AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 43 Insignia/Best Buy Ford Fusion (Qualified 3^rd) – “The 43 team has been fast unloading the last few weeks and in qualifying the last couple of weeks we just kind of lost it a little bit. I’m not very good around here, so when I threw that lap down, it felt good but there was so much grip on the race track you didn’t really know how good the car was, but Mike Shiplett and all the guys on the 43 team pumped me up. Mike is fun to work with. He’s always pumping me up, even when I’m a little nervous about qualifying or struggling after practice. He’s just a great guy to work for and have as a crew chief, so I’m happy we’ve got Wix Filters. We’ve got a sweet little paint job on the car this weekend, it’s their first time as a primary, so we’ve got them up front and hope we have a great Saturday night.”

PAUL MENARD – No. 98 Menards Ford Fusion (Qualified 5^th) – “It was a good lap. I was hoping for more and an early draw might hurt us here. I’m not sure how much more it’s gonna cool off, but it’ll probably get some more grip. It was a good lap, though.” HAVE YOU EVER GONE THIS FAST BEFORE AT CHARLOTTE? “It’s pretty close if it’s not. I remember some guys running in the 27’s here a year or two ago. I’m not sure if I was one of those guys, but it was pretty fast.” HOW WAS THE LAP? “Charlotte is one of the most temperature sensitive tracks we go to and obviously we practiced and it was sunny out and a little bit slicker. The sun went down and it’s dark, so the track has a lot more grip. I was hoping I’d go a little bit faster. The car felt really good and it felt like I could maybe have gotten a little bit more, but we’ll just have to see how it holds up. I didn’t hold back anything, but I messed up because I didn’t run a perfect lap. I ran a 95 percent lap. I could have gotten just a little bit more here and there if I would have hit my marks just right, but there is more speed out there and somebody is probably gonna get it.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Qualified 2^nd) – “I was just telling them that I’ve got my own billboard up there in turns one and two, so you have to run well when you’ve got your own billboard. We were close to getting the first spot, but that was a really good lap. That’s a fast lap around here. It’s almost too fast to take in what’s going on around the center of the corner. When you watch these cars go around, you’re all bound down in the corner, your elbows are up and you’re doing everything you can to keep it going in the right direction and my guys did a really good job. That was a fun lap.”

DAVE BLANEY – No. 37 Andy Griffith Show 50^th Anniversary Ford Fusion (Qualified 47^th) – “The track has tons of grip, but mine just wouldn’t go any faster. I ran it way harder than I should have and that was it. We just didn’t have any speed in practice and I didn’t think it would cure itself there. We’ll see what we can do Saturday night.”

BILL ELLIOTT – No. 21 JDRF Ford Fusion (Qualified 37^th) – “The main thing is that it’s a new deal this week and everything is different. We’ve got a lot of new pieces, but practice today wasn’t bad. We learned a lot of new stuff and we keep gaining, so the goal is to just try and keep getting better. That’s what we’ve got to keep doing and I’m looking more towards the race. That seems to be more forte anyway, but it’s great to have this new paint scheme with the Juvenille Diabetes Research Foundation on our hood and I hope we can bring more awareness to this cause by running well in the race on Saturday night.”

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Qualified 26^th) – “The lap felt really good. Obviously, it’s a pickup from our practice time, but I felt like it should have been a little faster than that. The car did what it was supposed to and we made a few small adjustments, but, overall, it felt great. It was a little weird it didn’t go much faster, but we’ll have to race that. It looks like we’ve got some good cars around us, but everybody did a good job and that was about as fast as it would go.”

TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 34 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion (Qualified 48^th) – “The balance of the car was pretty good. We just seem to be lacking some speed today in qualifying trim. We worked on race trim for 90 percent of practice and found a decent balance. So I think we found something that will be really good to start with tomorrow. I’m disappointed in the lap time – the car handled not too bad. I’m not sure we would change anything if we had to do it all over again. I’m happy with the work the guys did today and excited to start off tomorrow in race trim.”

 

DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Taco Bell Ford Fusion (Qualified 36^th) – “It was a good day. We came into Charlotte with our Taco Bell Ford Fusion having to qualify again, so we really focused on qualifying trim. Peter (Sospenzo) and the guys came with a good setup right off the trailer. We were second-fastest of the go-or-go-homers and from there we just worked on it and kind of made it better. We didn’t make any big gains in practice, but we did make small gains. And we’re in the race – that’s first and foremost. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow to be able to run some race trim stuff and see what kind of car we have in race trim. I feel really good and confident about our set-up and I feel like we’re going to have a great day.

AJ ALLMENDINGER – “It was a bit of a surprise. The car was good in practice. In race trim I was really excited about it. With about the 15 laps we ran the car was handling really well, and then in qualifying trim the thing seemed pretty good, but the car was better than the driver honestly in qualifying. I usually struggle here, so for the actual qualifying lap Mike Shiplett, he does a good job pumping me up. I saw my teammates were fast and they were saying the track had a lot of grip, so I just went out there and tried to lay down a lap the best I could and the car was solid. It got a little bit tight in three and four. I don’t know if that hurt us and our chance to maybe get the pole, but, all in all, from where we were in practice and how the car was handling in race trim I’m real excited. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and to go out there and work on the car, and for Saturday night to get the new sponsor, Wix Filters, get that up there. The car looks really cool, so hopefully for their first primary on the 43 we can go out there and put on a show for them.”

