Kenseth Finishes Second In NASCAR Banking 500

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Finished 39^th) – “That’s a mercy killing there. It was just a long night for our Aflac team. We don’t give up, though. We’re a team and we all made mistakes tonight and it just culminated in a bad event. Hopefully, Matt can win this race and get a Ford in Victory Lane. But I can’t thank Aflac enough, Ford. You’re gonna have nights like this. That’s life. That’s racing.” A TOUGH NIGHT. “It was bad. We had everything kind of go bad all in one night, which, in a way, I guess you can say that’s fortunate. That engine was probably gonna blow up whether or not we were running bad. If that was the 17’s engine, that would be heartbreaking. I think it just showed a little mercy on us and let me go home early right now, but our Aflac guys don’t give up. We made a couple of mistakes and we just had a bad night. We didn’t run well. We don’t have them very often. Bob is down on himself right now. He’s all upset because the car was slow, but Bob’s a smart guy and I’ve got a lot of faith in him. We’ll just go to Martinsville and go strong there.” A FRUSTRATING NIGHT. “I think that’s the most frustrated I’ve been in a long time, but you can’t do anything about it. If you look at the night the 11 had, the 42 – this is auto racing – a thousand things have to go right and if any one of them go wrong, then your night is bad. We had about four things go wrong tonight, and, luckily, they all happened in one night. If we can get that out of the way, I guess that’s good.” YOU LABELED THIS A MERCY KILLING. “Yeah. I guess I get to go home early, that’s about it. The way I like to think of that is if your engine blows up on a night like that – we don’t have very many engine failures, we don’t have many problems like that – but if you can have an engine blow, tonight is the night to have it for us.”

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Carhartt Ford Fusion (Finished 2^nd) – “It’s been getting better. I thought tonight we had a really solid night on the race track and on pit road. All of these Carhartt guys did a good job for me. We made good adjustments and it seems like maybe we’re starting to understand what’s going on a little bit more at these mile-and-a-halfs and had really good track position all night, so it was a great night for us.” DID YOU HAVE THE CAR TO WIN TONIGHT? “No. We weren’t quite that good, but we had a good car and had a really good, solid night and made the best of it and got the best finish we could out of it.” IS IT TOO EARLY TO SAY YOU FEEL YOU’VE TURNED THE CORNER? THINGS ARE BETTER THE LAST COUPLE OF WEEKS. “We’ve been gaining on it. I don’t want to go back and say we found it. I don’t know if any of our other cars ran real great tonight. As a team, we seemed to hit it pretty good tonight. We qualified good, which makes a huge difference. We had track position all night and never got behind and that makes a big difference in these races. I think you have to have more races to average in before we feel too good about it, but it certainly feels like we’re going in the right direction the last three or four weeks.”

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Finished 16^th) – “I had a really good car. We lost our track position there because of a little miscommunication about what we wanted to do and never got it back. We possibly could have finished in the top five if we hadn’t given up track position.” WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE POINTS NOW? “We’re just fighting for the highest spot in points we can finish, which isn’t looking bad for us right now considering the 42 had problems and the 99 and the 83. Our goal is to finish as high in points as we possibly can and if that’s one, two, three, four or five, that’s what it is.”

MATT KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE – “For us, our car was really good. Our Carhartt guys did a good job on pit road. That was the fastest car we’ve had in a long time. We qualified exceptionally well for us and were able to keep our track position all night, and we were just able to make real little adjustments. I was really happy with my car all night. I wasn’t fast enough to beat the 48 and Kasey in a long run was a good bit better than us at times, but we had a really good car and got the best we could out of it. It feels good for us to run up front. It’s a confidence booster for myself and the team.” WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO WIN PRACTICE, THE POLE AND THE RACE IN ONE WEEKEND? “I don’t know. I’ve never done it. I don’t think there’s much that team hasn’t done. I don’t know what leading both practice sessions gets you besides bragging rights, but besides that I don’t know if I’ve ever had the perfect weekend. I think you have to lead every lap for it to be a perfect weekend, too, so he still doesn’t have it. He still needs to work on it (joking). Those guys are awesome. Since those two got together they’ve been, in my opinion, the group to beat every single year. Whenever it counts and it’s crunch time, they do this. They’ve done this every year for the last four years, so it shouldn’t really be a surprise to anybody.” WAS MISSING THE CHASE A GOOD THING? THE JOLT YOU NEEDED TO TRY NEW THINGS? “No, not missing the chase – honestly, the way we were running if we would have made the chase, we weren’t gonna win the championship anyway. I’d much rather be in the top 12 and fight for the top 10 and be able to go to the banquet and do all that. It means a lot to your sponsor and all the crew guys and moral in the shop and to me and everybody, but the way we were running if we got in, we weren’t gonna do a lot anyway. If we would have slid in and been 12^th leaving Richmond and been in the chase, our approach and how we prepare our cars and everything we’re doing would be exactly the same as they are right now because we’re looking to try to get things better because even if we would have got in, we weren’t running very well and we’ve got to keep trying to get ourselves better and see if we can learn some stuff this year. Hopefully, we can finish the year strong. That would be good for all of our attitudes, especially mine, and, hopefully, start next season strong.”