NASCAR Cup

Bires - Ford inteview 2008-09-02

This Week in Ford Racing Kelly Bires, driver of the No. 47 Clorox Ford Fusion, makes his 47th career NASCAR Nationwide Series start this weekend at Richmond International Raceway. Bires talks about the unique racing at Richmond and what it ...

Edited: Sep 3, 2008, 1:39 PM

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This Week in Ford Racing

Kelly Bires, driver of the No. 47 Clorox Ford Fusion, makes his 47th career NASCAR Nationwide Series start this weekend at Richmond International Raceway. Bires talks about the unique racing at Richmond and what it takes to win at the three-quarter-mile track.

RICHMOND HAS BOTH SHORT TRACK AND SPEEDWAY CHARACTERISTICS. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT RACING AT RICHMOND? "It drives kind of like a short track but the speed that you carry on the place incorporates having a good body on the car. There is some aero grip that's involved there where some of the other short tracks most of it's mechanical grip with a little bit of aero grip but it seems like it's 50-50 at Richmond. You have to have a really good piece there to run good. It is a three-quarter-mile short track. It's similar to what we're going to run at Iowa next year. So, this is an important race for us to at least make a strive forward with our short-track program."

HOW DO YOU APPROACH THE RACE SET-UP? "You've just got to get it comfortable. Richmond has a tendency to be loose in. The characteristic of the track is once you get the thing turning good enough in the center of the corner you're always too loose in. It's a point where you can get it to where you can stand it getting in the corner and yet still be able to cut and have grip off. It's different with this motor package the way it is than it was even running there last year. It's changed. Last year, you kind of had to roll into the gas, this year you kind of get to it pretty hard. You're carrying so much speed through the center of the corner there this that it makes it tougher to get the thing to turn. When you get it to turn, you just get momentum loose instead of getting rear tire spin loose. There's a difference there. It is a pretty fast short track. That's what I would compare it to."

DOES THE TRACK CHANGE A LOT FROM THE MAY RACE? "It's hard to say. It's all temperature sensitive. It was pretty hot there when we were there in May. It changed a ton from when we tested there to when we actually went back and raced. It seems like the temperature does make a pretty significant difference in grip and the way your car is balanced. I'm sure it will be different; it always gets different as the weekend goes too with the rubber that's laid down. Each and every track has got it's own characteristics and it's just a matter of who can actually guess right or hit it right from the difference between practice and the race and put it all together and usually that's the person that wins the race."

DO YOU LIKE RACING AT RICHMOND? "I do. We haven't run as good as we wanted there. It's a place that I should excel at, but I feel like I can make up some going there. We haven't run as good as we want to, but it's not for lack of trying. We've tried quite a few different packages and we're just going to keep working hard at it until we hit on something that I'm comfortable with and it's got the speed to be able to run like we need to there. I'd like to get a top-10 run this weekend. That's our goal right now, to keep getting top-10 finishes."

-credit: ford racing

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