 

ARE YOU FEELING LIKE SOMETHING HAS CLICKED FOR YOU?  “Honestly, it’s just experience with the race team. This is my first full year working with Mike Shiplett and all the guys on the 43. For us to come together and really assemble the team, at the end of last year we kind of had a few of our guys working together, but, really, it’s our first full year and obviously working with Ford for the first full year. The alliance with have with Roush Fenway, I think it took awhile in the beginning of the season to get our cars and what we wanted and I think just over the last six to seven weeks Mike and I have been really working well together. We kind of made some changes inside the race team engineering-wise, just putting a couple people here and there and I think that’s helped a lot, so just all together we’re clicking. The race cars are getting better, the guys at the race shop are building great cars, making the cars lighter. This is probably the lightest car we’ve run all year – the newest, updated body – so the cars are just getting better and when that happens I get more confidence, Mike gets more confident, and I feel like we’re clicking. To me, what’s exciting is we’ve had some good races but even the races that we’ve struggled in – Kansas, even Fontana last week – when we’re running 30^th in the beginning of the race, those are the races typically at the beginning of the season where we would finish 25^th. We’d kind of stay there. We wouldn’t make the car any better. We’d struggle all day and we finished 10^th at Kansas and if it wasn’t for that late-race yellow last week at Fontana I think we had a chance at 10^th, so those are the races I’m really proud of – the ones we struggle in and can still make something good out of it. That’s what makes these teams that are so good – the 48, the 29 – makes them what they are is not the good days, but when they’re struggling, to make something good out of it.” 

 

WHAT ACTIVATED THIS SUCCESS FOR RPM? “It’s everything I really talked about. The alliance with Roush Fenway and Ford keeps updating stuff and making motors faster. We’re working well together and I think all the cars are starting to run well and that’s good, especially in qualifying trim I think the last few weeks there has been an RPM car on the pole or the front row, so the whole race team is working well together, working hard and just trying to go out there and make everything better. It’s not one thing, it’s a lot of small things and everybody is working well together. When the teams run strong, I think that just gives everybody confidence and it shows throughout the organization.” 

 

DID THE TRACK CHANGE MUCH FROM PRACTICE?  “For me, like I said, the car was good in race trim. I know what I want it to feel like in race trim here, it’s just that I’ve always struggled in qualifying. It was the same thing, the car wasn’t really that bad in practice, I could just never really get a good lap and a feel for how to get around this place, especially today with being so cool. There was so much grip on the race track that you just really had to get after it and to be able to go back in the truck and look to see what other cars were doing on the race track, being compared to like the 39 and the 20 car – seeing what they were doing on both ends of the race track helped me out a lot, and listening to Paul and Elliott on the radio talk about how much grip the race track had. I went out there just knowing that there was gonna be a ton of grip and to just try to get after it from the things I learned. I think the car was good all day, I just needed to keep getting better.” 

 

YOU’RE KIND OF ON A ROLLERCOASTER WITH QUALIFYING OF LATE. “We got on such a good roll there qualifying-wise and Kansas all weekend we struggled and we were never really good. We were struggling, especially on Friday and Saturday, even Sunday we struggled a lot, and we pulled something good out of it at the end there. Fontana last week we were second after practice, but didn’t have a great draw. We went out second and just got the car a little bit too tight, so I think it was a combination of the draw hurting us last week and I didn’t hit a real clean lap last week, so I felt like the car was a lot better than we qualified. We came here and it was the same thing, we unloaded well. The biggest thing for us, and something that I think over the last six or seven weeks that has improved, is just unloading good off the hauler and getting on the race track and being good in race trim, and then being able to go over to qualifying trim and make that work, so I think it’s part of the way the Sprint Cup Series is, you just have to keep working hard and some weeks are better than others.”

CARL EDWARDS – “Pit stall selection will be huge. It’s a 500-mile race, so we’ll stop plenty of times, so that’s really good for us. I believe, just like it is every week, it’s gonna be important to be out front and have clean air and starting up front will help us with that, so I’m really proud of my guys. We focused really hard on qualifying today and it worked out.” 

 

DO YOU WISH YOU HAD IMPROVED YOUR QUALIFYING MONTHS AGO? “I think we started at the right time. We made the chase and I feel like our qualifying is as good as it’s ever been right now, and this is when it needs to be good. At the beginning of the year we didn’t have a good enough cars in the race and we needed to work on race practice. Given the limited amount of practice you’ve got to decide. If you work on qualifying, you are giving up something for the race, at least we felt like we were, so, yeah, I joke around with Bob about that same thing though. We started qualifying well and I said, ‘Hey, it only took us five or six years to start focusing on this,’ and now I don’t think we’ll go back. I think we’ll stick with working with qualifying harder in that first practice.”