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NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 20, 2015Kyle BuschKevin HarvickJoey LoganoMartin Truex, Jr.THE MODERATOR: Let's roll right into our post‑qualifying for Sunday's 17th annual Ford EcoBoost 400, the season finale in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Our second fastest qualifier for Sunday's race is Joey Logano. He drives the No.22 Shell‑Pennzoil Ford for Team Penske, and our 11th fastest qualifier, one of the Chase Championship 4, and he's going to be joined by another one coming up here right now, as well, and that is Martin Truex Jr., and he drives the No.78 Furniture Row Denver Mattress Chevrolet, and he's joined right now by Kyle Busch. Kyle is the driver of the No.18 M&M's Crispy Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. Kyle was the fastest of the Championship 4 drivers. He qualified third. Gentlemen, I'll just ask you an opening comment if you could just talk about your qualifying run. We'll start with Joey Logano. JOEY LOGANO: Yeah, not quite fast enough. I felt like after practice, we never got out to make a qualifying run before the rain, so a little bit of an unknown going into qualifying for us. Team did a good job with the change‑over to qualifying‑‑ like I said, the change‑over from practice to qualifying trim without making any laps was good. Proud of what my team was able to do there, just wish we were a little bit faster in the third round. THE MODERATOR: Let's hear now from Kyle Busch. You were the fastest of the Championship 4 drivers with the third quickest time out there, and your teammate is sitting on the pole. Just talk about that situation. KYLE BUSCH: Well, it's not bad. We certainly got a good qualifying run there. Real proud of Adam and the guys for not making any qualifying runs. They did a good job of getting a good guess at what we needed to go out there and qualify with. Unfortunately it wasn't just a tick better, but we were kind of on edge there a little bit, but overall pleased with the speed and the way that we placed right there. So nothing to hang our heads about right now. With our teammate being on the pole, I'll definitely learn some things from what that was tonight, go back and talk to Denny about that, but also just our ability to be third right now behind another really fast guy throughout the season. We'll look forward to tomorrow, working on our race car, getting a good setup for Sunday. THE MODERATOR: Martin, you qualified 11th. Just talk about your qualifying effort out there today. MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, it was a decent day for us. We never really could get the balance of the car just like we wanted. But for us really qualifying hasn't been our strong suit on these type tracks. I thought 11th was a decent effort. Obviously wanted to be better and did a lot throughout qualifying to make adjustments and tried to move my line around, and just never really could quite hit on it. So tried something a little different in the third round; probably cost us a few spots there. But all in all, it's not about where you start here. This race is really hard on tires, really wears tires out, and long runs are going to be key, so looking forward to getting out there tomorrow and working on our car and seeing what we have for Sunday. THE MODERATOR: Our defending series champion is Kevin Harvick. He's the driver of the No.4 Budweiser Jimmy John's Chevrolet for Stewart‑Haas Racing. I know you would have liked to have got in a little faster qualifying effort there, but you had a fast car in practice. Talk about how things unfolded for you. KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, round 1 was really good for us, and then we went to round 2 and just really, really tight in the next two runs that we made. You know, we just never really recovered from what we did in the first round to make it repeat. All in all, I just think our balance was too tight. We'll work on the race car and go from there. Q. Kevin, so after qualifying 13th, how much more pressure do you feel for Sunday's race now? KEVIN HARVICK: It's really no different than any other week. I mean, we've not qualified as well this year as we had last year, especially on some of these types of racetracks. We got one out of the three rounds, but we only got two shots at it‑‑ well, we got three shots at it today, so it's really not anywhere too far outside of the box from where we've qualified in a lot of these races this year on these types of racetracks. Q. Joey, Matt said that you guys met this morning. How did everything go? Were you glad just to get to talk to him face to face? JOEY LOGANO: Yeah, we haven't had enough of this one yet? Geez. No, it was good to‑‑ NASCAR had us both sit down in there and just talk it out a little bit, so I thought that was good for us to do. Q. How much bearing does speed in qualifying and qualifying position bear out importance in the race? KYLE BUSCH: It don't. Qualifying position doesn't matter much here. I think with the opportunity that this racetrack presents of being able to move around, bottom, middle, top, and be all over the racetrack, I think you definitely have enough time here through 400 miles to work your way to the front. It's not a racetrack like last week at Phoenix or even Loudon or something like that where it's pretty single‑file, hard to pass. This place is good. So I don't know that qualifying position has anything to say about what kind of race we'll see on Sunday. Q. Kyle, Erik Jones starts fifth tonight in the truck race. Have you talked to him about his truck, and where will you watch the truck race from tonight? KYLE BUSCH: I haven't talked to Erik, no, not yet, about his truck today, but they came down here and tested. We had a decent test, so I feel pretty confident in Erik and the ability of the team to just go out here and have a good day today. I'm sure he wants to win. We haven't quite necessarily qualified very well with the KBM trucks on the mile‑and‑a‑halfs this year, actually throughout our existence. But we always seem to race well, so I really look forward to Jones having a great race truck and those guys being able to do a good job. I'll probably float between the pit boxes, most notably the 54 tonight, and just spend some time with Chris Bell. Q. Joey, the emotion, the mentality of you're at a race but there's so much else going on around you and behind you, how do you keep all that separate and do what you've got to do on Sunday? JOEY LOGANO: You're talking about our situation for this race? Q. Yes. JOEY LOGANO: Yeah, I mean, obviously you keep in mind, we all know who the top four are racing for a championship. So you keep that in mind for sure. You race them with the utmost respect like normal, but at the same time all of us are out there still with something to race for. We all want to win a race, as well. We'd like to obviously try to bookend the season with the 500 and try to get one here in Homestead. That's our goal this week, but we just‑‑ as far as what other drivers are out there and what they're doing, we keep in mind what they're doing and what their goal is for sure. But you don't want to be the guy that gets in the middle of that, but we want to also win the race. Q. Joey, last week when you didn't advance, you had a very good attitude about it, no bitterness. A lot of people think you probably should be in this top four. What would it mean to you to, one, to go out and maybe be the spoiler and win the race, and two, why no bitterness at all not being part of it? JOEY LOGANO: If I look at it, life is short, and really if you look at this is a drop in the bucket. Hopefully I have a long career in this and I can be doing this for a while. This is one season, and if you look at our stats this year, it's nothing to hold our heads down about. It's something we're very proud of, the amount of wins we've got, the amount of top 5s, that's something to be very proud of and not hold our heads down about. The way I look at it, if we finish second at Martinsville and we still had that issue in Texas with the left rear tire, we wouldn't have made it anyway. I think looking at the big picture and staying positive. As a driver you're one of the leaders of the team and your attitude is contagious, and I think you need to be positive, at least for me. It works for me. But is it disappointing we're not racing with these guys for a championship? Of course it is. We want to be. But it is what it is, and we move on. Q. Kevin or Kyle, Gordon looked like he's out of the first round, looks like he might not make the second round, and yet here he is P5. Can you speak to I guess no surprise that Jeff did what he did in qualifying? KEVIN HARVICK: I mean, he was on the pole last year, so you know, I don't think that's a huge surprise. I think we thought that he would run well and has run well in the past at this track. It's not his first time taking a shot at it or getting behind. THE MODERATOR: Guys, thank you very much. Good qualifying. Good luck this weekend to all of you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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