Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion, held a Q&A session prior to Friday’s practice at Daytona International Speedway.
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – WHAT’S THE BIG STORY GOING TO BE ON SUNDAY? “I don’t know. I suppose it will be the same as it’s been the last four months – is Dale Jr. gonna win the Daytona 500 with his new team. I imagine that’s the story that will be the most covered.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE RACES YESTERDAY AND WHAT DO YOU NEED TO WORK ON FOR SUNDAY? “Our team, we’ve just got to work on handling. We were a little off on that. We had pretty good speed. I thought the cars drafted good and I thought the races were pretty good, but we just have to keep working on how to get ours to handle a little better.”
HARVICK LED ONLY FOUR LAPS LAST YEAR, SO DOES IT CONFIRM THE THEORY THAT THIS RACE DOESN’T START UNTIL THERE ARE 20 TO GO? “Not really. I think the race is happening the whole time, it’s just that with this type of racing with drafting and whether you have people pushing you or helping you or what lane you’re in – all that stuff comes into play here and Talladega and it really doesn’t come into play at any other race track, so you just don’t really know what’s gonna happen until the end, especially if there’s a late caution and you get everybody bunched up.”
DO YOU HAVE TO RUN UP FRONT EARLY TO PROVE TO OTHERS THAT THEY CAN WORK WITH YOU ALL DAY? “If you go off of what you just said about last year’s race, I would say no. But I do think that it does help to be in the front. A lot of times, people draft with certain guys because they’re good at it and because they run up front or whatever. But you’re gonna draft with cars that your car runs fast with and vice versa. They’re not gonna want to run with you if your car is slow and they’re not running with you and maybe they didn’t see you all day. So I think you want to be up front and you want to try to get with some different cars and see how your car handles with their cars and how fast they’ll run.”
IS IT SILLY TO BE SETTING UP A GIBBS-HENDRICK SHOWDOWN ALREADY? “Well, not really. We have tested throughout the winter and they’ve run the shootout and the Gatorade races yesterday, so from what I see on the track, Dale Jr. is real good, the Hendrick cars are good and the Gibbs cars are unbelievably strong. Really, from sitting back and watching, unless some other people really get their stuff going, I really think it’s gonna be somebody out of those couple groups unless something weird happens.”
DO YOU SEE A DIFFERENCE IN THE POWER OF THE TOYOTAS? “I don’t know if it’s power, but the Gibbs cars are always strong anyway and then when they hooked up with Toyota this winter, I think that was somebody that everybody thought they were gonna be strong. When you put Kyle Busch in one of them cars, a guy who can make any car go fast it seems like, and when you get the three of those guys that’s a really strong team. Yesterday, when we ran around Kyle in the 150, it was unbelievable how fast his car was. I mean, it made our whole line go faster, so they’re pretty tough.”
ARE YOU SURPRISED WITH HOW JUNIOR HAS STARTED? “No, I saw it coming.” HOW IMPORTANT IS FLEXIBILITY ON THE TRACK BETWEEN THE HIGH LINE AND THE LOW LINE? “You want your car to handle everywhere on the track, but a lot of it is always dependent on tire wear and where the rest of the cars are, and it’s not so much which groove is faster on the track, it’s where all the cars are. If the guy who is leading the pack and everybody decides to follow him, his car is looking better on top, then it’s gonna look like the top groove is good. If the guy’s car is handling on the bottom and everybody sticks to the bottom, it’s gonna look like the bottom groove is good. So handling does come into play and you want to get your car to handle all over the track, if you can.”
DOES IT SURPRISE YOU A COUPLE OF GUYS SEEM TO BE ABLE TO RUN ON THEIR OWN OUT THERE WITHOUT HELP? “Yes and no. I didn’t really have any expectations or know exactly what this car was gonna do, so it seems like if you do handle good enough, if everybody is running the top for instance and your car is good enough, you can make some passes down there almost by yourself. But certainly there’s that group of four or five cars that seem to be quite a bit stronger than the rest of the field, that can hang out by themselves a little longer than the rest.”
