ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Mobil 1 Ford Mustang – “We fight. That’s the beauty of this race team. We’re still learning this car. There’s a lot to learn about it and we’re still trying to figure a lot of things out. Practice is great, but we’ve got to make adjustments throughout the race and I feel like every race we’re learning more and more and more and we’re building a notebook. We’re making adjustments throughout the race and trying to figure it out. This team has so much fight in it and so much grit that it’s a lot of fun to race with these guys. We’ll keep digging and try and keep this streak alive of all these top 10 finishes. It’s a lot of fun when you run up front.”
IT SEEMS THAT IN ALL THREE RACES YOU GET BETTER BETWEEN STAGE 2 AND 3. TRUE? “Yeah, Drew has been doing a great job of making good adjustments throughout the race and just getting the car better and better. We take the first half of the race and it’s really about learning. We make adjustments. If they’re no good, we go back on them and just keep fine-tuning on the car to get it to where we need to get it and, usually, the last few weeks we’ve gotten the car where we needed to have it at the end of the race. It’s been nice. It’s so much fun to race with this group of guys and everybody that supports us – Mobil 1. Our Ford Mustang was fast. We’ve got some work to do to keep up with some of the other manufacturers. We’ve got to continue to do our homework, but, nonetheless, this is a great start to our season and a lot of fun.”
YOU STARTED ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE FOURTH ROW FOR THE OT RESTART. WHAT WAS THE KEY TO GAINING A COUPLE OF SPOTS? “I just wanted to make sure I could get the car turning. I was able to get to a couple of those cars outside and be able to keep the throttle down and get by those guys, so things went our way. I picked the right lanes at the right time on restarts. Those last couple of restarts were crucial to get this good finish.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Pennzoil Ford Mustang – “We were tight and at the start we just weren’t very good. We made some adjustments and got better to where we were a sixth or seventh-place car, which would have been a decent recovery all things considered and then we just gave up a bunch at the end.”
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 2 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – “Obviously not an ideal day for our Discount Tire Ford. We really struggled being tight early on in the race and lost a little bit of our track position. I felt like we were hanging tough in the top 15 and had a lot of potential to make the car a little bit better. We decided to go off strategy and keep scuffs on the car and unfortunately that played out and had us getting fenced for some position outside the top 20. Then we had a right-rear tire come apart and had to pit right before the yellow came out, which trapped us two down. Recovering for a top 20 is I guess a decent recovery, but definitely not what we were wanting or hoping for today, but definitely learned a lot and hopefully it’s something we can carry forward.”
HARRISON BURTON, No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Mustang – “I felt like we had a real up-and-down day. We ended up in the wall trying to miss a crash and then ended up hitting somebody trying to miss a crash. Every time we would get any track position we seemed to lose it. It’s a track position race and lots of challenges trying to pass, but overall it was a pretty decent day for us. The finish at least was better than where we had been at times and worse than what we had been quick enough to run at times, but at the end of the day we’re building, so this is a step. We actually finished the race and got some points and we’re just trying to build towards the right direction as a group and try to make our group better as quick as we can.”
COLE CUSTER, No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang – “Something happened under the hood. I’m not sure what it was. It was a very eventful day for sure. We started in the back and then we started making progress, but had to go to the back again. Then we spun and had to go to the back one more time, so it was just an eventful day and didn’t end very well. We’ll just move onto the next one. I think we had a solid car. We finally got running good at the end and it was shaping up to be a solid day, but it didn’t work out.”
CHASE BRISCOE, No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang — “I don’t know. We were running really good and then the 34 stayed out that one time on tires and kind of just messed us up. We lost a lot of track position and then he got loose and I was so sideways. I came across and got the 99. I don’t know if that damaged it or what, but I would say the last 5-10 laps before I finally spun out the rear was bouncing really really bad and I think it broke something or the tire went down. I don’t know. I just went in the corner and the thing spun out. It’s just really unfortunate. I thought we were gonna be really really good. We’ve had good speed all year long, so we’ll just try to dig out of a hole next week.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Pennzoil Ford Mustang – “The 6 spun out on his own right in front of me and I plowed into him. I’m not happy about anything and I don’t mean to be happy about anything when someone loses it right in front of you and ends our day. I won’t call it bad luck, but when someone just spins out in front of you and wipes you out, there’s nothing to be happy about. We had a pretty fast car and nothing to show for it.”
Campbell Marketing & Communications for Ford Performance
