Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
IRWIN Tools Night Race Advance – Bristol Motor Speedway
Friday, August 21, 2015
Aric Almirola, driver of the No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion, is battling for one of the final spots in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup field. Almirola, who qualified for the Chase last year after his win in the July Daytona race, spoke to the assembled media following today’s second practice session.
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – NOT QUITE THE WAY YOU WANTED TODAY TO GO WITH HITTING THE WALL IN FIRST PRACTICE. “Today didn’t go exactly like we planned. We had a really good test here a few weeks ago and we were really excited about coming here to Bristol and we still are. The car unloaded off the truck really fast. We jumped right to the top of the board after about our fifth lap on the race track and the car bottomed out over that patch in turn two and when it bottomed out the car just jumped sideways and I got in the fence. The way these cars are built now they’re not built to crash, they’re built really lightweight and they fly apart when you hit something, so we had a lot to do to get it back on the race track. I’m really proud of my guys to put that much effort in to get that car back out on the race track. We could have taken the backup out, but as good as that car unloaded we were really looking forward to racing that car. So we got it all back together and went back out on the race track and it was really good in race trim again. I think we’re gonna be just fine.”
WHAT ARE YOUR OFF-WEEK PLANS? “We’ve been planning on going to the beach for a while, so we’re excited. The off weekends come few and far between and it’s a long season from February to November, so we always enjoy the off weekends and we’re excited about going to the beach and spending a week, week-and-a-half down there at the beach before we get ready for Darlington.”
ARE YOU ALL HEALED AFTER LAST WEEKEND AND HOW ROUGH WAS IT? “I’m back to 100 percent but my goodness was that rough. I never felt so bad in a long time. I had some sort of 24-hour stomach virus and it was maybe a little longer than 24 hours, maybe 36 hours, and I was down for the count. I was laying in the infield care center on Thursday night from 11 to maybe 2:30 in the morning getting iv’s and went back to the bus and got a little bit of sleep, but woke up every half-hour with throwing up or whatever and you know what the other is, so it was a long night. I got back up the next morning and went back to get some more iv’s and I watched the first hour of practice laying on my couch in my motorhome and it was all I could do to gather myself up and get over to the garage and make a couple laps at practice.”
DARLINGTON IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS. YOUR THOUGHTS? “I think it’s awesome to be able to race at the Southern 500 on Labor Day Weekend. That’s what everybody remembers about Darlington and all the retro paint schemes that are coming out for it. I know we’ve got something really special planned with STP, so I’m super-excited about being at Darlington on Labor Day Weekend. That’s always been a tradition of NASCAR and to have it back on Labor Day Weekend is gonna be really cool.”
ARIC ALMIROLA CONTINUED — DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST DARLINGTON STRIPE? “Yeah, the first time I got my Darlington stripe was, at the time, a Busch car for Joe Gibbs Racing. I think I ran the 19 car at Darlington and this was maybe like three laps into practice. On stickers everything would go fine. On the old Darlington, before they repaved it, the tires would just wear out so fast. So I ran my lap on stickers and was relatively respectable for my first time ever at Darlington. The second lap I thought I’d get a little bit more and the third lap I thought I’d get a little bit more and the tires were just going away and I got it in the fence like every dumb rookie does at Darlington.”
DO YOU FEEL MORE PRESSURE AS YOU GET CLOSER TO RICHMOND AND THE CHASE CUTOFF? DO YOU DO ANYTHING DIFFERENT? “We can’t do anything different. The only thing we can do is just continue to bring the fastest race cars to the race track that we can. You guys can see it. You guys report on the sport week in and week out. We need more speed. There’s no denying that, but we’ve done a really good job at maximizing the weekends when we can. We’ve had a few setbacks. Pocono, we had an engine failure. Indy, we wrecked, so we’ve had a few setbacks that were costly to us, but all in all we’ve had 15th-place cars and we’ve been running top-15 with them. That’s really all we can do. The guys back at the shop are working extremely hard and so is everybody else in the garage area to bring better cars to the race track every weekend. We’ve just been playing catch-up all year long. I’m really proud of everybody at RPM, but the moral of the story is we just need more speed in our cars and as we work harder and harder and continue to get more speed in our cars, our results will reflect that.”
DO YOU PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING? “Yes and no. Obviously, I realize I’m racing the 5 and the 15, so I understood when me and Kasey were both a lap down last weekend we were racing for the lucky dog and that was extremely important. I saw when the 15 and the 31 got together right in front of me on the backstretch and I saw that they had to turn behind the wall and go to the garage, so I knew that was an opportunity for us to capitalize and get some points if we got a good finish, so you’re always aware of that, but it doesn’t change. I’m gonna drive just as hard and try to get just as good a finish whether those guys are leading the race or out of the race in the garage area. It doesn’t really change how we go about our race.”
