Three Fords Qualify Top 10 For NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Race In Atlanta

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Qualified 9^th) – THE FIRST ONE OUT FOR QUALIFYING IS GENERALLY NOT A GOOD THING. IS THAT GOING TO HURT YOU? “It’ll hurt us a spot or two, but I think our car has got good speed. It may be the difference between a 10^th place to a 15^th, but I’m happy with the lap. Hopefully, it winds up to be pretty good. If we can wind up in the top 10 or 15, I think that would be good. Our car was pretty good in practice today and this is one of the better cars I’ve had here at Atlanta.”

TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 34 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion (Qualified 45^th) – “We have really been fighting our Long John Silver’s Ford today. It’s probably as far off as we’ve been in a long time getting to the race track, but we kept zeroing in on it. Right towards the end of practice we got it a lot better. We still have a little ways to go, but for qualifying we made a couple big adjustments and learned from that. We definitely have some more adjusting to do for the race tomorrow night, but we’re a lot closer than how we started the weekend.”

AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 43 Insignia/Best Buy Ford Fusion (Qualified 16^th) – “I’m not very good here when it comes to qualifying. I find it funny that it’s my best actual race track, but it’s my worst qualifying track, so I don’t know. Hopefully, that will put us 16^th to 17^th, which would be something like 10 spots higher than I’ve ever qualified here, so that would be a good thing. The car was really good in race trim, but if I go over the lap – and I always critique myself – but I hit everything I wanted to. I’ll just have to go back and see if I needed to push a little harder or not, but, overall, it was solid with no mistakes. We’ll hopefully have a good car tomorrow.”

PAUL MENARD – No. 98 Quaker State/Menards Ford Fusion (Qualified 19^th) – “We’ve got two pretty decent cars this weekend, but I just didn’t hit turns three and four as well as I would have liked on that qualifying lap. I think we’ll be pretty good in the race tomorrow, but for that one lap I just missed it a little bit.”

KASEY KAHNE – No. 9 Budweiser Ford Fusion (Qualified 10^th) – “That felt pretty decent, but I just didn’t quite turn soon enough to get pointed. The car actually felt pretty good, so I’m happy with it. I’m looking forward to the race and I think we should have a good chance of running up front and racing with these guys. It should be a good race and I’m looking forward to it.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Qualified 4^th) – “It was really good. I felt like if I had it to do over again we could possibly be on the pole, but that’s the trick is just having a car that’s good enough every time. It means a lot to have that fast of a race car. We worked on qualifying pretty hard today, but the thing is Bob and these guys have figured out a way to make these cars fast in qualifying. That’s gonna be a big deal during the race with a good pit stall and clean air. That’s a great start for us.”