Ford Daytona Busch Advance
FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Orbitz 300 Advance (Busch) February 14, 2007 Daytona International Speedway
Jon Wood, driver of the No. 47 Ford Fusion, posted the fastest time in today's Busch Series practice session with a time of 48.046 seconds (187.320 mph). Wood spoke about his fast lap and how it will translate into Saturday's Orbitz 300.
"When you come down for pre-season testing at Daytona, you want to do what's called a PR lap. That's when you suck up on the pack and you go to the top of the board, and it looks great and everyone is giving high-fives, but that's not a good indication of where you stack up in relation to other cars." - Jon Wood, speaking at media day.
JON WOOD-47-Clorox Ford Fusion - YOU MADE MENTION OF A PR LAP EARLIER THIS WEEK. WAS THAT THE CASE TODAY? "Actually it wasn't. I think if you were to go around in the garage and ask a lot of other drivers if today was the day to make a PR lap, they're probably going to say 'no.' The race track is real slick and the cars are moving around a tremendous amount. It's going to be exciting to watch. I'm not too awfully thrilled about racing in these conditions. This is the first time that I think I've been to Daytona and not intentionally tried to run a PR lap and was able to do so. That was just a lap early on where I could run wide open all the way around the race track and caught decent cars at decent times to improve my straightaway speeds. It wasn't a matter of planning it out and running one; it was just a matter of my car driving that good at that point in time."
WILL TODAY'S PRACTICE TIME TRANSLATE INTO A GOOD QUALIFYING RUN? "A lot of people that you see that can run decent laps in race trim won't necessarily run decent laps in qualifying. One does not influence the other, and if anything, we've geared more towards race trim, so we may sacrifice a lot in qualifying. As far as what strategy I'm going to use in the race, I've always had a plan for these types of race tracks, and this is the first time that I don't. I don't know whether to race white knuckle the whole race and try to run up and risk getting into the big crash, or lag back a little bit and kinda see what goes on and bank on the crash taking out a lot of the cars and then being ready to race."
YOU WERE FAST IN TESTING, BUT WAS IT A LITTLE BIT OF A SURPRISE FOR YOU TO POST THE FASTEST TIME OF THE DAY? "Yeah, it's a surprise because you have the usual fast cars like Dale Jr. and Tony Stewart. Those cars always qualify well and they're always close to the top of the board in race trim. So, it came as quite a shock to run that kind of speed, but I ran several more close to that. It wasn't a fluke deal and it was actually a good indication of what my car is like."