Ford Racing Charlotte 300 race report

Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Roush Fenway Ford

Photo by: Action Sports Photography

RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 6 Ford EcoBoost Ford Mustang – WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR CAR? “I think the U-joint between the driveshaft and the transmission broke first. We’re gonna have to go back and look at it. It was a new driveshaft, new everything, so it was a tough day. Our Ford EcoBoost Mustang was by far a top-five car and had a chance to win for sure, so we can take that from today and go on. Our mile-and-a-half program this year has been really strong and it was strong again here today. We went back out and tried to learn some things for our Cup guys and learn some things for us the next time we come back here. We had a really fast car there at the end, so, all in all, it was obviously a tough day for points, but we’ve got to hang our hat on we were really fast."

HOW DOES THIS CHANGE YOUR OUTLOOK FOR NEXT WEEK? “It doesn’t at all. We’re gonna go out to win every week. We’ve been fast at Dover every single time we’ve been there. We’re going to win. That’s what we do every week and I think we’re gonna have a shot at it next weekend."

DID THE CAR GIVE ANY WARNING OF A PROBLEM? “Right there under that caution before I pulled in it felt like something broke. I started picking up a vibration and came down pit road and didn’t see anything, but then I went back out and it broke. It was just a tough day for us."

ON THE FINAL RESTART YOU WERE AROUND AUSTIN DILLON AND RICHARD CHILDRESS WAS NOT HAPPY WITH YOU WERE RACING. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THAT? “I’m just letting them know we’re here to win. Obviously, we pulled away by more than a straightaway. I was respectful of the guys – the 20 (Joey Logan) and the 30 (James Buescher), I was respectful to them – because they were battling for a position there at the end. I got to them and could have passed them, but I backed off and rode around. We’ve got to go out and get every lap we can and if that means running as hard as we can, we’re trying to learn, I’m not gonna just ride around, so, obviously, they didn’t have a very good day so that’s just part of it."

WILL YOU RACE GUYS LIKE ELLIOTT AND AUSTIN ARE AROUND DIFFERENTLY AS OPPOSED TO WHAT HAPPENED TODAY WITH BUESCHER AND LOGANO? “I’m not gonna put anybody in jeopardy of crashing their race car. I’m not gonna try to crash them or anything like that, so I’ll be respectful to everybody out there. When we have a really fast race car like that I like to see what we’ve got and compare. If we’re just running around by ourselves, it doesn’t really do anything. We need to see how we are in traffic and need to see how we are up front, so that’s what I did.”

MICHAEL ANNETT – No. 43 Pilot/Flying J Ford Mustang – “The biggest problem with the plug wire deal is you run that many laps on seven cylinders you don’t know what the car has and it puts us halfway through the race behind on adjustments we need to make. So we got behind and didn’t really know what we had halfway through the race and started guessing a little bit. That was our downfall there at the end. Our car wasn’t too bad, it was just way too tight and we were just making adjustments on guessing what we saw around us.”

REED SORENSON – No. 98 Shelby American Ford Mustang – “I thought it was good. We finished 16th and it was the first run for this team, so we’re pretty happy with that overall. We don’t have any damage on the car. We had some issues all weekend just trying to get the front end off the race track. That slowed us down a little bit, but that’s expected with new teams."

WHAT’S NEXT? “Kentucky is our next race, which is about a month. The good thing is we’ve got three weeks to figure out what we need to do and we’ll get better, so we should be good.”