guys for building the durability and being able to salvage a top-10 finish. Otherwise, engines like that blow up, so thanks to Doug Yates and Ford.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “We had a good car. We were like a third-place car and whether it was a short run or a long run it didn’t really matter. We made some adjustments there at the end to take off a little bit better, but I didn’t get by the 42 in time to try to run down the 2. We were just matching lap times, so I couldn’t catch him enough. I was just hoping lap traffic would screw it up enough to try to catch him, but one-two for Team Penske, that’s pretty cool. Brad sweeping the weekend, that’s awesome for him to do at Darlington. That’s no easy feat, so congratulations to them. I just keep going back to two restarts to the end. I didn’t have the best of restarts and if I got to second our pit stop was good enough to get us to the lead and give us control and that’s what ultimately won Brad the race was his pit crew that got him out in the lead. Once he was out in the lead, he was gonna be hard to catch. I had a lot of fun on the Throwback Weekend. It’s really cool to drive Steve Park’s car and give it a good run. I wish I got to celebrate with him in Victory Lane and hold up the 1 that he used to drive.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Beer Ford Fusion – “Darlington just has a lot of ups-and-downs in general just because of the fact that it’s a tough old race track. As a driver, it’s a challenge and a lot of fun. For us, we just could not make the front end of our car work all night and everything we did to try to help it just undid the back and just never could get it right. Track position was bigger here than I’ve ever seen, so we all got to figure that out as a sport.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT LONG RUN AND WHAT IT’S LIKE TO HANG ON FOR SO LONG? “It’s not really that much fun just because of the fact that you’re probably about two seconds slower than every other car. We didn’t pit and everybody else pitted and you just literally just try to stay out of the way. We saw a wreck down there with I think the 14 and the 31 trying to pit. It’s such a huge speed variance, but that’s part of the challenge of this race track – all the different speeds, there are tire strategies and things like that.”
DAVID RAGAN, No. 38 Citgard 700 Ford Fusion – “I felt like we struggled a little bit when they dropped the green flag. Our car just wasn’t balanced as good as it could have been, but as the track cooled off we made some pretty good adjustments. We had a little different strategy too and I think it all played out. I’m proud of our Citgard 700 team for overcoming some adversity in practice. We didn’t get a lot of practice, but that was a good recovery and a top-20 finish. We would have liked to gotten a little bit more, but that was a lot of fun.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 John Deere Ford Fusion – “Overall, it’s our best career finish and really running the whole race at Darlington. I kept it out of the fence, which was goal number one. We got off two or three runs, which was a bummer because I felt like we were really good the rest of the race. Those three runs just caught us off-guard. That’s a little lack of laps here because I haven’t run many, but it was a good finish for us. I was real happy we were able to get back on the lead lap and pass some good cars and race some good cars there at the end. All in all it was a good weekend.”
