CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (finished 4th) – IT WAS A FUEL-MILEAGE FINISH, AND YOU OBVIOUSLY HAD ENOUGH TO MAKE IT TO THE END. “Ford gets the best fuel mileage out there anywhere in the world. Greg [Biffle] was just racing his heart out, you know. It’s good to see Mark [Martin] win a race. He’s a good friend of mine. But, man, it’s a heartbreaker to see Greg lose that thing. He did everything right. Our Aflac team performed well. It was a good, solid points day. We didn’t run quite as well as we wanted to, but I’m just glad to see all these fans out here enjoying the sport – and Aflac, Ford, Subway, all my sponsors, I appreciate it.”

 

MORE ON THE FINISH. “Fords get the best fuel mileage in the world on the street, and we can usually do it here at the race track. Greg was just racing so hard, and, man, I wanted to have a Ford in Victory Lane. I knew this Aflac Fusion wasn’t good enough, but we still got a good finish out of it. My guys did a good job and we’ve got something to build on.”

 

HOW CLOSE WERE YOU ON FUEL? “I don’t know how close we were. I shut it off so we could check, you know, but I’m sure we were good. We usually have pretty good fuel mileage with these Fords, but our Aflac Fusion was about an eighth-place car today, so to come home fourth is good. My heart just aches for Greg. He did a good job, and was just half a lap short.”

 

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (finished 5th) – “We had to save that whole round. We were a couple of laps short. We would’ve made it, but the 48 came up there and put pressure on us. I felt like I had a faster car than the 48, but I knew running that pace we weren’t going to make it, so I backed it off a little bit and I saw the 48 was a little loose, and I asked [Greg] Erwin if I could run him down, because I think I can beat him, and he said, ‘Go for it.’ There was only three laps, but if I would’ve let the 48 go – if I would’ve stayed with my program, I would’ve made it, no problem. I don’t know if I would’ve beat the 5, though, because I would’ve had to pick it up when he came along. But, overall, it was a good run for us. I’m really excited about our Ford cars ran up here at Michigan. It’s unfortunate that it came down to that; I think we had a really good car for today.”

 

WHAT IS THAT LIKE, BECAUSE IT’S LIKE THE POLAR OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOUR PROGRAM CAN DO. “Yeah, I know it. I was just backing it off way early – then the 48’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming, and I’m like, ‘There’s no way I can run that pace and not run out of gas,’ so I picked it up a little bit, and I could hold him off there. I was kind of tricking him, I was slowing down getting into the corner, but finally he got in front of us. I saw he was really, really loose, and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can mess with him,’ and get back beside him, but I just ran out a half a lap short.”

 

HOW FRUSTRATING WAS THAT? “Pretty frustrating. It was our first win for the season; I watched it slip away there. Fuel mileage, two weeks in a row. Last week I was running third and finished 11th, and this week I was leading and finished fifth. So, we’ll keep working at it.”

 

 

HE WAS GETTING READY TO GO, BUT HIS CREW CHIEF TOLD HIM TO GO. “Yeah. They miscalculated a little bit there, because they were way over a lap short. We ran out going down the back. I shut it off and just kind of nursed it to the line to try to get a top five, but that’s unfortunate; we had a great car.”

 

YOUR CAR RAN WELL IN CLEAN AIR, BUT YOU WENT RIGHT TOWARD THE FRONT EARLY, SO IT WAS GOOD IN TRAFFIC, TOO. “Yeah, the guys did a great job. I’m so happy about the way we have our Ford Fusion running. And the engines are running good, and pretty dang good fuel mileage – it looked a little better than the 48, the 5 sat back there and nursed his stuff, so anytime you run it like that, you can save a lot of gas. But, we think we’ve got a pretty good program, and we’re going to be tough through the summer.”

 

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (finished 15th) – “We got good fuel mileage with our UPS Ford, that helped out, but just those couple of cautions there in the middle part of the race, I struggled on the restarts and lost a lot of track position. I felt like at times that we had a top-eight car, but we just needed some long runs. It was good to get some long runs in at the beginning. I’m proud of our UPS team. We made good adjustments. We were strong at times, we’ve just got to keep looking at the good runs and keep building on them.”

 

WHAT DID THE 6 TEAM WORK ON TODAY? “For us, it was just making real small adjustments. We were either just a little bit loose or a little bit tight, so we were making real small adjustments. If we could hit it right and keep it right, we were fast, but if we got just a little bit off, we fell back to 15th, so that’s what I think happened on a couple of those runs. But, overall, we learned a lot today, and we’ve just got to keep getting better as a team.”