Ford Performance Watkins Glen Post-Race Notes And Quotes

FORD SHELBY GT350R-C FINAL RACE RESULTS

Overall/Class4/4         158 Multimatic Ford Shelby Mustang GT350R-C (*Jade Buford, Austin Cindric)7/1         15 Multimatic Ford Shelby Mustang GT350R-C (*Billy Johnson, Scott Maxwell)* Last driver in carFORD SHELBY GT350R-C STARTING POSITIONSP1           15 Multimatic Ford Shelby Mustang GT350R-C (*Scott Maxwell, Billy Johnson) – 2:01.358P7           158 Multimatic Ford Shelby Mustang GT350R-C (*Austin Cindric, Jade Buford) – 2:02.204* Driver qualified.158 Multimatic Ford Shelby Mustang GT350R-CMultimatic MotorsportsAUSTIN CINDRIC: “I had no expectations coming into the race. We started p7 and I’ve never driven a sedan in the wet, and our new Shelby GT350R-C had never been in the wet either, so we were kind of in the same boat. I just kept on working up to it and figured out what worked and what didn’t, and picked them off one-by-one. A few dove down in the pits and a few I passed. It was a blast, really.”WHAT WERE THE THINGS YOU DID TO STAY CLEAN AND STAY SAFE? “I hung out the first two, three laps, just testing the waters, no pun intended. But Jade and Billy were really good, getting me educated on what to do before I got into the car and helping me understand what’s important in the wet in these types of cars and really tried to figure out what was going on. These cars had never been tested or driven in the wet at all, so we were kind of going in blind.”JADE BUFORD: “It’s a good day to be disappointed in fourth. The debut of these cars, Scott (Maxwell) getting the pole and us running up front, even in the rain. Our pace was very good. We probably would’ve been in competition for the win had it gone back to green. We would’ve liked to see it go green, because we’re here to win. But that’s the call they made. The team deserves a lot of credit for giving Austin and I a spectacular car all week. The amount that has gone down behind the scenes to make that happen, nobody could understand without seeing it. I couldn’t be more grateful to the team and to Ford for making everything happen for us.”DID ANYTHING SURPRISE YOU ABOUT HOW THE SHELBY GT350R-C RAN TODAY? “It was going to be a bit of an unknown situation no matter what, because we’ve never had these cars in the rain. Typically, you know what works in the dry at least translates some to what works in the wet, as long as you have a good, balanced race car. That’s what we worked on. We know this track is tricky in the rain. There’s no direct path. It’s all touch-and-go in the rain here. It’s more about just having a good time. That’s how you can do very well in the rain here. Don’t get too focused on doing the same thing every lap. Try something different every lap. Just have fun with it.”15 Multimatic Ford Shelby Mustang GT350R-CMultimatic MotorsportsSCOTT MAXWELL: “(The drive-thru penalty for jumping start on lap 12) did and didn’t change momentum for us. The other driver missed a shift, so I don’t know what I was supposed to do. In the end, it was sort of irrelevant. The car was really, really good in the first 20, 25 minutes, when it was just spitting rain. It was consistent. When the heavy rain started it went away a little bit, but when the heavy rain started visibility became a problem. In the end, it was a disappointing day, but we still qualified No. 1 and I think if it was dry, we would be on the podium for sure today. It just wasn’t meant to be. I think, overall, we shouldn’t be discouraged as a team. We proved the car is fast and we’re going to some tracks we like and I think we’ll be a threat for the rest of the year.” BILLY JOHNSON: “The race getting red-flagged (for heavy rain/track conditions) and then ending under yellow definitely took out a major part of the race itself, which, when things cycled through we were able to make up some positions and be sitting in seventh, but a good portion of the end of the race, so there’s nothing you can gain or lose, from that standpoint. This was the first time the car’s ever seen rain, so it’s just like every session we’ve had so far. Every time we have the car out is a learning experience; learning more about the car, working on it to make it faster and faster. The rain just throws in so many different, complex challenges to racing and the inherent preparation of the car that you can’t really perfect until you actually run it. All the cars we’re racing against have raced in the rain multiple times, so we definitely didn’t have that log book on what works and what didn’t work. We’re building that log book and we’ll be even stronger the next time out.”