CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – “Our team, we’ve performed fairly well. We have not had the results that we had hoped to have. We’ve been steadily getting more and more competitive. That’s good. I’d definitely like to have some wins at this point of the season, but there’s nothing you can do about that, so for me and my team, right now, the mission is to make sure we’re solidly in the Chase and to make sure the progress we’ve made with our pit crew and our cars and all that, we can really apply it for the last 10 races. I didn’t know there was only [six] to go. That’s good. We’re getting closer. I’ve been trying to keep my eyes off of that and focus on the races, and if we just have a few good races here. We’ll be all right.”

 

IN 2005 ROUSH FENWAY HAD A TREMENDOUS YEAR AND LAST YEAR THE ORGANIZATION HAD A VERY GOOD YEAR. BUT THERE HAVE BEEN UPS AND DOWNS. DO YOU THINK, “WHAT WAS DIFFERENT IN THE GOOD YEARS?” HOW DOES IT SLIP AWAY? “That’s a really good question. If you really break it down – I don’t know if it’s based on psychology and how people operate in competitive situations, when you gain an advantage, then you don’t work on those things because you don’t want to mess it up, and maybe during that time other people are working things and maybe they can surpass you; I don’t know how it ends up going in waves like that, but for me it definitely has. In 2005, the races that we won were easy to win – I say easy; it’s relative. It wasn’t like we backed into them, but we ran really well. And then last season, we won nine races and I really feel there was about 12 or 13 of them that we could’ve won, if things would’ve gone just a little bit better. I don’t know. I feel like I’m doing a better job this year in a lot of ways than I did last year. Bob is doing a really great job. It’s just the way the sport goes. And this season, there’s [16] races left, I guess, and so far Matt Kenseth’s won two really big races, and we could still go win 10 races as a team, so I’m not willing to write anything off. I still feel like we can win this championship. I feel very strongly that we can win it, so I guess we’ll just have to keep our heads up and keep moving forward and keep working on it. If anybody figures out how come we kind of go like that, you let me know. Hopefully, the worst of our trough, we’re through that. I feel like we’re on our way up. I hope it’s true.”

 

YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE NEW NATIONWIDE MUSTANG? “I know very little of exactly how Ford is going to market the Mustang and how it’s going to be developed. And I still don’t know exactly what the rules are going to be, but I did see a picture of the car and I got a chance to drive the Nationwide COT. I don’t know about you guys, but that picture, that got me excited. That’s pretty cool looking. You know, I have a Mustang, my mom’s got a Mustang. I like that car a lot. I think that could be good. I talked a little bit about this yesterday at Iowa; what I hope NASCAR does with this Nationwide COT is I hope they take advantage of the opportunity to minimize our dependence on downforce. I don’t know if there’s time for that left, but, man, it would the best thing they could do. If you look at last week with the race, it ended up being an exciting race at the Brickyard with all the drama that went on at the finish, but for the majority of that race, it was very difficult to pass and you couldn’t get close to anyone. It’s my opinion that the reason for that is our dependence on downforce, and I think that if we were to work on getting rid of that, you’d see races more like races you see at USAC Silver Crown cars and cars like that where it just doesn’t matter how close you get to someone.”

 

OR, THE RACING AT ORP… “Right. ORP is a good example of a track that’s small enough that aerodynamics don’t make that much of a difference. I believe we could have those types of races at bigger tracks if we could minimize downforce, use mechanical grip, allow Goodyear to make softer tires, and allow mechanical grip to dictate how fast you go.”

 

THERE WAS A NATIONWIDE RACE EARLIER THIS YEAR WHERE YOU PIT-ROAD SPEEDING ISSUES. CAN RELATE TO JUAN MONTOYA AFTER WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK? “I saw the coverage of that and I can definitely relate to Juan’s frustration there. It’s very tough. It’s my opinion that the way NASCAR determines pit-road speed, it’s way better than it has been, way better than guys up there with stop watches. It’s still complex enough, there’s enough moving parts there and potential for error that that can be improved, and I think NASCAR will improve it. They’ve got to look at the things that have happened this year. It’s just like anything: if you take out the option for argument, if it’s a good enough system in place, then it’s harder to question and it’s accepted more. I think nthat there’s still that could be done so that we all believe that pit-road speed is exactly what it’s supposed to be.”

