Today s win was the fourth of the season for Brad Keselowski and eighth for Penske Racing.

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1 Aug 10, 2013 Watkins Glen, New York Brad Keselowski Gives Ford Racing Ninth NASCAR Nationwide Series Win with Watkins Glen Triumph Today s win was the fourth of the season for Brad Keselowski and eighth for Penske Racing. Four different drivers have accounted for Penske s eight wins this season: Keselowski (4), Joey Logano (2), Sam Hornish Jr. (1) and AJ Allmendinger (1). This victory also marked the ninth NNS triumph for Ford in 2013 and 205 th all-time. BRAD KESELOWSKI No. 22 Hertz Ford Mustang VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW: THAT WAS ALMOST FLAWLESS. There was definitely some drama with the different strategies. I really thought the 48 car could make it on fuel, but obviously it didn t. We just plugged away. We had a fast car and that s so important. The Hertz team and everybody at Penske Racing did a helluva job. All three Penske cars were fast and that s so important. You ve got to have a fast car and you ve got to execute the weekend to win these races and our team did that today. IT DIDN T TAKE YOUR TEAM LONG TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE THIS MUSTANG GO FAST. The Mustangs are really, really fast. Everybody has done a great job with these Nationwide cars and it s a pleasure to drive when you ve got cars this good. DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING THAT WILL CARRYOVER TO TOMORROW? No, I think you learn more about yourself and what your limitations are and how hard you push the car and know when you re pushing it too hard and know when you can push it some more. I think you learn more about yourself than you do the cars. SAM HORNISH JR. No. 12 Penske Truck Rental Ford Mustang WERE YOU MISSING SOMETHING BETWEEN SECOND AND FIRST? I was driving the crap out of the car trying to pressure Brad into making a mistake and I got him to get into turn one hard a couple times and just wore my stuff out trying do everything I could to figure out how to keep with him and keep pressuring him. It was a real good day for our Penske Truck Rental Ford Mustang. The guys did a great job and gave me a great car. We had a loss in our Penske organization. A long-time friend, Barbara Signore, passed away this last week. She was a good friend to the IROC Series and

2 all the people at Penske Racing, so we re going to miss her. We re looking forward to getting to Mid-Ohio next weekend, but most importantly getting home tonight to see my girls. It was a great day. I feel very blessed to come out here and have a good run. Third last year, second this year, maybe we ll get us a win next year. YOU RE DOWN THREE IN THE POINTS. With about five laps to go I had to have a little bit of a gut-check on what was more important, winning the race or getting some points. I did everything I could do to try to pressure Brad and to make it a great race for the fans and I wore my stuff out trying to keep with him. I got to the point where I about spun twice trying to pressure him and trying to figure out a way to get around him. I just decided it would be a little bit better to get the points, and I m just happy because our Penske Truck Rental Ford Mustang was really good today. We ve qualified on the pole the last two years here. We finished third last year, second this year, so maybe we ll come back next year and figure out how to win one. WHAT WAS YOUR THOUGHT PROCESS DOWN THE STRETCH? The other part of the whole deal is I m racing my teammate, so it s not like it s somebody else. They re running for the owner s championship and all the things that are going on here at Penske Racing and we felt really good. We ran quite a bit today with Joey as well. It was very difficult to sit there and want to win this race and what it would mean to me to be able to win here, but, on the other hand, the championship is very, very important to us and that just kept replaying to me. Everytime that car stepped out and I d have to make a big correction to be able to catch it, you ve got to be smart here and make sure that we save the car and get some good points today. TRAVIS PASTRANA No. 60 Roush Fenway Ford Mustang I didn t really do that well in practice and qualifying, but I thought we had a really, really good car. I was just kind of smooth and steady in the beginning and moved up to 10 th at one point, and I was running with some good cars there in the middle. I got my lap times down where I wanted to be, but we bumped into a few people under braking, so it wasn t the result that we had hoped for. I felt like we learned a lot though and were a top-10 car at the end, so, for me, that s still the primary goal. SAM HORNISH JR. PRESS CONFERENCE HOW DID THINGS TURN OUT? It was a good day. Fastest in practice yesterday and qualified on the pole. I think Brad and I had a great race out there. I could pressure him towards the end of the race and actually got him to either wheel-hop or lock up a little bit in one a couple times, but just was never close enough to where I could take advantage of anything. Then with about three laps to go I got really sideways through the bus stop and had her all crossed up and I thought, Man, that would be real dumb if I spin this thing out running second, so we pushed hard to try to do what we could do, but had to save a little bit there at the end because I was driving a little bit too hard to be comfortable with the fact that we were gonna get the car home in one piece, so it was a great day for the Penske organization for sure a 1-2. We ve done that quite a bit lately and one of these times we ll get it turned around to where I m on the

