Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion, came to the infield media center Friday afternoon to discuss this weekend’s race. A full transcript follows:
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion – HOW WAS PRACTICE? “It was pretty good. The Subway Fusion is fast. If we started out as a 12-inch sub, I thought we were gonna be a six-incher there in that first wreck, but it’s amazing how well the front end held up. Everybody chocked up and I smashed the left rear of the 77 car almost all the way up to his tire, and then Clint got in the back of me. It looked like everybody’s cars made it out OK, so that was good. But this race is what it is. I can’t tell a difference in the plates. The cars seem to run the same as they have and ours seems pretty good, so I’m looking forward to it as much as I can.”
WILL THE SMALLER PLATES IMPACT WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU IN THE FIRST RACE? “I think the smaller plates will keep the pack together more. My incident with Brad in the spring was just two cars. That’s all it took was two cars there, so in that respect, I believe that with the smaller plate, those two cars would have been going slower so maybe it would have been better. There would have been less chance of the car leaving the ground, so, in that respect, it’s good. It would be so neat that instead of plates we could come here with a narrow tire that’s really hard or spray water on the track or do something to make it so you had to lift off of the throttle and then the cars could get separated – maybe they could run in smaller packs. That would be a lot of fun, but, as it is right now, we’re stuck in the one big pack. The smaller plate is only gonna magnify that or amplify the chance for that.”
ARE YOU LOOKING AT ANY CHANGES FOR NEXT YEAR? “We can always improve, but, right now, if we can get everything – if there are eight variables that make you fast, if we get all eight of those at once, that’s it, that’s the trick. We’ve been slowly getting different things better. Our pit crew is better. Our parts longevity is better, but our cars are not quite as fast – our setups are not as fast – so that’s what we’re working on right now. We know we have great cars, great engines, great people, we just have to turn all the screws and put the right springs in the thing and make it better that way, so that’s what we’re working on. On the Nationwide side, we did make a crew chief change, which I hope is going to make our whole Nationwide operation better, and the thinking behind doing it now is, ‘Hey, we’ve had the best year on record, think, for ourselves in the Nationwide Series.’ Dan has done a great job. We’re seeing if he can make that 6 team, with the younger drivers, better and see if Mike Kelley can come over here and lend something to our team to make it better. But the thinking of doing it now is that you get to try it. There’s no better test session than the real world and there’s a lot of teams in position to do that.”
DO YOU SEE TEAM OWNERS WILLING TO MAKE CHANGES SOONER NOW THAN IN THE PAST? “I think that in general, as a society, we’re less patient with everything. That holds true right here with this sport and the coverage that all of you guys provide. Everyone gets right to the bottom of everything very quickly. You can’t pull the wool over anybody’s eyes. If things aren’t working, everybody knows it and then the next question is, ‘What are you gonna do to change it?’ I’ve been in this sport for a very short period of time, but even in that short time it seems to be getting more and more cut-throat and that’s tough.”
HAVE YOU SEEN BLAKE BOBBITT YET THIS WEEK? “No, I haven’t seen Blake Bobbitt yet. I’ll see and meet her on Sunday and it will be cool just to get to talk to her. We’ve texted a little bit. She sent me some photos so I at least knew what she looked like. If I see her somewhere I can say, ‘Hey,’ and it’ll be cool to meet her. I don’t have anything planned just yet, but I already know if I can win this race that trophy is going to her for sure. That would be the best thing to give her.”
CAN YOU RATE YOURSELF AS A RESTRICTOR PLATE DRIVER? “I was feeling like a 10 last year about this time, but then I realized I had some more stuff to learn after that wreck, and after paying a little bit more attention. My first time here, I’ll never forget, in practice I hit the wall in turn two and I swore that someone ran into me or something. I told Bob and he said, ‘Dude, you hit that all by yourself,’ and I watched a replay and, sure enough, I did. So I had a lot to learn about the way the air works and the way the car would work at these big places, and I feel like now I’m pretty good. I feel like I understand everything that’s going on and when I make a move or something – whether or not I’m going forward – I think a couple steps ahead and how the rules and the line and all that stuff is working out. So I would say that I’m an eight right now. That’s about what I feel. If I could win one of them, I’d feel pretty good.”
IF THE PLATE IS SMALLER AND KEEPS YOU GUYS IN A PACK, DOESN’T IT MAGNIFY THE SITUATION FOR A BIG WRECK? “Yes, it does. If we were unrestricted here and we were going so fast we could trim the cars out and try to lift in the corner, we would probably have less wrecks, but, boy, the ones that we’d have would be big. It’s these two curves that you kind of have to figure out where the sweet spot is and if we were going 60 miles an hour out there, we’d wreck a lot but it wouldn’t be bad. The only answer is to flatten the banking out or make the track slippery for it to become a race where we don’t have to worry about restrictor plates, but as long as we have the track in this configuration, we’ll just have to do what we can to make it as safe as possible, I guess.”
