Ford drivers Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle all held Q&A sessions after Friday’s practice session at Pocono Raceway to discuss the weekend ahead and other issues.
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – WHAT IS YOUR VIEW ON TRACK CONDITIONS HERE? “This is auto racing. The track is fine, it’s perfect, it’s the same race track for everyone. The more bumps and the more patches and cracks and character it has, I think, the better. That’s my take on race tracks is that they’re not supposed to be perfect.”
HOW HAS THIS TRACK CHANGED FROM JUNE? “We’ve noticed the track is a little slower than it was and I think that’s just because the temperature is a little higher than it was in the practice session the last time we were here. This track doesn’t change a lot. It’s got some really good bumps down in one and two and that makes it real fun to try to find a line and the tunnel turn has a couple of bumps, and then that patch they put in down here (in turn three) is awesome. It gives two real options over there.”
WHAT WILL THE ISSUES BE THIS WEEKEND? “I don’t see that there will be any issues this weekend. We just raced here and I thought the cars did pretty well here the last time we were at Pocono. Hopefully, there’s no major drama. It seems like every week there’s something else, but, hopefully, we just have a good race and the fans get what they paid for this week.”
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE COMING BACK TO A TRACK THE SECOND TIME? “It’s a little simpler when you come back to a track you’ve already been to because you already have notes and a plan. Bob Osborne had a whole plan for practice and it worked really well. It’s the same for everyone, so you don’t get an advantage, but it’s just a little more comfortable.”
WHAT’S THE PLAN FOR TOMORROW? “The plan for tomorrow is to practice all we can here, hopefully all of it, and still make it to the airport. We just have to make sure that the helicopter people understand they cannot leave without us because at that time, if they leave with an empty seat or something because somebody is in a hurry, then the round-trip time will make it impossible for us to make it to Montreal, so we’re going to go have that meeting right now.”
WHO IS GOING? “I think David and Greg and myself from Roush will be going.”
HOW IS YOUR CONFIDENCE LEVEL COMPARED TO ’07? “My confidence level is really high right now. I feel like we have cars that are faster or as fast as anyone – at least. That’s really the hard part in racing is getting all that stuff to work. Our pit crew is doing really well. We’ve challenged for wins at almost every type of track this season, so this is the best season I’ve had so far and the best I’ve felt.”
ARE YOU SURPRISED YOU’RE NOT HIGHER IN THE POINTS? “No. The way some of these guys have been running, they’re just really strong. I’m not surprised where we’re at in the points. I feel like we’re right where we deserve to be. We really messed ourselves up with some things this season and had a little bit of bad luck that’s kept us from winning a couple of races, but with the performance the way it’s been, I’m real happy.”
ANY FURTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT LAST WEEK? “No. No further thoughts about last week.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – HOW WAS PRACTICE? “Our car is running pretty good. This has usually been a track where I feel like we really struggle, but we ran pretty well here – probably the best we ever ran – in the first race, so I guess it’s a case of so far, so good. Our car seems to have some pretty good speed and it’s driving alright.”
HOW MUCH OF A HELP IS IT GOING TO A PLACE FOR THE SECOND TIME? “It helps, especially with this car. We’ve never raced here before with this car, so all these tracks we see for the first time, it really helps when you go back the second time because you have some notes and some things to look back on.”
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE FOR YOU TO LOOK AT YOUR PLACE IN POINTS AFTER LAST WEEK? “I still haven’t really looked to be honest with you. You just go out and do the best you can every week and get as many points as you can. I don’t really worry about it – you go on. Usually after the race if you gain, you’ll look at it and see where you’re at, but somebody said we were 11th, but, other than that, I don’t know.”
DOES YOUR STRATEGY CHANGE NOW AND GET MAYBE MORE CONSERVATIVE? “No, I don’t think your strategy ever really changes. The only time it probably would change at all is if you’ve got about 100-point cushion on making the chase or something like that and you go into Richmond you might be more careful. Like Jimmie last year at Homestead, he won all those races in a row and had 60 or 70 or 80-point lead, so he ran 16th or 17th all day just to be careful. So I think there’s a time where you can do it if it’s the last race, but, other than that, it’s always so close you can gain or lose so many points in one race that I don’t think you can really ever change your strategy. I think you need to go run hard, finish as high as you can. The higher you finish, the more points you get so it’s a really pretty simple formula – you just go out and finish as high as you can every week and run as hard as you can.”