3 leading edge of it, but it was a great organization effort and the fact that at a lot of points we were 1-2-3, so it was a good day for us. THREE POINTS BACK. HOW MUCH DID THAT COME INTO YOUR THINKING LATE IN THE RACE? When you drive around here you can only see the top four spots, so I had no idea where Austin was at, but I was focused on trying to figure out how to pass the 22. You definitely keep that in the back of your mind and when it got down to the point where I felt like I had driven 10 laps where I d driven over 100 percent for each one of those laps and I could never get up beside him. I could get to his bumper, but I couldn t make it to that last little bit where I felt like I had a legitimate shot to pass him. I had to just settle down a little bit and make sure that we got it to the end. The last kind of moment that I had probably cost me three or four car lengths and then I was like, I need to sit here and ride and make sure that we don t make a mistake. I was pushing hard and I knew that there was traffic and things like that that we were gonna catch up to, but you sit there and you re thinking about the points and I had to remind myself of that a little bit. If I would have felt a little bit better about the car and had a little bit more speed to pressure him and try to pass him, I think that the points would have played a little bit further back in my mind. WILL MID-OHIO BE DIFFERENT SINCE IT S A STANDALONE RACE? I think this track provides you the opportunity to not have as many yellow flags because you have so much of the off-track parts of this is paved, and there aren t very many if any gravel traps left anymore, so when guys get off line, they have a long time to be able to get back on, like turn one where they just need to cut back onto the track or they get slowed down and somebody packs in behind them. I feel like this track is a lot more set up for what these races turn out to be and it allows it to not have so many yellows coming down to the end, and I think Mid-Ohio is going to be more similar to Road America with the way some people approach it. The good thing about that track is that it s not quite so far around, so when a car stops somewhere it might be a little bit less yellows for trying to get somebody back to the pit lane or whatever, and bunching it up less that way as opposed to Road America. WHEN DO YOU START TAKING CHANCES FROM A POINTS PERSPECTIVE? I think you ve got to take the chances when you ve got the car to do it. Today, I felt like this was a great opportunity for me to try to get a couple extra points and try to get the win, so I pushed hard to try to make it happen. But I feel like it can come at any point in time. There are days when your car is not quite there, it s a lot about making sure that you get it to the next pit stop so you can adjust on it or you just work on minimizing your bad days. That s really been our Achilles heel this year is that we ve had a lot of really good races. We haven t had any mediocre ones. They ve either been really good or really bad, and what we need to do is minimize. Our bad days need to be a 15 th -place finish and not a 35 th.

