MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (finished 11th) – “The finish was way better than what we ran. We didn’t run good at all. In the spring, we ran pretty good here and finish bad, and this time we ran really bad and finished halfway respectable, but it’s just so slow I just couldn’t race with anybody, so we just kind of got lucky through pit strategy and had some position there at the end.”

 

YOU’RE NOT ONE TO LOOK TOO FAR AHEAD, BUT WITH THE RACES WINDING DOWN BEFORE THE START OF THE CHASE, DOES A FINISH NEARER THE TOP LIKE THIS HELP YOU BREATHE A LITTLE EASIER? “Well, I don’t think 11th is finishing near the top for us for what we’re looking for – that’s really not that great of a run – but every finish from Daytona to Richmond is important, and we gave away a lot of points, a lot of finishes, all year. We do the best we can every week, and hopefully we’ll put together enough finishes to get it in, but you just can’t look to one or two races.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (finished 18th) – “We were just no good in the pack. In clean air I was really good, but I just couldn’t make anything happen on those re-starts at all. Every time there was a re-start, we’d lose spots. It was very frustrating. But, my guys did a great job on pit road. Pit road was unbelievable.”

JAMIE McMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (finished 20th) – “We did not have a very good day, I think. The 16 looked like he was all right, but I think all the Roush cars had trouble again today. Track position was important, and we got it a couple of times, but I had a hard time hanging on. It was just a very disappointing weekend.”

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (finished 22nd) -- “I thought that the one run that we stayed out on in tires and we were up there in the top 10 and 15, we were pretty good. But then our UPS Ford would get a little too free on the end of the run. We made an adjustment and I think we just went a little overboard. We got back in some traffic and that certainly didn’t help. So a combination of our adjustment and trying to make our car faster and poor track position just didn’t work today. It was just tough to start all over again adjusting on our Ford. At times, I felt like we had a top-10 car, which is a little bit of hope, but we’ve just got to keep looking at these races and keep paying attention to the adjustments that we make and the feedback that I give the crew and try to keep making that perfect.”

BOBBY LABONTE – No. 96 DLP Ford Fusion (finished 36th) – ARE YOU OKAY, AND WHAT HAPPENED? “Yeah, I’m alright. It’s just hard racing that goes on out there, and we just sort of ended up on the short end of it, so that was unfortunate. We had an up-and-down day, and it was just one of those things where you could be running 30th and have the same speed as the 12th-place car sometimes, you know, but you can’t get there. So, we opted for some track position, and we got ourselves some track position – we were going to maintain there, probably, for a little bit – a couple of caution flags didn’t help us, but I guess that’s the way it goes.”

 

THE RACING SEEMED VERY AGGRESSIVE AT TIMES. “After about eight or 10 laps there’s not going to be much passing going on, so you’ve got to get while you can, and you get on the re-starts the best you can so that leads to that. Really, that’s about it.”