COLIN BRAUN – No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion – (finished 2nd, qualified 1st) – BEFORE THE RACE YOU WERE CONFIDENT ABOUT THE CAR. DID YOU FEEL THAT YOU HAD A SHOT AT KYLE? “I thought through the whole race that this No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion had a shot at it. My crew chief Eddie Pardue did a great job. These guys did a heck of a job on pit road. Congratulations to Kyle and those guys, they did a great job there. You know, Jack’s been telling me for a long time to race long and race clean and get good finishes. I’m sure if we didn’t have those conversations, I would have been a little more aggressive there, but I just wanted to bring this one home and get a good finish for all the guys at CitiFinancial and Ford.” YOU HAVE TO BE SATISFIED WITH THIS EFFORT TONIGHT. “Yeah, we’re really happy. These guys on this No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion car did a great job. We had really good pit stops, but my crew chief Eddie Pardue gave me a great car. Like I’ve been telling a lot of people, I think we might have had a shot at it there at the end, but Jack Roush has been telling me, be safe and make sure we finish these races and bring it home in one piece. We just kind of rode around there for the last 15 laps and made sure we brought it home in second. That’s what we need to do.” DID YOU HAVE SOMETHING FOR KYLE BUSCH? “We’ll, I’ve got Greg Biffle’s Cup spotter Joel up there. We rode around for a lot of that race. And a lot of that was thanks to him. He did a great job up there spotting for me. He kept me smart and patient. There were quite a few times that I wanted to go after it and race and he, I guess, kept me under control, which is good.”
COLIN BRAUN PRESS CONFERENCE
Colin Braun – No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion – TALK ABOUT YOUR RACE. “It was a great night for me and the whole No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion team. My crew chief Eddie Pardue brought me a great car for this weekend. We started off right off the truck pretty quick. We made a few changes but tried to be smart about what the race track was going to do tonight. It think he did a great job on that. We had a really good car. I really enjoyed the opportunity to go and learn with these guys, Mike Bliss and racing with Kyle up there and Cale Gale and all those guys have a lot of experience and to race with those guys was a lot of fun. Congratulations to Kyle for winning the race there. I want to thank Mike for racing me clean. It was a really fun night for me. I learned a lot and certainly I needed a good, solid finish again. We’ve been having some back luck in the truck series and maybe we kind of shook some of that away here tonight.” CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE RESTARTS? “Well, I was just trying to sit behind Kyle and learn as much as I could. He’s got a lot of experience at this kind of stuff. I asked my spotter, I’ve got Greg Biffle’s spotter Joel up there spotting for me tonight. I asked him what I was doing wrong and he didn’t have any great works like ‘get on the gas sooner’ or anything like that. I was just trying to be smart there and not get too impatient and just kind of let that happen. I think I got a little bit better there every time. I don’t know, he certainly got the restarts down pretty good and that’s something I’ve got a lot of learning left to do. I guess I’ll get better one of these days here.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 Discount Tire Ford Fusion – (finished 9th, qualified 4th) – “At the first of the night, we were just riding. The car was pretty comfortable and I got really tight on the long runs. We made an adjustment and it just wasn’t enough. We were just going to try and make it on one stop but we decided with 30-so laps to go we’d come back and try to put four tires on and start all over again and it worked out. I wish we could have stopped a little bit earlier. We just kept on fighting. It could have been a lot better but we salvaged something. Hopefully, we’ll learn from it and go on.” COULD YOU HAVE USED A FEW MORE LAPS AND MADE IT TO THE FRONT? “Definitely, 100 more laps on a short track. I just don’t know if it would be better or worse. A lot of stuff was going on out there, but I felt like we just needed to be a little bit better over the long run and try to get our car turning. We were close, but close only gets you a top-10 finish.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 60 Vitamin Water Ford Fusion – (finished 11th, qualified 12th) – WITH SIX MINUTES ON PIT ROAD, YOU SAID YOU COULD COME BACK AND WIN THIS RACE. YOU FELL A LITTLE SHORT. “A little short. It’s just like anything in this world; you try as hard as you can. That’s what we did tonight. Everybody at Vitamin Water was very cool. We had an oil cooler leak into something, but man, I’d give anything if this thing was about 100 laps longer. I was having fun. It’s just too bad. I felt like we had the fastest car.”
MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 59 Kingsford/MatchLight Ford Fusion – (finished 12th, qualified 37th) – “I’m pretty pleased with our finish tonight. We just quite didn’t have the car there at the very end, but we got ourselves in a good position. I can’t complain. I hadn’t practiced the car at all. We had a pretty good piece and I had a fun night.”
KELLY BIRES – No. 47 Clorox Ford Fusion – (finished 36th, qualified 8th) – “Jason Leffler got into me in the left front. He didn’t give me enough room on the straightaway and knocked the left front fender into the left front tire and we had a tire rub and it finally blew going into three. I was just disappointed. This was the second time he used me up instead of passing me clean. He used me up. It’s hard racing out there. You can’t pass and the lapped cars got in the way. There’s just no room to do anything. We had a pretty good Clorox Ford Fusion. We were hoping to get a top-10 finish tonight. This was not what we were looking for.”
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