Ford Chicagoland Qualifying Notes - Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)

PAUL MENARD, No. 21 Menards/Sylvania Ford Fusion -- Qualified 1st

“My guys did a hell of a job today. We weren’t very good in practice. We did a mock run that was so loose that we had to abort it and never really got a true mock run. We had speed and all through those rounds we got a little too loose in round two and we adjusted for it. Round three drove like rails. It was good.”

 

HOW DID YOU PICK UP TIME FROM ROUND TWO TO ROUND THREE? “It is hard on tires and the sun is going down a little and it is getting a little cooler. It is still 89 degrees but it is cooler and I just hit my marks and Greg and the guys made good adjustments.”

 

TEAM PENSKE SEEMS FAST. “Yeah, all the Fords have been fast all year. We have been on the back side of that with the 21 and playing catch-up a little with a new group of guys that have never worked together before. We are all learning each other and I am really proud of all of them. We had a good test in Indy earlier this week and learned some things. Not that this is applying much from Indy but we have a little momentum going.”

 

RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 PPG Ford Fusion - Qualified 2nd

“I hate to lose the pole but if I have to lose it to anybody it is cool to lose to my former team, the Wood Brothers and Paul have been good all year. It is cool that they got themselves a pole this year now. I think our PPG Ford Fusion is pretty fast. We got better each round. That is something this team does a really good job of I think, improving round to round. That is something you need in this deal. Can’t thank everybody enough for working in this heat all day. It has been hot. It is a long day for these guys out here. I want to thank them for hanging in there. We will see what we have for them tomorrow. I think our race car was pretty decent, just a matter of moving around with the car changing and seeing where the line goes. It should be pretty exciting.”

 

KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Jimmy John’s Kicki’ Ranch Ford Fusion - Qualified 13th

“We changed a lot in our car from practice. We were too tight in practice. With the impound stuff it is a little more difficult to hit the qualifying stuff than what it was when it is a whole qualifying setup. We were just too loose. We made a lot of changes to our car for tomorrow and the impound does make it a little difficult to his the setup sometimes.”

 

 

PAUL MENARD AND RYAN BLANEY PRESS CONFERENCE

 

PAUL MENARD, No. 21 Menards Ford Fusion -- CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE LAP AND ALSO YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE WOODS AND HOW THAT HAS DEVELOPED THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEASON: “Yeah, our lap, all three of them were solid. I couldn’t make a lap in practice in qualifying trim. I had to abort because I was so loose. We made good adjustments, went out first round and drove it in like I wanted to drive it in just to see. I knew we were good enough to transfer to round two. So I drove it in and it stuck and I got to the gas and it stuck and then the same thing in three and four. I knew then that it was pretty decent. We didn’t really know what to do between rounds because we didn’t get a scuff run in practice. So we left it alone to try to back up our time but the balance changed. Greg (Erwin) and I talked for awhile about what to do with adjustments and handle and round three was just like round one. That was just good communication and good adjustments.”

 

“My relationship with the Woods, we are coming around. I have known Greg a long time as a crew chief. Eddie and Len are at the race track every week and are two of the best men you will ever meet. We are just chipping away. Learning as we go. We got some good notes from this guy (Ryan Blaney) from last year as a good baseline to work off of.”

 

IT HAS BEEN 10 YEARS SINCE YOUR LAST POLE. WHAT DOES THAT FEEL LIKE? “It has been 10 years? Wow. Well, nine-years. A few more weeks til 10. Yeah, it is cool. I think I started on the front row two other times at this track. It has been a good qualifying track for me. A good race track. It is cool. It is something in the column that it sucks to have a 1 there. Now we have a 2 there in the pole column. Now we need to get rid of that 1 in the win column and make that a 2. 10 years goes by quick. I feel old now.”

 

HAVE YOU FELT CLOSE TO GETTING A POLE THE LAST 10 YEARS? IS IT SOMETHING YOU HAVE PUT EMPHASIS ON? “We have qualified on the front row here before and maybe third here too. We were close at Texas a few years ago. I have just never been a really good qualifier. I don’t put a real big emphasis on it but 10 years ago the tires were different and the competition was different and qualifying didn’t matter as much back then. Now, you saw it at Michigan, we had a really good car and were stuck in 10th to 15th place, stayed out on tires, restarted on the front row and ran a top-five the rest of the day. Track position is everything. Pit selection is extremely important. We picked up in the Xfinity car a couple hours ago a couple spots each time just by being in that first pit stall. Qualifying is more important now than it has ever been.”

