Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Kobalt 400 Advance – Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Page 1
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., driver of the No. 17 Fastenal Ford Fusion, is coming off a 10th-place finish last weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway. He visited the infield media center earlier today at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and discussed today’s test and the start to his season.
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 17 Fastenal Ford Fusion – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THIS LOW DOWNFORCE PACKAGE AND HOW THE TEST WENT TODAY? “Last week was really good for us. We kind of hoped to start that way, but we weren’t real sure how that was gonna play out until we actually got to Atlanta. But, all in all, we were real happy with how qualifying went and practice and then how everything translated to the race. There are some things we need to clean up. I think we could have finished a few spots higher, but the cars were fast and they handled good. The aero package was a lot of fun at Atlanta, but Atlanta is fun no matter what. It’ll be interesting to see how the race ends up playing out here in Las Vegas with the lower downforce package. I ran around some cars today to try to get a feel for that. The Fastenal Ford felt decent today. We didn’t do any qualifying runs at the end like a lot of cars did there, but so far so good. We definitely have a lot more speed than we had to start the year last year or even to end the year last year, so that was a big positive vibe going on throughout the shop and hopefully we can keep that up.”
DURING THE MEDIA TOUR YOU GUYS SEEMED MORE PUMPED UP AND OPTIMISTIC ABOUT THIS YEAR. “I think we were more pumped up this media tour because of the way we ended last year versus the way we started last year. We were going in the right direction at the end of the year and I think all the things that we learned throughout last year and the things that we implemented to our cars and to our system, the people that we implemented brought over some more information. All of that just kind of kept playing into the way we ended the year last year, so it kind of made us more motivated and pretty happy with the group of people we’ve got, and really believe in the direction we’re going. You can see that throughout the shop. The drivers, we feel it. We drive it now and can see a difference and I think that was the biggest thing for us drivers. Over the last few years we were doing a lot of work and the team was doing a lot of work, but we didn’t really feel any difference in the race cars and we didn’t see any speed difference in the race cars, so last year going throughout the year we could see a difference, and I think that’s the first time since I’ve been on the Cup side that I’ve actually felt a difference in the cars and continuing to get better, so that was a huge bonus for me.”
DO YOU CREDIT THE NEW NOSE AND BODY STYLE OF THE NEW FORD OR IS IT THE TEAM’S WORK? “I feel Ford Performance has done a great job with our race cars. I definitely don’t think the nose hurt us with some of the new specs that we have, but I would say that Ford Performance and Ford and everything that they did with the body was definitely a little bit better for us – get us more similar to the other cars. But a lot of it goes to the work that everybody at Roush Fenway has done. The engines ran great last week and the cars handled good and we didn’t have any failures, and I think that was a big key. Our pit stops were good. Everything that we’ve been working on at Roush Fenway has been to not make any mistakes and just be better in every aspect. Our pit stops were better last week, so it takes the whole package. We had one bad pit stop with another car blocking us in and it cost us quite a bit of time, but, other than that, it’s about not making mistake and everybody at Roush Fenway worked really hard this off-season to make sure that our cars were better than they were last year.”
ARE YOU HAVING FUN THIS YEAR DRIVING THAT LOW DOWNFORCE PACKAGE AT ATLANTA? Yeah, we had our hands full last week. We were a top-10 car and I had my hands full. I’ve been further back and I knew that some people really had their hands full. When we were racing with Dale Jr. and racing with Ryan Newman and those guys we were all sliding around. We could all go in one corner and somebody make a mistake because they were hard to drive and they were hard to hit your line at the right spot at the right time, so that made it a lot of fun. The cars sliding around and then you having to take care of the tires. I don’t know if we’re gonna see it as much here at Las Vegas. The cars felt pretty locked down today. I think that’s why a lot of us always want to raise our hand and say, ‘Take more downforce off,’ but right now it’s definitely a good direction as seen by the drivers and the way we were able to race a little bit closer to each other without our car just handling really bad. So I went out there today and that’s why I was trying to run behind some other cars – to see how that was gonna affect it because Las Vegas last year was pretty bad with how fast we go around here and how much on throttle time that we have. The aero package last year really played a big role in how the car drove around other people and it was a little bit better today for sure.”
IS IT HARD TO NOT GET A LITTLE EXCITED ABOUT WHAT’S BEEN GOING ON WITH THE WAY THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS HAVE GONE? DO YOU FEEL YOU NEED TO TEMPER YOUR ENTHUSIASM? “For sure. We went to Daytona and the cars were fast. We qualified well. We didn’t get the results that we wanted to in the race, but the cars were fast. Everybody was like, ‘Oh man, that’s great.’ I was like, ‘Hey, this is one race and it was a superspeedway race.’ Then we get to Atlanta and we were fast and felt good and all throughout the weekend I was like, ‘Man, I just hope tomorrow goes as well as today did,’ and we just kind of took it one day at a time. I was talking to Dale Jr. before the race last week and he’s like, ‘What do you think?’ And I was like, ‘Well, the first two days went really well. I hope the race goes that well.’ I just didn’t really know. I’ve had cars go the other way on race day, so definitely on the 17 team we’re taking it one day at a time and one practice at a time and making sure we maximize that. Again, we had a good race at Atlanta, but I was a little nervous about how the car was gonna be today and if we were gonna have speed and how it was gonna drive, and it was a lot better than we were here last year. Again, just taking it one day at a time and not trying to get ahead of ourselves and think we’ve got it figured out. We’ve still got a long ways to go because we want to be back winning and we want to be running in the top-5 consistently. So I’m definitely happy with our top-10 last week, but, like you said, you don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS WITH THE TIRE AND THE GROOVE? “The track definitely widened out. All of us were running a lot higher than we were in the first session. The rubber was getting laid down a lot in the second session versus the first session today, and the track changed a lot. I think it’s gonna change a lot throughout the rest of the weekend and throughout the race. Just because you have a good race car to start, I don’t think your race car – if you don’t do anything to it, I think it’s not gonna be as good at the end of the race because the more rubber that got on the track the car didn’t turn as well for me. So we’ve got to play catch-up. I think we got a little bit behind throughout the day, so we’ve got to go in and make some changes to get it better, but the tires hooked up good. We were also losing some tire off of it and the lap times were falling off. I think the morning session the tires and the cars didn’t fall off near as quick as I think everybody wanted to, similar to Atlanta or we want it like Atlanta, but in the second session I think the cars finally started to fall off – not near as fast as Atlanta because the race track is a lot different, but it seemed to be over 15-20 laps or so you could lose maybe eight-tenths to a second.”
THE WEATHER ON SUNDAY IS GOING TO BE WAY DIFFERENT. HOW WILL THAT IMPACT THINGS? “One of our engineers is new on our team and he asked me how bad the wind affects our race cars here, and I said, ‘Pretty bad,’ because he told me Saturday is gonna be pretty windy as well. I did see that the temperatures were gonna go down, so that will help. I feel like my car turned a little bit better. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. I think the race would be better if it was a lot hotter like today, unfortunately, but we really can’t control the weather. We’ll just see how it plays out. The wind is definitely affected a lot here at Las Vegas because we’re going so fast. The cars, when you’re going close to the wall down the back straightaway and then you turn off the wall, the wall kind of blocks the wind sometimes if it’s blowing towards turns three and four – kind of to the side of you – it definitely changes the way your car handles. So it’ll be interesting come Saturday trying to figure that out.”
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