GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion (qualified 27th, finished 6th) – ON THE DENT ON TOP OF HIS LEFT FRONT FENDER. “That happened the first or second run. We were running three-wide and the 32 jumped up on my car. He was actually inside of me, and came up and it hopped up onto my car. I don’t know how we didn’t wreck. Just guys being aggressive, but that’s the way it goes. It cost us.”
YOU GOT UP TO FOURTH AT ONE POINT. IS THAT AS GOOD AS IT WAS GOING TO BE? “Yeah, but I didn’t know the fender was this bad. I can’t believe how fast we were like that.”
KELLY BIRES – No. 47 Clorox Ford Fusion (qualified 22nd, finished 12th) – “We really had a great Clorox Ford Fusion on a long run. We just couldn’t figure what it needed to get it to take off, and we were so good on the end of a run, you really hated to do too much to it. The second-to-last run, I think I were probably one of the best cars on the track, and we pitted under green and the car just never came to me. We tried going down on the track bar to tighten it up on entry for the first couple of laps, and it just made it looser into the corner and tighter off. So, everyone did a good job. I mean, we’ll take a 12th-place run. I believe we’re a better car than that, but just the way things worked out tonight, everyone did a good job in the pits and on the team here working all weekend.”
THERE WERE ONLY THREE CAUTIONS ALL NIGHT, SO BEING GOOD ON THE LONG RUNS MUST’VE BEEN A GOOD FEELING. “Yeah, but it didn’t come to me until about lap 20 or so, it was that free. If we would’ve had a little better car on the shorter run and maybe gave up a little bit on the end of the run we might’ve been good. Overall, we had a really good car. And, that’s what we came here to do is have a good, strong top-15 run, and we’re going to keep digging here and go on to Gateway next weekend.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE FIRST NIGHT RACE HERE? “It was awesome. I raced here last year during the day, and it was a struggle here. There was just no grip and wasn’t fun, and tonight we had pretty good grip, and it’s a beautiful track and a beautiful area, and the lights really were fun to race under tonight.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 Discount Tire Ford Fusion (qualified 3rd, finished 13th) – “We just were behind from the get-go. Our car was a totally different race yesterday. It felt like it had a lot of speed, and we started the race way too free and could never get it comfortable to go fast. We adjusted on it every stop, and our Discount Tire pit crew did a great job on pit road, but just didn’t have enough cautions to work on it a lot. When you start off that bad, you get far behind, so it just wasn’t a great night. We managed an average finish. We didn’t lose a lot of ground in the points, but certainly we’ve just got to keep working on our program. We just felt like we were a little bit off tonight, and a little bit off will get you a top-15, but not a top-five.”
WERE THOSE PROBLEMS AN ELEMENT OF RACING AT NIGHT? “No. I think the track changed a little bit, and maybe our car just over the long run wasn’t that great. In practice on Thursday, I felt like we were a top-five car and we had good speed, and then dropped the green this evening and just no rear grip and really slipping and sliding. So, we just need to go back and look over the car and make sure nothing funny happened. It was a salvageable night, and hopefully we can learn something from it and move on, and we won’t let this happen again.”
MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 59 Kingsford Match Light Ford Fusion (qualified 24th, finished 15th) – YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE FIRST NIGHT RACE AT CHICAGOLAND? “I’ve got arms like a gorilla because I’ve been hanging on all night. Had a pretty good car. It would’ve been nice to be a few spots up, but we just couldn’t get track position. We struggled for the first few laps. The car was good for, like, lap 15 to lap 30 and then went away again, so there was quite a shift in balance. But, when we were good, we just didn’t have track position.”
THERE WERE A NUMBER OF LONG RUNS TONIGHT. HOW WERE YOU ON THE LONG RUNS? “We were okay. Not great, but okay.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 60 World Financial Group Ford Fusion (qualified 12th, finished 16th) –“I thought it was blowing up. Something sounded real flat. It was running real terrible. And then it sounded bad when we went back out, and it ran pretty good the rest of the day.”