FOUR RACES LEFT. IS YOUR DRIVING MOTIVATION TO WIN A RACE AND FINISH IN THE TOP 10? “Yeah, that’s why you guys saw me hit the fence in Martinsville. I just was driving like an idiot and trying to make something happen. That’s what we’ve got to do right now. If I accept a 10th-place finish, that’s OK, but we’ve got to go for it and try to get everything we can. I axle-hopped the rear axle trying to apply the brakes a little too hard at Martinsville, but that’s the kind of racing we’ve got to go do without hitting the wall, but we’ve got to go out and try more stuff. Bob had actually talked about that last week because we made a conscious decision to go out and just go for it and have a little fun and try to learn something.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT BLOCKING AT RESTRICTOR PLATE TRACKS AND WHAT SHOULD BE DONE TO POLICE THAT? “That’s the only way to keep someone behind you sometimes. If you look at the blocks that have happened at the end of the race and how it’s turned out for the guy blocking, that’s kind of self-policing in a way. It’s really easy to get turned around blocking. The guy in front has a responsibility to make sure he doesn’t swipe across the guy’s hood, and the guy behind, I believe, has a slight responsibility to give the guy a little bit of room and let him try to defend his position. But I’d hate for NASCAR to have to make a judgment cal to say, ‘Hey, they blocked once,’ or ‘They blocked twice.’ I don’t think we need that. I think we can do it ourselves as drivers.”
Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, is still looking for his first win of the 2009 season and first win at Talladega Superspeedway. He spoke about his chances for both after Friday’s practice.
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – HOW WAS PRACTICE? “It was exciting. I don’t know what happened. I think the 24 car got bumped out of line or decided to quit or something going into the corner and everybody got bunched up. I hit the brakes and I got clipped in the left rear. It did a little bit of body damage, but then I looked in the mirror and they were wrecking behind us, so we’re not real sure what happened there. We’re not real sure what happened there. I haven’t figured it out. I don’t think anybody has figure it out. Anyway, the car is driving decent. Everybody seems like they’re the same speed and it’s hard. You’ve got to get grouped up to be able to try to make a pass.”
DO YOU NOTICE ANY DIFFERENCE WITH THE SMALLER PLATE? “You can tell a little bit inside the car, but, really, from the cars around you and side by side with the way you’re driving, it doesn’t really make a lot of difference.” HOW WAS IT BUMP DRAFTING TODAY? “I had a hard time trying to catch the guy in front of me to bump draft, but they were warning people in practice, so it was obviously working.”
DO YOU THINK THE CHANGES MADE TO THE TRACK WITH THE CATCHFENCE AND PLATE WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE? “They’re gonna make a difference in that they’re gonna keep people from getting hurt – definitely. Anything can happen at these races. What if there had been two cars beside Carl when he got hit and shoved him up higher in the air or something? Anything can happen and better to err on the side of safety, which they did here, so that’s good.”
DO YOU THINK NASCAR IS SETTING A TONE IN PRACTICE BY WARNING GUYS IN PRACTICE ABOUT BUMP DRAFTING? “I think so. This track is so smooth and the cars are going a little bit slower now. You can push all the way around the corner, and NASCAR is saying they’re not gonna allow that, but it’s awfully hard to tell when we’re an inch apart versus whether you’re pushing a guy, so they’re gonna have to really, really do their due diligence to penalize a guy when it looks necessary and not when they’re just bunched up tight. That’s what causes these wrecks. Carl tried to push us in the middle of the corner down here last year and it caused a big wreck, so that’s what we’ve got to stop doing. We’ve got to push on the straightaways.”
DO YOU GO THROUGH THESE LAST FOUR RACES WITH AN EYE ON 2010? “We’re looking forward to next year. We’re trying to get the highest position in points we can this year, but we’re looking forward to picking some wins up. We think we can still win this year. We’ve got three or four more chances, so we’ll get by those and see what we can do, but we’re excited about next year.”
WHAT AREAS DO YOU NEED TO ADDRESS TO IMPROVE? “It’s a little bit of everything. Our new engine will help us a little bit, figuring out our chassis better will help us and getting to some places to do some testing will help us. We’ll be a little bit more outside box when it comes next year as far as trying stuff early in the season.”
IS IT TOO EARLY TO THINK ABOUT GOALS FOR NEXT YEAR? “Your automatic goal is to make the chase. That’s important for teams to make the chase and win races. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
WHAT’S YOUR STRATEGY FOR THIS RACE? “I’m just gonna try and find a spot that looks happy, where there’s not so much pushing and shoving. Bump drafting is fine, but you get a guy changing lines and barely squeaking in there, and guys putting tire marks because they’re going four and five wide. I might slack off a little bit from that, but I’m gonna be up in there racing and feeling what the car is gonna be like, so when it does get down to 30-40 to go that we know how it’s going to drive.”
ANY FEEDBACK ON THE NEW FR9 ENGINE? “No. I asked the engine guy and he said there didn’t seem to be any issues. It isn’t anything revolutionary. It made something like only one horsepower more, so it’s gonna be so minor that you’re probably not gonna notice it.”