YOU DON’T WISH MISFORTUNE ON OTHERS, BUT THE NEWS ABOUT MICHAEL WALTRIP RACING THIS WEEK HAS PEOPLE WONDERING IF THEY’LL BE ABLE TO HOLD IT TOGETHER WITH THAT HANGING OVER THEIR HEADS. DO YOU FEEL THAT MIGHT BE A TEAM THAT IS MORE VULNERABLE? “There are two ways to look at it. One is, yeah, they may be vulnerable and guys are kind of distracted and they’re scrambling looking for jobs, but the other way to look at that is they don’t have anything to lose, so they can push all the gray areas as hard as they can and be really aggressive and what’s the worst that’s going to happen? They’re not going to lose their jobs because they’re already looking for work. There are a couple different ways to look at that and I think as hardcore racers as all those guys that he has on his team are, they’re not gonna lay down; they’re not gonna give up; they’re gonna fight hard; they’re gonna try and make the Chase. It’s about pride. Everybody in this garage area has egos and we all want to beat our competitors and I doubt any of those guys, Clint included, are going to lay down.”
ARIC ALMIROLA CONTINUED — IS IT POSSIBLE TO MAKE THE CHASE BY FINISHING TOP-15 FINISHES IF THAT TEAM KEEPS COMING BACK TO YOU? “If you look at the points that we gave away when we didn’t run top-15, and then when you look at Michigan when we did run top-15 and they had some misfortune we gained a lot of them back. I think Clint was 51 points ahead of us going into Michigan and now we’re only 23 points back, so we closed a big gap there. Bristol is always kind of crazy and eventful and you never know what might happen here, so there is certainly a lot of opportunity for us. We run really well here at Bristol. We run really well at Richmond. Darlington is kind of a question mark with the new package, but I thought we ran really well at Kentucky. We ran inside the top-10 a lot of the night and I think we finished 11th, so I think there is certainly an opportunity for us and this race team to get into the Chase and all the guys at the shop and all my guys on this 43 team we certainly believe that and we’re going into these next three races guns blazing.”
DO YOU LIKE THE LOW DOWNFORCE OR HIGH DRAG PACKAGE? “I am a little bit more preferable to the low downforce package. I find it a lot more fun to drive. We have to let off the gas and you really have to drive the race car, which I enjoy. The other package was extremely easy to drive by yourself and extremely difficult to drive in traffic and it made it hard to pass, whereas the low downforce package is just hard to drive all the time and it doesn’t really change. Your car by yourself versus a car in traffic the delta on that is a lot less, and I think that makes for better racing, so I’m excited about Darlington and seeing how that works there. I thought Kentucky was really good. I was able to catch cars that I was faster than and pass them pretty easily within a lap or two, whereas the package that we had at Indy and Michigan was just extremely difficult to pass and the guy in front of you really had to make a major mistake for you to be able to get by him.”
THE CUBA CHANGES HAVE BEEN IN THE NEWS A LOT THE LAST FEW WEEKS. DOES THAT MAKE YOU THINK A LITTLE ABOUT TAKING A RUN DOWN THERE? “Yeah. I would like to go back down there just to see my family roots and check that out, but I stay so busy right now and finding time to take off and go down there is really hard to come by and when it is I want to be able to go somewhere and relax with my wife and two kids. That’s not really the ideal place to go down there and relax for a long week or something, so maybe as the kids get older that would be really cool as long as everything stays kosher between us and them over the years to come. I think it would be really cool to take Alex and Abbey down there and my wife and kind of tour around and see where my family history stems from.”
ARIC ALMIROLA CONTINUED — ARE YOU PLEASED WITH THE THAW IN THE RELATIONS? “Here’s the deal. I think the older generation of Cubans they rightfully so have some bitter feelings towards it because they gave up everything. Imagine if someone knocked on the door at your house and said, ‘Hey, if you want to fly to Texas that’s fine, but you’ve got to leave everything you’ve got right where you’re at and you get to take the clothes you’ve got on and a spare pair of underwear and leave everything else. Leave your pictures; leave your wedding ring; leave your money; leave everything.’ You would be bitter if they said, ‘OK, now you can go back to North Carolina. It’s OK.’ I think that’s where a lot of the hard feelings come from, but like my grandparents say, I’ve talked to my grandmother about it and my dad and their focus is that they left there for an opportunity at a better life for their family. They’ve accomplished that and when they left Cuba and got on that plane to fly to Miami, they said that they were never gonna look back they were always gonna look forward, so I don’t think they’re really bothered by it.”
