JAMIE McMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (qualified 2nd) – ON WORKING WITH CREW CHIEF LARRY CARTER. “Larry and I haven’t done anything different. We’ve unloaded really good at the track, and if we haven’t, Larry has just done a real good job at making the cars feel better me and it seems like there’s a lot more speed in them for the last few months. So, we came really close last week at Texas, and in race trim today I thought we had one of the best race cars, so I look forward to Sunday.”
JAMIE McMURRAY press conference
JAMIE McMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (qualified 2nd) – ON HIS BEST QUALIFYING EFFORT OF THE SEASON. YOU HAVE TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT HOW THINGS HAVE BEEN GOING FOR YOU LATELY? “Yeah, I mean it started off so bad with actually falling out of the top 35, it’s nice to get to end the season that we are. I think the guys that typically end well start next season well, so it makes racing so much more fun. It’s been a really exciting week for me, getting engaged – what about that? That’s pretty exciting stuff, huh? So, it’s been a fun week.”
DID SHE SAY YES? “Yeah. Actually, what her words were, ‘Are you kidding? Are you serious?’ ‘Yeah, I’m serious. What are you thinking?’ So, to come here, it’s cool. Qualified second here before and on like the fifth lap I had something on the grille and had to pit, and hopefully Sunday will go better.”
WHERE AND HOW DID YOU PROPOSE? “Actually, I did it at the Phoenician, at the hotel here in town. Christy and I stayed there, three and a half years I’ve known her, so every year we’ve stayed there. Did it after the race on Sunday, we got back and went and hung out and went and had dinner and went back to the room. I had it planned out, and I really didn’t get nervous, but I wanted to wait another day, and I’m, like, ‘I can’t wait another day. I’ve got to do this right now.’ It was cool. We’ve had so much fun this week. It’s exciting for me because it’s certainly a big deal to find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, but to see, Christy’s been glowing, that’s been so cool to me to see how excited that she’s been. I think she likes me.”
WHAT DAY? “Monday, November 3rd.”
WHAT’S CLICKED ON FOR YOU? JUST CIRCUMSTANCE? “I don’t know. I was just talking to the engineer about that in the trailer, and our cars have been very good over the last, like, three months. We’ve been a lot faster the second half of the year; things just haven’t worked out – whether you just got caught up in accidents, things have just clicked. There’s been a little more fortune on the race track. They just have made really good adjustments to my car, and I think I’ve probably been a little better driver explaining what I’m feeling. When we unloaded at Texas, you kind of know the tone of your weekend when you run your first few laps, like if it drives good we can work on this or you have weekends where you think, “We’ll never get this right,’ and at Texas we unloaded and I thought, “This is going to be tough.’ And we came into the garage and made we made a few adjustments and I pulled back out and I’m like, ‘There you go. It feels great again.’ So, they just have done a really good job of being pretty methodical on the adjustments, and they seem to work.”
DID YOU GET ON A KNEE WHEN YOU PROPOSED? “Yeah, I was pretty nervous. I did. Yeah, I got on my knee. Christy and I have been together for so long that it’s weird when you’re talking to your friend. You picture that as a child, I think, doing that, and you don’t know what the person looks like, but we’re sitting there, and I’m, like, ‘Gosh, this is my best friend.’ I kind of felt corny. Do I have to get on my knee? Because I’m certainly not Romeo, by any means, you know? Not even close.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion (qualified 15th) – “I really like this race track. We’ve been very fast here in the past. It’s really a really fun race, and I feel good about it.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion (qualified 30th) – EARLIER TODAY, A NUMBER OF THE CHASE DRIVERS WERE ASKED TO NAME WHO THEY WOULD VOTE AS DRIVER OF THE YEAR. TONY STEWART SAID HE WOULD VOTE FOR YOU. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU TO HEAR HIM SAY THAT? “That certainly feels good. I feel like I’ve come a long way since I was a dart with no feathers just a couple of years ago. We’ve been good this year, and I owe a lot of that credit to Jimmy Fennig and our AAA team for providing me good race cars and stuff. But, it’s fun to get out there and race with those guys and it’s fun to beat ’em, and certainly it’s encouraging for them to give you pretty good props when they’re asked about you. That makes us feel nice, and certainly it’s cool for Tony to say it. But, we still feel like we need to get a little bit better as a team and there’s still some thing that I can learn to be a little better to get us to a championship contender.”
YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS WEEKEND? “Phoenix has been a tough track for us in the past. I’ve had a couple of good Nationwide runs, but for the most part in the Cup series, it’s been a challenging track for us. We’ve had some good cars and we’ve just never been able to seem to crack that top-10 or certainly a top-five and I feel like it’s a tough track to get a hold of, and we’ve got as good a shot this weekend to be good and run well. We’ve just got to be sure that we take care of the car for 200 laps and have something to race with the last 200.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (qualified 34th) – DID GOING OUT EARLY MATTER? “I think it will matter. I think one and two will be the same because it’s shaded already. Certainly, three and four will gain a little bit of grip. But, we’re still fourth out of five cars, so I don’t think we would’ve been very good either way, no matter when we went.”