 

I GUESS RUNNING THAT XFINITY RACE DIDN’T TAKE ANYTHING OUT OF YOU? “After the race I went back to my hauler. I am on like my fourth of fifth different pair of underwear and my third firesuit. I have been keeping it fresh I guess. I drank some pickle juice and had a lot of ice packs and now I feel pretty good. Pickle juice gives you all your salt back I guess. We used to do that in football all the time and it worked. I haven’t drank pickle juice in awhile but I figured this was a good day to do it.”

 

RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 PPG Ford Fusion -- CAN YOU TALK ABOUT GOING TO DAYTONA NEXT WEEK? “The Daytona race is always fun. I have always enjoyed it from when I went down there as a kid to watch my dad race. It is always a cool atmosphere and really cool vibe. I think I will go down pretty early and spend the Fourth of July there and see some good people. That race is always a good one. Under the lights there is always a cool show. Daytona under the lights is always neat. Any racing under the lights is cool but at a race track like that it adds a lot of character. Hopefully we can survive that one. I think we are 0-for-2 this year on superspeedways on surviving. Hopefully we can change that up next week.”

 

PAUL MENARD CONTINUED -- THIS BEING AN IMPOUND RACE, THE QUESTION IS, ARE SOME OTHER PEOPLE MORE FOCUSED ON OTHER SETUPS AND MAYBE NOT AS FAST TODAY. WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE TOMORROW? “We did not concentrate at all on qualifying today. We tried to do one run earlier and we aborted. we worked all practice in race trim and made some gains I thought. It is kind of like the Xfinity Series, they impound over there and you always get a little nervous if you qualify good because when the adjustments happen and you get in traffic sometimes it changes things. We have the relationship with Team Penske and we have great notes and great drivers to feed off of and great crew chiefs. We will look at what our adjustments will be and the good thing is the cars have speed. We can work on the balance.”

 

RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED - “I agree with Paul. It is always a toss up from qualifying to the race. You never know. I have had really bad qualifying cars that have raced great or vice versa. We have sat on poles and gone straight backwards. YOu never know how it will stack up. You just look back on your race runs. We only made one mock run today and we didn’t focus too much on that. We made a couple long runs in happy hour and you just try to go back and look at that to see where you can get better. We will see. It is always up in the air. It is always good to have raw speed in the car like that for qualifying and you just hope it carries over.”

 

PAUL MENARD CONTINUED -- ARE YOU IN MEETINGS WITH THE OTHER TEAM PENSKE DRIVERS? “I am in most of them. We share. We have a pretty open book between the organizations. I can look at Ryan’s data from qualifying and kind of compare. We are always talking to each other.”

 

STEWART-HAAS RACING HAS KIND OF BEEN THE TOP FORD TEAM THIS YEAR, YOU GUYS THINK YOU HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY THIS WEEKEND TO UNSEAT THEM? “Well, tomorrow would be a great day for it. We will try like hell.”

 

RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED -- “They have been really fast and they have a bunch of wins between a couple cars. I think we have been pretty close. I thought we made a really big gain at Michigan and I thought that we had a car at Michigan that could win the race if it didn’t get shortened. I thought we were close there at a pretty recent, bigger race track. We will see tomorrow. We made a little bit of gains, not only on the Stewart-Haas cars but on everybody. It is just about trying to find little things and finding them before everyone else does. That is how some teams get ahead early in the season and I think we are catching up. Not that we were really far behind, we just needed a little bit and I think we are getting close to that.”

 

PAUL MENARD CONTINUED -- FOR SOMEONE WORKING WITH A NEW TEAM, DOES THIS SCHEDULE THIS WEEKEND IMPACT YOU AT ALL? “Yeah, that is a struggle of running both races. This weekend is a little unique having two practices yesterday with the Xfinity car so that we could basically concentrate mostly on the Cup stuff for practice. Having the race today, I talked to Greg a little bit so that we could get a little bit of an idea of what to do tomorrow. Even though it is an impound race we have some adjustments to make. It is tough on a normal weekend when you are practicing both cars on Friday, you try not to lose track of what car you are in or what adjustments you made. You might do a spring change in one car and be thinking about it later and get confused as to what car you did it in. The crew chiefs and teams on each of those cars keep you in check.”