 

LAST YEAR, A PIT STOP PUT YOU IN POSITION TO WIN. PEOPLE HAVE SEEN PIT STRATEGY WIN OTHER RACES. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF PIT STOPS, AND HOW SLOW IS TIME WHEN YOU’RE WAITING FOR A STOP TO BE COMPLETED? “Right now, pit stops are more important than they’ve been in my five years that I’ve been doing this. It’s so competitive on the race track that a couple of spots gained or lost in the pits can really define your race – especially if you multiply that over the six pit stops you have in a race, or eight of them. I know there have been a number of races earlier in the year where I feel like we lost a lot of ground on pit stops, and I’m really proud of my guys for working on it. But during those pit stops, when that jack’s sitting up there, and you’re just waiting for it to drop, those are the longest few seconds of my life. But, it’s just tough. You’ve just got to do what you can. That’s what makes this a real team sport on race day – those guys are just as much of a part of your success or your failure than the driver or the crew chief, and they’ve got a big responsibility.”

 

WHAT COULD BE DONE IN REGARDS TO MONITORING PIT-ROAD SPEEDS? “First of all, I don’t know exactly how they do it. I don’t know exactly how they determine the pit-road speed, but what I think could solve a lot of it would be to put a transponder on the pace car and go ahead and run it down pit road, and let everyone see how that works. The only issue I have is we all set our pit-road speed based on the pace car at the beginning of the race. That requires a person in that car, which may or may not be the same car, I don’t know that they time through pit road, to set a cruise control setting on the dashboard, I don’t know who checks that cruise control, I don’t know who checks the tire pressures in that car, I don’t know what goes on there. So, I think they need a transponder on the pace car, I think they need to run it down pit road, maybe with the field behind it at pit-road speed before the race starts or something like that, so that everyone is certain that is pit-road speed, and that would correspond with the data that the NASCAR officials look at, if that pace car had a transponder and they could just double-check it. That’s the only thing I could say.”

 

JIMMIE JOHNSON SAID EARLIER THAT IF EVERYONE ROUNDED UP $100 MILLION THEN HE’D CONSIDER SITTING OUT THE REST OF THE SEASON. WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO CONTRIBUTE AT ALL? “I’ll tell you what: I’d like to be the guy that stops his title run on the race track without paying him. That would be nice. But, $100 million?”

 

WE DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY YET. COULD YOU DONATE $5, $10? “I don’t know. I’d have to think about that. Competitively, I’d rather beat him without paying him. But, there’s a lot of people out there. If we went to the fans, we might be able to come up with something there. Good idea. It would cost a lot more than $100 million for me to quit.”

 

YOUR THOUGHTS ON RETURNING TO POCONO? “I’m pretty excited about the race here, to say the least. These last few weeks have been some pretty decent weeks for us. The Brickyard wasn’t that great, but this place is cool. It’s got some bumps and three different types of corners. Our car usually runs well here. The last race here I felt like it was our race to lose. We had a really good car. I like it – from the first time I came here. That first race here was really cool – to come here and win like that, that was neat. I like it. Does it rain here all the time like this? So, we might actually start up front because of that.”

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – “We certainly know that we need to continue to run like we did this last weekend at Indy, and we feel like we’ve been a team capable of running like that – we have run like that, actually, this whole season – but the three races prior to that, obviously, a lot of issues. We had troubles on pit road, troubles with the car, track position, so we needed to get back on track and we did that at Indy. We like this race track. We really like Watkins Glen, Michigan. So, we feel like if we can keep these top-fives up, certainly that’s what we need to do to get in (to the Chase). The bad part is that Juan Pablo and Kasey Kahne are good here, and of course they run good at the road course with Kasey winning at Sonoma. So, those are kind of the guys we’re racing for the Chase spots. Kyle Busch is not out of it. So, we’re up against some tough competition, but we know we have to not make mistakes, and finish these races up front.”

 

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF PIT STOPS – PARTICULARLY HERE AT POCONO? AND, WHAT KIND OF INPUT DO YOU HAVE IN TERMS OF STRATEGY, CHANGES, ETC.? “It’s hard for a driver to really decide the strategy from the cockpit. It’s easier for us to decide what we want change on the car, or we may have an opinion on whether two or four tires. But as far as anything else goes, we don’t know the fuel mileage, we don’t how many laps there is to go, so it’s hard for us to calculate who stopped when and all of that with all of that information, but we can certainly offer opinions on two or four tires or whatnot. We can definitely help with that, but it’s a tough call. It’s easy on Monday to figure out what you should’ve done; it’s hard when you’ve got about 20 seconds what to do. So, it’s a difficult decision to make. We’ve made a few mistakes – like I said, Indy was great, we did a flawless job, but leading up to that we had a few errors. We missed quickie yellow at Chicago. We dropped a catch can and got a pass-through penalty. We took the wave around and the caution never came out, the next time we pitted and then the caution came out. So, woulda’, shoulda’, coulda’. Those are the things that we’re going to have to avoid. Those are tough. It’s the toughest part of this game.”