ARE YOUR TIRE CONCERNS FOR SUNDAY GREATER OR HAS IT BEEN FIGURED OUT? “I think they’re still pretty great. We had tire problems when we tested here, so we knew we were gonna have them when we came back. They didn’t change anything to fix it, so other than the race track rubbering up a little bit, there’s really nothing that they did to fix the tire, so we’ve got to keep working on our cars. Everybody is not having tire problems, so we’ve got to keep working on our car to get our car not to have them.”
DO YOU EXPECT THE TRACK TO BE AS SLICKER OR SLICKER THAN THE SHOOTOUT? “I hope so. I think the slicker it is and the more handling that comes into play, the better shot we’ll have at success. Our handling is not near good enough yet, but our car is not quite as fast as a handful of those guys, so I think if handling comes into play, you can have a car that doesn’t have quite as much speed and still have a shot to win and a shot to do good, if handling is the key.”
THE FORDS ARE UNDER THE RADAR SO FAR. DO YOU HAVE A FIGHTING CHANCE? “I hope so. I was pleasantly surprised with our car’s speed, to be honest with you. We went up there and led a little bit until after that pit stop and we had a fairly strong car. We had some handling problems and that’s really why we fell to the back. It wasn’t really just because of speed, so I think if we can figure out a few of our handling issues, I think we’ll be competitive. I don’t think we’ll be as strong as the Gibbs stuff and some of the Hendrick cars, but I think we’ll be competitive.”
ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE COT SO FAR? “Yeah, so far. I’ve only run 150 miles, but I think it’s put on a pretty good race here. I thought the racing was really exciting in the Bud Shootout and I thought the Gatorade races were good races, so I think so far, so good.”
DO YOU CONSCIOUSLY THINK ABOUT THE CARS AROUND YOU WHEN YOU DECIDE TO MAKE A MOVE TO DRAFT OR CHANGE LINES? “You try to see which lane is moving and you try to see the people that are around you and what you’re committed to doing, but it doesn’t really matter. If there’s somebody leading a line and you’re in the other line and that one is moving faster than yours, and they’re all baling out to get in that one because it’s faster, you’re gonna bale out to get in that one too. Sometimes you don’t even know who is leading it.”
THE END OF THE RACE WILL BE IN THE DARK LIKE THE SHOOTOUT. DO YOU HOPE THE TRACK JUST COMES TO YOU AT THE END? “I wasn’t in the shootout, so I don’t really know about that, but we’re gonna try to set up for a slick track. The old cars you could come and qualify bad and say, ‘Oh man, I built my car to race,’ because you could build more downforce in it, which, in turn, would make drag. You can’t really do that with these cars. They’re all pretty much set, so you’re gonna work to make the car as neutral and as balanced as possible anyway for the slick track, and if it gets more grip at the end of the race, you’re not really gonna do anything to make your car slower to make it handle better, where with the other car you could kind of decide. Do I want it for a hot track or do I want the car with no drag and no downforce to go fast when it has a lot of grip.”
Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion, will start 11th in Sunday’s 50th running of the Daytona 500.
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – ON FRIDAY’S PRACTICE. “It’s good for us to go out here and get any practice laps we can. We’ve got to balance it with the craziness that’s going on out there and the risk of tearing a car up. So, we practiced. We ran two sessions, just enough to feel some things out. We’re going to finalize things tomorrow.”
HOW’S THE CAR? “It runs well. I’m real happy with the Office Depot Fusion. It’s fun. It’s slippery out there. It’s making it pretty exciting to race.”
ON THE CONDITIONS AND HOW IT AFFECTS THE DRIVERS. “The slicker, the bumps there are, and the more cars are sliding around, that makes it racing. That’s what’s fun.”
WITH THIS PRACTICE SESSION, ARE GETTING CLOSER TO WHERE YOU WANT TO BE? “I felt like in our Duel we were pretty fast. I made some bad decision, but learned a lot and made it back up to fifth, and I felt like our car was real strong, so this practice, we worked on a couple of little things. And I think we’re going to be real competitive. I think it’s going to be one of the most competitive 500 I’ve been a part of, just because of the way the cars are handling. It’s going to make it a real close race, so I hope we’re on top.”
DO YOU LIKE YOUR CHANCES? “I always like my chances, man. We’ve worked really hard to this winter. We’ve got a great car, and the way we ran in the 150, that kind of boosted my spirits a little bit. After qualifying I was a little down, but being out there racing, it made me feel better about it.”