4 BRAD KESELOWSKI PRESS CONFERENCE FOUR NNS WINS IN YOUR LAST FOUR STARTS. HOW DID IT GO TODAY HOLDING OFF SAM? I thought four wins in a row was a helluva stat until I just read Jim Utter s stat that Ryan Newman, Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr. have all won five in a row. I guess I ve got more work to do (laughing). Bristol is my next race, so we definitely have something to aspire for. We re gonna run the triple there with the trucks and Nationwide and Cup, but forget that part. Today was really just an excellent day. All three Penske cars were very, very fast and with the start of the race and Kyle getting torn up it was pretty apparent that all three of our cars had a shot to win the race if we just didn t do something dumb, so I tried to not do something dumb the whole race. I maybe came close a couple times, but it all worked out and had the car and the team to really execute it. Sam Hornish, my teammate, was really, really fast. It s hard to say if he was in front of me rather than behind if the outcome would have turned out different as far as me not being able to get back by him, but that last pit stop we were able to get out in front of him and work our way through traffic. Then obviously pass my other teammate, Joey Logano, who was running the third car on that last restart probably two or three laps in, so that was very rewarding. Like I say, we came up in Victory Lane and with a 1-2 finish for Team Penske. That s really great. JEREMY BULLINS, Crew Chief No. 22 Hertz Ford Mustang YOU HAVE SEVEN WINS THIS SEASON. WHAT WAS THE KEY TODAY? First off, it s a great weekend for Penske Racing. Obviously, like Brad said, we brought three cars here and it s pretty cool to come here with three identical cars and have them run for a lot of the race. Another 1-2 finish is pretty special. Like Brad said, these races are just about execution, trying to pit on the right lap, not make any mistakes on pit road, not put yourself in a bad position, and the team did a good job of that today. We got off pit road when we needed to on the last stop and once the cycle played out we were in position to get the lead again and just manage the race from there. Brad did a really good job of that and the whole team built a great car, and the pit crew did a good job on pit road. MIKE NELSON, NASCAR VP of Operations, Penske Racing CAN YOU TALK ABOUT PENSKE S PERFORMANCE IN NATIONWIDE THIS YEAR? It s been really good. It s been a good year for us. We were talking about it right after the race was over. This is our eighth win for the season and that s the most that we ve won in a Nationwide season. We were tied last week and we had to tip that over this week, so to come home with a 1-2 finish, the 48 car with Joey ran well all day today and it s just been a good season. Things have been going our way and we re real excited to be sitting here right now. WHAT HAS PENSKE DONE HERE SINCE 05? Before I came to Penske Racing I was always so impressed by how strong the cars were at this particular track. I m not sure why that is, but you see that and it s not really explainable. If it was, you d apply that template to other tracks, whether it s the Roush cars always

5 running well at Michigan and the Penske really run here at The Glen and I would say traditionally at Bristol and places like that. It s kind of funny like that. I wish I knew why because you would try to take those lessons and apply them elsewhere, but from the very first time I got in a Penske car at Watkins Glen it was like, Wow, if I don t screw this up, we re gonna run pretty good today. That was certainly the case today. JEREMY BULLINS CONTINUED WHAT IS YOUR PROCESS WHEN YOU HAVE DIFFERENT DRIVERS IN THE CAR? The biggest thing for me is it depends on who is driving the car. As far as the setup goes, we wind up not being all that much different from week to week. What we feel like is gonna be the best setup is usually close. I think the adjustments that we ll make during the race vary because I think the drivers have a different style of adapting to an ill-handling car. I think if Brad s got a loose car versus when Joey s got a loose car, he s probably gonna drive it a little bit differently to try to compensate for that, so the adjustments that we might use will be different. That s probably the biggest thing. BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED I UNDERSTAND THE FORDS AREN T GETTING THE SAME FUEL MILEAGE AS THE TOYOTAS. HOW WILL THE STACK YOU UP FOR TOMORROW? That s news to me. MIKE NELSON INTERJECTS: I think we ll be good tomorrow. I guess we ll find out after the race is over, but I feel good. I feel good about where we are and we ll see where the chips fall tomorrow. BRAD CONTINUES I feel confident that we ll be alright in that area tomorrow maybe not the best, but certainly not the worst. I hadn t heard anything differently. HOW DO THE TIRES LOOK? I think this is a really good tire. I ve been really happy with some of the progress we ve seen in the tire compounds this year. I think there are some really good things coming around the horizon with what we saw at the Atlanta test, so I think there s a lot of encouraging signs there and tomorrow should be a great race as far as the balance between tire degradation and any issues you might have as far as being unsafe. I think that s gonna be really strong tomorrow and probably why this is one of the best races of the year. YOU GAINED GROUND IN THE OWNER S POINT STANDINGS. That s really important to Roger. Obviously winning the Cup championship last year was a high mark for him in both the driver and owner standings and with the Chase the way it works. On the Nationwide level, although we won the driver s title in 2010 we did not win the owner s title and I think it s something he certainly holds and values, so it s nice to see that we re a little closer there, but we still have a lot of work to go and obviously the 54 team is a very strong team. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WINNING HERE? It feels really good to break through whatever barrier that might be, but the most important one is breaking through those two second-places I ve had on the Cup side. This has been a great track for me. I can