IS IT FRUSTRATING NOT HAVING A CUSHION? “I honestly won’t think about it until we get to Richmond, if we still have a possibility of getting in or getting out – if we’re in that spot. Other than that, I don’t really think about it because, really, like I say, it’s an easy formula – the higher you finish, the more points you get. You just go out and try to finish as high as you can every week. If that’s capable of winning, you hopefully will be in a position to win the race and if not, you try to get the best finish out of it you can.”
DO YOU KNOW WHO IS 10TH-13TH IN POINTS? “No. At this point I really don’t care. There are six or seven races left, so I don’t really care at this point. You just keep working at it.”
FRUSTRATING TO COME OFF A RACE LIKE LAST WEEK WHERE IT WAS CIRCUMSTANCES THAT KIND OF PUT YOU OUT? “Yeah. It was kind of disappointing for everybody with the way the race played out. It’s easy for me to say because I was the guy who had things go bad, but it’s almost like, ‘Man, I wish this race didn’t pay points,’ or we could do a do-over or do something different to make everybody happy. I don’t think anybody was happy with it – the drivers, the fans, the teams, NASCAR, I don’t think anybody was happy with the result, obviously. I didn’t think it was anything we could really control there. We were probably running only 70 percent when we blew that tire, along with everybody else. I don’t think we could have really done anything different about that. There were actually two other guys that blew them at the same time I did, it’s just that mine was more severe and the other guys were just getting flat. I know Carl’s was all the way flat when he got to the pits. That was the longest run that they made us run all day and when they figured out we couldn’t run that far, they backed the runs up by a couple laps.”
WILL A NEW TEST POLICY HELP PREDICT WHAT COULD HAPPEN WITH TIRES? “In that situation at Indy, unless there are a lot of cars there, I don’t think we would have prevented the situation because they did a tire test there. They had three or four cars there and with a new testing policy, if you can run and only three teams show up at the track, you’re kind of probably gonna have the same result. They’d probably think, ‘Oh well, when everybody gets here, the whole track will rubber in,’ and that never happens. So unless every team was there and ran for two days and Goodyear looked and said, ‘Man, it never got better. We better do something else,’ I don’t think it would have mattered.”
IS THERE A HANGOVER AFTER A WEEK LIKE LAST WEEK? “I hope not. I mean, I don’t. You just show up at a different track and go full speed ahead and just do everything you usually do. You usually feel bad about it Sunday night and maybe Monday morning when you go in the shop and see the car and the guys that have to fix it and do that stuff, but then you get over it pretty quick and move on to the next track.”
YOU’VE MADE THE CHASE EVERY YEAR. HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO KEEP THAT STREAK GOING? “It’s important to make it just because if you don’t make it, you can’t win a championship and our goal every year is to try and win a championship. It’s important we make it, but we can’t do better than our best. We just have to go out and put forth 100 percent effort, do the best we can and that’s it. I think when you start pushing the panic button and start doing more than you’re capable of doing or try to get more out of your car than it’s giving you that day, that’s when you make more mistakes and things go worse. So you can’t really change the strategy, you just go out there and do the best you can.”
DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE FLOWN UNDER THE RADAR THIS YEAR? “Yes and no. We haven’t really been a contender to win very many races. There were two or three races we probably had a good enough car to win and, other than that, we haven’t really run good enough to do that. We’ve been running better and we’ve been a top-10 car or a top-5 car once in a while, and there have been a couple of times we’ve been contenders, but we haven’t been that guy that’s been knocking on the door every week, so I don’t think we’ve really been under the radar.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – SIX RACES TO THE CHASE. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR POSITION? “We need to do the same thing we did at Indy – top 10 finishes are what we need to do to secure out spot to get in the chase to go to New York and all that. We’re working hard at it. I tell you what, we’re working very hard. We’re thinking about what we need to do, execute every race and we’re running decent enough here that we feel this is another top-10 and just try to inch our way closer and closer to locking into that chase.”
