Stenhouse Jr.: Watching the race is 'never any fun'

“Having to watch the race is never any fun, but it’s part of it,” Stenhouse said. “Sometimes you don’t make races. I never thought we wouldn’t miss a race here, but everything worked out perfectly and we did. Everything aligned and a worst-case scenario happened for us and we wouldn’t let it happen again, that’s for sure. … We learned from it and thankfully we don’t have to worry about it this week. That’s a positive.”

The confusion surrounding the multicar Coors Light Pole Qualifying at restrictor-plate tracks Talladega and Daytona was compounded last Saturday by the waiting game with teams trying to time their qualifying attempts to the best aerodynamic advantage. Ultimately, time was not on Stenhouse’s side.

“We’re not thinking about making it in the race. Knowing we needed to make it in the race, we would have gone to the middle of the pack to run a lap good enough to make it in, and that’d be it,” he said. “We were trying to make it to the next round, because that’s what we get paid to do — try to get poles. I thought rolling off last, we’ll get the biggest draft and easily make it to the next round and have no problem. Then my spotter’s telling me you need to kind of hurry up. He told me halfway down the back straightaway, you’re going to have to hustle to get around here.”

After Jeff Gordon‘s car slowed his momentum, Stenhouse crossed under the start-finish line just after the black and red flags were unfurled, leaving him among those bitten. But so were several other Chase-eligible drivers, who snapped up the remaining provisional berths based on the team owner points standings, leaving Stenhouse and Co. as spectators.

“Now, being where we are in points is not where we want to be, but heck, 10 positions up in points still wouldn’t have got us in the race,” said Stenhouse, who was 27th in the driver standings entering Talladega. “It would still be tough to have that perfect scenario work out again, but we’ll be better in points next year and hopefully won’t run into any situations again like that.

Stenhouse ran an extra lap after flashing under the black and red flags, just in case there was an error in timing and scoring. But as he inched back toward pit road, it became more and more evident among the No. 17 camp that the team would be left out.

That prompted Patrick to action, as she marched up to NASCAR officials to speak her mind — not just on her boyfriend’s behalf, but as a general protest to the unconventional qualifying system.

“I was really pissed off after qualifying,” Patrick said. “I went to the NASCAR hauler and said ‘what the … is this? Is that what we were trying to accomplish?’ Part of it was because it was Ricky and part of it was, that could’ve just as easily been me, and I know how important those races are to me and my team, but then also my sponsors and the people who invest into those events, especially the speedways, the big ones, all of them. These are all very big races, all four of those, in particular the Daytona 500.

“And so I was fighting for not having someone who wasn’t deserving in that situation.”

The qualifying lockout left Stenhouse in a tricky position regarding what to do next, but instead of going home, he remained to fulfill sponsorship obligations and stay as a TV viewer with a strong rooting interest.

With the laps winding down and Patrick leading, she looked like as good a pick as any to secure a surprise breakthrough win. If so, Stenhouse said he would have been front and center in Victory Lane but stopped short of watching the race from atop the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 10 pit box.

“All those guys like me. They would have let over there, but I figured it would be best to watch it from the bus,” Stenhouse said. “Had some pizza. A Coca-Cola. Just chilled out.”

Stenhouse has already had hard lessons in his tenure with car owner Jack Roush. He failed to qualifying for a NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Nashville during his rookie season of 2010; that and a flurry of crashes in the first half of the year led to a two-race benching and shop duty back at Roush Fenway headquarters.

The rest of the story is that Stenhouse recovered to win Nationwide Series championships the next two seasons, graduating to NASCAR’s premier division the following year. While he hasn’t enjoyed this most recent dose of misfortune, he’s hoping the difficult lessons eventually pay similar dividends.

“I learn real quick of things to do and not to do,” Stenhouse said. “Sitting there watching races, especially long Cup races, makes you sit there and think about everything you need to do, whether it be get more focused and help the guys at the shop on our team more to figure out what we need to do to make our Fords fast again like they need to be. Spent some time with my guys about already looking ahead to next year at the things we need to do differently so we’re not in the circumstances we are (in) right now in terms of being further back in points and not running as well.

“We’re already looking to 2015 and making sure we’re not this far back in the garage.”

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