6 remember coming here with my dad in the mid to late nineties and just always having a love affair with this track, whether it s the different fans and just the atmosphere and ambiance. This particular track is something I ve really taken to and really like. It s really the only true racers road course, I think, that we run. All the other ones feel like parking lots to me. This is a real road course that has real speed, real banking and has real genuine handling dynamics and I just really appreciate that and like that about this track. WHY DO YOU FEEL YOU VE ADAPTED SO QUICKLY TO ROAD COURSE RACING? A lot of video games (laughing). I like video games. For some reason when I first started racing growing up this track was one of my favorite places to run in the video games. I don t know why. I just liked it probably because of what I was saying earlier about the speed and the handling dynamics. I remember I spent a whole summer when I was kind of locked in my parent s shop because I was just young enough to where they wouldn t let me touch anything and just old enough to where I wasn t getting a babysitter, and I remember spending a whole summer sitting on the computer in the office area running Watkins Glen as a video game. My mom could tell you that story. I guess it was only a month or two that you have off, but Watkins Glen was always a track I ran. It was just a place I really liked and I don t know, it s hard to explain, but it s something about this track I have a real deep appreciation for. DID THE VIDEO GAME TRANSLATE WELL TO THE REAL THING? Oh yeah, absolutely. WHAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE IN YOUR CAR AND DID YOU FEEL PRESSURE FROM SAM AT THE END? I think the difference was probably getting through traffic, and then executing the last pit stop. That stuff adds up really quick, but obviously I felt pressure. Sam is a helluva road course racer. He sat on the pole by like three or four tenths, which for us as drivers is a lot. That showcases a lot of strength and a lot of talent, but you know what I really like about these Nationwide cars specifically at tracks like this is they seem to draft and that helps the second car kind of supplements whatever loss there is for the aerodynamic pushes you have in the corner. You see the field rubber band a little bit from corner to straightaway and I thought that was really interesting. Sam was using that very effectively to definitely keep pressure on, so that was a good move by him. Certainly, if he would have caught a little break in any way, he d be sitting up here today. WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THE TWO RACES LAST YEAR THAT WENT THROUGH YOUR MIND TODAY AND HELPED YOU GET TO VICTORY LANE? I think last year s Nationwide race, if it wasn t for that final restart, I think we were more than capable of winning the race. I was just trying not to get myself in any trouble there, but then furthermore on the Cup side it s just being smooth and taking care of your stuff and knowing how hard to push and when to push it and that s so critical when you run these road courses.

7 ANYTHING THAT YOU CAN USE TOMORROW WITH THE GEN-6 CAR? No, not really. I think it s just rhythm and technique. The rhythm probably more so than anything else because they re two different cars and they drive vastly different. The speeds are vastly different. I really like the way the Nationwide cars drive here. I probably prefer the Nationwide car over the two, but so far we ve got to figure out tomorrow. That s what is gonna count. WHAT IS THE MAIN THING YOU LL TAKE AWAY FROM TODAY THAT YOU LL USE TOMORROW? You re just trying to find the limits of yourself. It s not even so much the car. Even though the car has its own fixed limit, it s trying to find the limits of yourself and the feedback that the car is giving you and trying not to be too conservative when there s speed out there, and then try not to push so hard that you get yourself in trouble. That s more of a read about yourself than it is the car because you have to really increase your sensitivity to those things and I think that s so important in this style of racing and something Marcos Ambrose and those guys do very, very well. That s more rhythm and experience than anything else. ARE YOU NOT DOING OTHER RACES BECAUSE OF SPONSORSHIP OR POTENTIAL INJURY OR OTHER ISSUES? It s a mixed bag. I can tell you that if getting injured is on that list, it s way down that list. I feel fairly confident in this series and whatnot. There are a few tracks that I don t feel as confident in and that I have been on record as saying I don t want to run accordingly, but, for the most part, that s not an issue as far as running more or less races. There are different reasons for each track and every week, so it s hard to pick one, but I would say that s at the very bottom of the list. WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE ATLANTA TIRE TEST THAT MAKES YOU OPTIMISTIC? Goodyear has done a good job of kind of rewriting their book on how they construct tires to try to compensate for some of the ways that this style of stock car punishes it. I don t want to get into the engineering talk. They could probably tell you a lot better and I would suggest that you ask them, but the science behind it and the technique behind it has the potential, I feel like, to revolutionize the sport and fight a lot of the issues that we re facing from a competition side. Like I said, I m extremely optimistic and I think that s gonna be a big step for our sport, so I ll let the engineering talk be done by the engineers. BUT THEY PUT IT IN THE DRIVER S HANDS HOW MUCH THEY WANT TO ABUSE THE TIRE? I wouldn t say that so much. I think they ve just found a good balance between speed, grip, fall-off, and safety.

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