ANY FURTHER THOUGHTS ON INDY? “It’s just surprising the track didn’t take rubber, just like everybody else. At the least it was kind of challenging, and to be perfectly honest with you, I find it fun when things are challenging. It’s not the normal, ‘OK, here we go, is the caution gonna come out?’ The challenge was how to manage the tires that we have, how to get track position, how hard can I run now and still have a tire in 12 laps. So it was something different and sometimes that’s fun. It’s like going road racing. It’s not the normal what you’d expect. It wasn’t what we expected. We had to adapt. We had to deal with it and we dealt with it the best that we could.”
CAN YOU BREATHE EASIER ON THIS TRACK WITH THE TIRE? “Yeah, this track – the surface – is pretty normal here, so you can take just rights if you want. You want to put them on every couple of runs, but this track is fine on tire wear.”
HOW DOES THIS TRACK CHANGE FROM JUNE? “History has it that this track changes a tremendous amount. We came back with the same setup and the same car and we’re a little bit slower. The balance is about the same, so we’re happy about that.”
HOW DOES IT HELP COMING BACK TO THE SAME TRACK WITH THIS CAR? “It helps. We’re learning a little bit that we can with this car. Track position is still ever important as it always is, so qualifying is really important for us today, but it’s the same setup and the same car that we race here five weeks ago and I’m pretty happy with how it’s going.”
WITH SIX WEEKS LEFT BEFORE THE CHASE IS IT RIDICULOUS TO ASK YOUR THOUGHTS ON WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW? “We’re worried about being in the chase. We think about it every week. Those top-10 finishes we keep getting just get us closer and closer and we just need to continue to do that and not make mistakes – get top-10 runs. Getting top-10s are good as long as the nine guys you’re trying to beat to get in aren’t in front of you. We’re just paying attention to them and what we’re doing and trying not to make mistakes.”
IS MOMENTUM OR CONFIDENCE? “I think momentum. We came off of two good runs – Chicago and Indy – we’re running good here. We finished 15th in the spring after a speeding penalty. We were running second to Kasey Kahne, so that’s a lot of momentum for us.”
WHAT DO YOU NEED HERE? “Track position and staying up front in clean air. Green flag runs are good for us because it spreads the field out a little bit and the car will run better. It’s just about balance. You don’t want a car too loose or too tight. It’s difficult to get a car balanced here because you’ve got three completely different corners.”
HAS THE TRACK CHANGED A LOT? “It’s surprising because I’ve heard from a lot of drivers that there’s not as much grip on that new piece of pavement as the last time we were here. Just the heat throughout the summer and the five weeks of age, it’s lost a little bit of grip. But I’ve been up there and it’s still fast enough, so we’ll just have to wait and see.”
POCONO QUALIFYING
TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 28 Hitachi Power Tools Ford Fusion (Qualified 19th) – “We’re really happy with that. We weren’t very good at the end of practice, so we looked at the 38 car and some of the other Fords as to how they were set up and we literally changed three of the four springs and other little things on the car. That was the best we’ve been all weekend and even since we were here last time the car seems to be responding a lot better. I feel optimistic about Sunday. We had an OK car here in June, but I just feel like we’ve really improved on it and the things we changed right there in qualifying will give us a great direction for the race.” HOW WILL THAT HELP WITH ALL THE CHANGES? “The thing I was fighting was it felt like the nose was up in the air and it wasn’t turning really good. The changes we did were all in the direction of keeping the nose down and the right-rear up. What we learned is something we can definitely take into tomorrow’s practice and put it in for Sunday’s race.”CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion (Qualified 15th) – “I didn’t get up to speed through five and six as well as I should have. I just got a little free there in the center and I didn’t do it correctly, so I lost a lot of speed coming across the line the first time and I think that’s where I lost a little bit. I’ll go watch the tape and learn from it. Historically, I have really messed up qualifying badly here. I’ve qualified terribly. When we won in 2005 I think we started 33rd or something like that, so I’m not too worried about the race, but on Friday I have to learn to do a little better here. I’m steadily getting closer and closer, but I still have a little bit to go.” YOU SEEM TO RACE WELL HERE DESPITE QUALIFYING POORLY. “Yeah, we’ll be fine. We passed something like 20 or 25 cars in the last 20 laps the last time we were here, so you can pass cars here, it’s just more fun to go to bed Friday night with a good qualifying effort, but I didn’t do it so we’ll just have to live with it.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Dish Network Ford Fusion (Qualified 9th) – “It was pretty good. The car was still real bouncy getting into turn one and I gave up a little speed there. It was pretty good across the tunnel, but I had to get out of the gas coming off of three. I just got tight and that probably killed me a couple of tenths. That’s the difference between being starting in the top five and hopefully the top 10 now.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion (Qualified 16th) – “I really wish I could have run a teen. We unloaded and were just a little off there. We haven’t run that great here at Pocono, but we’re making strides. We’re probably the best we’ve been here, but still not where we need to be. Jimmy Fennig and everyone brought me a great race car for this weekend and we need another top 10 finish. We’ve still got a little bit of work to get there, but I’m content with that lap. I wish it could have been a little better. I really thought we could run a mid teen or something, but hopefully that will be in the top 20 and we’ll be able to go racing from there.”