WITH SPEED WEEKS, YOU GET A NUMBER OF OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING AND THE DUELS TO GET A HANDLE ON YOUR CAR. “Yeah, the Duels are great. The Bud Shootout was great. Just any track time we can get right now, just because this essentially an unknown. So, any track time is good, and I’m learning a lot every lap we’re out there.”
THIS IS A RESTRICTOR-PLATE TRACK. WITH EVERYBODY HAVE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT THEY’VE GOT STARTING NEXT WEEK AT CALIFORNIA? “Right. Obviously, we race four times on tracks like this throughout the season, and the other 32 times we run at more standard race tracks, so this is definitely part of it and we have to be good at this, but the meat of the season will be race tracks like we’re going to the next couple of weeks. So, we’re really focused on that. I think we’re going to do pretty well.”
HOW DID PRACTICE GO FOR YOU OUT THERE? “Testing was great. We tested great.”
ON THE FORMER CHAMPIONS BEING HERE FOR THE 50TH RUNNING OF THE DAYTONA 500. “Being the 50th running of this race, that’s big with all the guys here, that have been successful here and have won races here. That’s huge. Those guys have seen it all, and we’re doing anything new to them. It’s cool for them to be here. That means a lot to us.”
WHAT WILL YOU DO THE NIGHT BEFORE THE DAYTONA 500? “Everybody always asks me that: ‘What do you do before the 500?’ I don’t have my Dish Network set up yet, that’s getting set up today, so hopefully I’ll have some television to watch. But mostly just try to relax and not think too hard about it. Once you get to a certain point in the evening you’ve got to quit thinking about racing; otherwise, I’ll never go to sleep.”
YOU GOT TO GO TO THE SUPER BOWL. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? “I got to go to the Super Bowl. Under Armour got me some tickets. That was a pretty amazing experience for me. I can’t remember the last time I sat in the stands at a big event, and I just got to take it in as purely a spectator. It’s huge. It got me excited to come here and run this race because it’s a lot of the same atmosphere and feeling. It made me realize what these fans experience here at the Daytona 500. It’s very cool.”
NOW THAT YOU’VE WON A NASCAR CHAMPIONSHIP (NATIONWIDE IN 2007), DO YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY TREAT YOU ANY DIFFERENTLY? “No, no. Heck, no. I’ve got a great group of friends and family, and I get to spend some time them. Nobody’s ever treated me differently. My close friends and family don’t treat me different from they ever have.”
Dan Davis, director of Ford Racing Technology, was part of a manufacturer’s panel discussion after NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice on Friday afternoon at Daytona International Speedway. Davis spoke about a variety of issues.
DAN DAVIS, Director, Ford Racing Technology – WHAT IS YOUR OUTLOOK FOR THE 2008 SEASON? “It should be a good season. I have to agree, it seems to me that the cars that we see on the track, there’s passing and it seems like they can accelerate harder. It looks like finally at this place we’re gonna see a little bit more sportiness going on on the track and that’s a really good thing. Certainly, we feel we’ll be very competitive at Ford. This race probably won’t tell us what the season is going to look like because it’s a special place with special circumstances, so we’re gonna come out of here competitive, I think. Then starting in Fontana, we’re gonna see a real slugfest. I think we’re gonna have a really competitive slugfest down to the wire kind of year this year with probably three top teams beating up on everybody all year. It ought to be a lot of fun and I just hope the fans enjoy it and I hope everyone here enjoy it because I think it is gonna be a bit of a war and it’ll be fun to watch.”
DO YOU TALK TO YOUR TEAMS ABOUT WORKING TOGETHER SPECIFICALLY WITH THE OTHER FORD TEAMS IN RESTRICTOR PLATE RACES? “We’ve always encouraged it. In the beginning of the race it seems like it’s probably easier to get that done than it is toward the end, but when you get toward the end and the real fast cars are made known, drivers have a tendency to go with those fast cars because that’s how you work your way through. So there’s a balance here between your teammates and that sort of thing and certainly we at Ford have pushed that for quite a while. We’ve seen more in the last couple years than we’ve seen in the past quite frankly as far as the teamwork, so I love seeing it happen. But at the end of the day when you’ve got a couple of fast cars in the front, it seems like it’s everybody for themselves. That’s just the way it works.”