 

ON RACING AT POCONO. “Of course you think about what happened the last race, so we think about this race. We ran second most of the day, third, led some of it, and then we didn’t have good enough fuel mileage to make it in the end, so we had to make an extra stop versus Tony and Carl and all those guys. We finished 11th, still, but we had to make an extra pit stop and give up that precious track position. So we’ve been working hard on mileage. There’s nothing you can do if your car doesn’t get the fuel mileage it needs. You can wish it to get the best fuel mileage it can, that’s hard to come up with, but we’ve been working hard on fuel mileage. We hope it doesn’t come down to that. We hope it comes down to pure racing. And we know we’re going to be in the top five, we feel like.”

 

ROBERT YATES USED TO SAY THAT AT THIS LEVEL YOU WIN RACES BECAUSE YOU’VE GOT BETTER TRICKS THAN THE OTHER GUY – EVERYBODY’S CAPABLE, BUT YOU’VE GOT SOMETHING BETTER. LAST YEAR YOUR TEAMMATE, CARL EDWARDS, WON NINE RACES, AND THIS YEAR HENDRICK IS WINNING. HAVE YOU FIGURED IT OUT OR ARE YOU STILL LOOKING AT THE FILMS TRYING TO FIGURE WHAT’S GOING ON OVER THERE?  “We’re looking at the films, we’re looking at their cars, trying to pay attention. They’re a little bit ahead of the curve right now, I think, than most of the other teams. But it’s so small of a change. It’s 10- or 20-thousandths of this or that. It’s not a big chunk. We feel like it’s real small, and we’re trying to hone in on what that is. We feel like we’re gaining on it. We ran decent at Indy, but the 5 and the 48 were faster than us, it’s just that simple. We were a little better than the 14, which gives us some confidence, but still the two Hendrick cars were beating us, and we’ve got to figure out how th beat them or be better. We gained something on our car in practice today, made some changes. We’re just continuing to learn all the time. But, it’s hard to catch them.”

 

DOES NASCAR NEED SPEEDOMETERS ON THE DASHBOARD? “That’s kind of the history of our sport. It’s a stock car and it doesn’t have all the creature comforts. We don’t have on-board data systems or anything like that, hopefully we never will have any on-board data at all, but we technically have a speedometer, if you will. If you put on a speedometer right next to the tachometer the needles both are going to read really relatively the same thing. It will take out the error of when you’re behind the pace car and you look at the tachometer and you get the speed, it could take that mile or two of error out of it, where you have a little more accurate speed. But, the reality is is we technically already have a speedometer with that tach. The thing is there’s error in the actual devices, so if you had a speedometer, would be 100-percent accurate or would you need to verify it every race? You’d almost have to verify it every race. That’s sort of what we do with that tachometer, is we qualify them. But those are electronic pieces that are picking up RPMs so they could have a slight bit of error one way or the other, and 50 RPM can make a difference, and so can a couple miles an hour on speedometer if we had a speedometer. It’s difficult. And it’s not as easy as it sounds to put a speedometer on it because we don’t have a way to pick up the mile-per-hour currently, unless you did a GPS speedometer, would be the only 100-percent accurate way, is to do a GPS speedometer.”

 

ON NOT HAVING WON AT POCONO. “That’s a good question. This race track and myself have a love-hate relationship that we’re trying to work through. We run good here every single time we run here. I think it’s a lot of fun to race on. I love the way it’s layed out. But every race we run in the top five here, every time we’ve been here. I can’t remember a time we’ve been here that really we haven’t run in the top five, but we could never finish there. For instance, the last race. We led, we ran second to Carl for a long time, passed the 48, the 48 and I and the 99 trading the baton back and forth. The green flag would come out, I would pass the 14. We ran there all day long and then it comes down to the last run of the day and we don’t make it and we have to pit for fuel. So, it really hurts to not finish where you’ve been running. I don’t think we’ve finished where we’ve been running here all but one time – one time we finished where we were running, I think that was a top five. But, other than that, something freak has happened. I got caught speeding on pit road, the last pit box. That probably cost us a win. It was Kasey Kahne and I that day. We got caught by the rain. Pitted and the rain came out and Jeff Gordon won. It’s just a number of things that we’ve had issues with here. But, hopefully, this time here we’ll get it ironed out.”

 

ON THE MUSTANG RUNNING IN THE NATIONWIDE SERIES. “I think it’s pretty exciting. Racing is driven by, I feel, sports cars and the Mustang is really one of the flagship cars for Ford and it always has been. So, I think it’s going to be exciting for the Nationwide series to have that car, and I think it’s going to create excitement with the customers. Shoot, there’s a magazine – Muscle Mustang Magazine – so I think it’s going to be good for Ford to finally get an opportunity to get that badge into the NASCAR series. It’ll be good for our sport. I think it will bring more attention to fans. I think it will improve our TV ratings. I think it will improve recognition of our sport to get a vehicle like that on the race track, or the perception of that, at least. I think it’ll help Ford, and I think it’ll help the sport.”