MATT KENSETH – No .17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Qualified 5th) – “I’m really pleased with the time and the result, but I’m not so pleased with how I did in my lap. I totally missed turn one and we didn’t have the car driving as good as it did in practice, but I’m super-pleased with the result.”
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 freecreditreport.com Ford Fusion (Qualified 3rd) – “Our freecreditreport.com Ford Fusion was real good in practice. I kind of messed up a little bit on our last run in practice and I just had to tell the guys to put it back and I’m gonna have to do the rest. This race track is very, very sensitive to having to hit your marks and I hit them, so it’s good. We’ve had trouble in qualifying all year and I told Max Jones and Doug Yates I felt confident going back to these tracks for the second time and we’d be better. At Daytona we were awesome and had an awesome race car and just didn’t quite finish the way we would have liked and then coming here this is the second time we’ve been back here and we have some notes to go back on. It’s been working good.” YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT SUNDAY? “I was very, very happy with our car in race trim, too. It’s something to be proud of for Yates Racing and we need a good, solid day. We’re still in search for a primary sponsor and runs like this can only help.”
GILLILAND PRESS CONFERENCE – “It was a great run for our freecreditreport.com Ford Fusion. We came here and tested at the test and were really good and came back and didn’t race quite as well as we’d liked. We learned a lot and I’m real proud of all the guys at Yates Racing. This is the last race for freecreditreport.com on our car, so hopefully we can translate this into a good run on Sunday too and bring home a good, solid finish.” WHY DO YOU THINK YOUR QUALIFYING IMPROVED TODAY? “It’s just a gradual improvement. This is the second track we’ve gone to for the second time. Daytona was the first one and we had an awesome race car there. We were really, really strong and ran very well and this is the same thing. We’ve got some notes to go back on. My crew chief, Cully Barraclough, it’s his first year in the Cup Series and I’m still learning too. So just having notes to go back and lean on of a lot of things what not to do have cut down our curve for the day.” ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT FATIGUE SUNDAY LIKE IN JUNE HERE? “No, not really. We’ve worked really hard on our car to make sure we’ve got good air to me and keeping the floorboard cool. A lot of that preparation is done at the shop before we ever get to the race track and my guys do a great job with that.” WHAT DOES SPONSORSHIP LOOK LIKE DOWN THE ROAD. IS THERE ANYTHING ON THE HORIZON? “I hope so. We’re talking to some great people, but nothing is concrete yet, so it’s not a good feeling for sure. Our performance has definitely improved this year from last year and still needs to improve some more from where we’re at now, so we’re working real hard at Yates Racing. Travis and I work really good together and I feel really good about where our team is at. Still, we need to take that next step to just be a little bit better. We’ve built some new race cars and we’re still continuing to build. We got started in the middle of December from basically nothing and here we are today, so there’s still a lot of room for improvement and I think each and every day at Yates Racing we’re heading in that direction.” DOES IT SHAKE YOUR FAITH THAT YOU AND TRAVIS HAVE RUN BEYOND EXPECATIONS AND YOU’RE STILL ANSWERING THE SAME QUESTIONS? “Yeah. We’re ahead of the expectations, I think, with Yates. We came out of the box better than we probably anticipated, but we still need to keep going because there are teams out there that have performed better than us that are still seeking sponsorship, too. That’s what we’re up against right now. Travis has got Hitachi Power Tools on his car for six races, which could turn into something better, and we’re talking to some great people, too. Hopefully, we can have a good, solid run this weekend and next weekend and the weekends to come to help solidify those deals.”