Stenhouse finishes fourth at PIR, but remains positive

PHOENIX, AZ -- Ricky Stenhouse Jr. had to settle with a fourth-place finish at Phoenix International Raceway in the Monster Energy Cup Series race on Sunday, the Camping World 500.

After the race, Stenhouse was very positive in his post-race press conference.

"I've definitely seen a difference in the quality," Stenhouse said on how his team has improved since the winter. "We still got a long ways to go. But I think we've made a big improvement from last year, especially the end of last year.

"Atlanta, we had a really good car.  Got the right front fender tore off on the restart.  Thought we were going to finish fifth to tenth, somewhere there.  Vegas, I thought we had a 15th-place car.  We had an issue with the axle there at the end. Then today I thought we had a good long run car, a 10th place car at best in the long run.  We took a gamble and were able to get a better finish at the end."

Stenhouse did say that the attitude in the Roush Febway Racing shop is real positive, and he even complimented his teammate Trevor Bayne on a good start to the 2017 season.

I think our cars, the attitude at the shop, is really good," Stenhouse said. "Trevor [Bayne] has some solid finishes over the first few races here. So that's something encouraging and something to build off of. I feel like we've had speed. Just haven't got the finishes that I feel like the speed that we have. It's better to have the speed and figure out how to get the finishes."

Stenhouse discussed the difficulties that his No. 17 team had faced at Las Vegas and Phoenix over the past two race weekends.

"Yeah, you know, there in Vegas, I mean, our car was really loose," he said. "We got really loose into turn one, had to bring out the backup car.  But you know what, the good thing was is I thought our backup car was just as good as our primary car. That's what the guys have been preaching at the shop, is to make sure that we're not only bringing the best cars to the racetrack that we can, but our backups are just as good.  Because you got to be prepared for anything in this sport. With had a brake issue there going into turn one, first lap of the first practice on Saturday.  Luckily we were able to just get some minor damage.  Five minutes we were back out on the racetrack logging laps. Then the axles last week cost us probably 15, 20 spots.  It's been some bad luck.  But today was fun.  I thought we made our car better throughout the race, which it's been a while since we've been that, so I was pretty happy."