IS THE PICTURE FOR FORD A BIT MORE GRIM NOW THAN A FEW WEEKS AGO AS FAR AS THE NUMBER OF TEAMS YOU HAVE? “It’s not really grim. I think that we feel like you need seven or eight championship quality cars. Realistically, you could have half the field here and if they aren’t championship capable, it isn’t doing you any good. In our minds, we really need seven or eight championship quality cars – no matter how you work them out team-wise. We’ve got Roush with five going to four, and you’ve got Yates doing some things, so, to me, you need that quality. Nowadays, and Robby (Gordon) is a great example of an individual car owner. It’s really hard to make it work as an individual car owners, and the Wood Brothers, it’s hard to make it work when you’ve got a single-car team because you just need to share and you need to help each other. I’m always gonna be looking for seven or eight championship quality teams and if we can get that, then, in my mind, our program is totally solid. That’s what we’re really, really pushing for. You go back a couple of years and the Roush organization had five in the top 10, right? I’ll take that anytime. I’ll take those five and we’ll go, but probably is more like seven or eight with the attrition you get and all the kinds of things that happen. We’re always gonna try to do better, but I’m not disappointed in any way at this point.”
DO YOUR MARKETING GUYS FEEL YOU’RE STILL GETTING ENOUGH BANG FOR THE BUCK WITH THIS NEW CAR AND IS THERE ENOUGH IDENTITY ON THE CARS? “I can tell you just flat out that we’re never happy with the look of the car because it’s never close enough to what we make, so we’re always gonna be pushing on that constantly. There’s a dilemma here. How do you have race cars, we’re seeing here some equalities that are very good in terms of all the cars on the track and yet there’s not enough identity. So it’s always gonna be a balancing act. As a marketing department, as the Ford Motor Company, we’re never gonna be happy. We’re always gonna want more and we’re gonna keep pushing for more and we’ll take what we can get.”
WHICH MODEL CAR ARE YOU LOOKING AT FOR THE NATIONWIDE SERIES AND DO YOU WANT TO SEE IT ROLLED OUT IN EVERY RACE NEXT YEAR? “We’re not ready to announce our model, but certainly the economics is a big issue, so whatever we do, we need to do it once and get it done and get it right and not do it again in a couple years. If we burden these teams that are already stretched with the change now and then come back a couple years later and say we’re gonna do something different again, I think would be a real problem. So let’s get it done, get it done right and do it as economically as we can possible do it and be on with it.”
WHAT’S THE HARDEST PART ABOUT DEALING WITH YOUR TEAMS EVERY YEAR? “To me, a manufacturer and a team is a partnership, so it’s not so much difficult as it is prioritizing what you’re gonna do, agreeing on how you’re gonna do it, just going through the motions. It’s just like any business, you’ve got a couple of teammates that are gonna go prepare for the following year and you’ve got to figure out what are your priorities and what are you gonna work on and who is gonna do what. You plan it, you write it down and you just work it. I don’t view it as difficult, it’s just something that needs to be done. There’s always gonna be a little bit of disagreement probably on priorities of things to work on, but you work that out. Partners work it out, so, to me, it’s not so much difficult, it’s just something that, to me, you need a good process and you need a good partner and then it’s fine.”
WHY NOT RUN THE MUSTANG MUSCLE CAR FOR NATIONWIDE AND GET THAT 18-34 DEMOGRAPHIC? “It’s not that simple in that if you’ve got a car that’s selling really, really well, do you have to go pump up and spend a lot of money and effort and time on a car that sells itself? Why would you do that? In a lot of cases, what you’re trying to do is get your vehicles out there that may not be as well known and put those nameplates in front of you. If you’ve got a car that’s sold out, every one of them you make is sold, why would you spend extra money, time and effort and all that trying to build up the brand just to disappoint the customer? So it is a complex thing when you look at it, and you have to look at what’s happening in the future and what your plans are for new models and that sort of thing, so it may seem real simple at the beginning, but when you start to peel that onion back, it’s not all that easy.”
