MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Qualified 25th) – WHO IS GOING TO QUALIFY YOUR NATIONWIDE CAR? “Ricky Stenhouse is over there. He was gonna practice it a little bit after I left this afternoon and then he’ll qualify and we’ll just get in it and start at the back.” WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR IN YOUR CUP CAR NOW AFTER QUALIFYING? “I guess what I’m looking for in the rest of qualifying practice is hopefully one of our cars will be fast so we’ve got something to look at. Yesterday, I think our best car was about 20th. In race trim, we’re looking for the track to get rubbered in and then really I’m just looking for the feel and the balance – not necessarily the lap times. Once we get to race trim, I’m just kind of looking for the feel and balance that I want.” DOES THIS SEASON DEFY EXPLANATION, STARTING WITH TWO WINS AND THEN STRUGGLING? “Yeah. The two wins were probably more of a surprise than anything else, although I didn’t think we would be running this bad. But the whole organization right now, I think, is just behind. It’s way more a struggle every week than it should be. It’s probably the biggest struggle I’ve ever had in the 10 years I’ve been over there.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Qualified 12th) – “I’m really happy with that. I’m beating myself up right now because I could have been two-tenths faster, easy. I could have run a 49.80. I didn’t really overdrive the corner, I just drove down in there and it didn’t turn like it had all weekend. It just took an eternity to go back to the gas in one and I thought I was dead, but it still turned out to be a good lap. I couldn’t imagine. If I would have cut that corner right, it may have even been a .60 or .70, but it was really good. I feel good about the car.”
BOBBY LABONTE – No. 96 Ask.com Ford Fusion (Qualified 31st) – “I blew turn two. I just screwed it up and overdrove it. Three and four wasn’t bad and getting to speed was fine, I just went into turn two trying to get everything and I just didn’t lay it right on the brake to get it to turn.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Qualified 29th) – “Our UPS Ford didn’t feel too bad, it was just a little tight. When you’re at a big track like this that amplifies all the way around, but it just didn’t have a lot of speed. I don’t know about the other guys, but I wasn’t too displeased with how the UPS Ford handled, it just didn’t have that speed. That’s been the case we’ve fought at a lot of races this year. The car, at times, doesn’t drive that bad, but it’s just not as fast as we’d like. We’re constantly trying new things and learning and glad that we get to have this second practice, so we can work on some things for the race.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Qualified 44th) – “That’s bad. We just have to work harder on our qualifying. The race car there, I just couldn’t get it into the corner. The entry of the corner, it feels like you’re gonna wreck. It’s really hard to get a lap and I missed the line into two because I turned in and I felt the rear end come around just a little and I chased it up and I could never get it back down on the bottom. We’ll work hard on race trim. Luckily, we have some more practice and we were actually faster than that, I think, in race trim yesterday, so we’ve just got work to do on our qualifying. This is about the worst we’ve ever been, but maybe it’s what we need right now to remind us that that’s important too.”
PAUL MENARD – No. 98 Menards Ford Fusion (Qualified 28th) – “I concentrated real hard not to overdrive my entry and I was just a little bit too free getting in. It’s really windy out and that’s kind of moving the car going down the backstretch and caught me off guard into three, and I didn’t get a real clean exit to three. I was up a little bit too high. I was just a little bit too free kind of everywhere, but we picked up a little bit and we’re right in the ballpark with all of our teammates. We’ve got another hour-and-a-half of practice and we’re gonna be working hard.”
BILL ELLIOTT – No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion (Qualified 4th) – “All that kept going through my head was here a year ago and how bad we screwed up here qualifying. It hurt so bad missing this race a year ago and being able to come back here – Len and Eddie have really worked to give me something to drive and I’ve been working my butt off making sure that I have not let them down on the other side. With David Hyder and all the guys we’ve still got, all the guys that keep this thing going week in and week out, I can’t say enough good things about them. We’ve kind of meshed. We’re able to get input back and forth. We’re working so well together right now and that’s so important.” YOU’RE IN THE RACE. CAN A 53 YEAR OLD WIN THIS RACE? “Well, I’m gonna give it my best shot. If a 50-year-old can win, I think a few more years ain’t gonna hurt a thing.” YOU WERE FAST YESTERDAY AND BACKED IT UP TODAY. “I keep saying it over and over again, but these guys have worked so hard on this stuff. I’m proud to get in this race car when we come to the race track. They have done so much work. Between Ford Motorcraft helping us put this deal together, and everything we’ve done, I’m proud of these guys.” DID YOU MAKE ANY LONG RUNS YESTERDAY? “No, but we were here during the tire test and we were able to make some runs then, and I felt like we really learned a lot by coming here and doing that. We were relatively quick then and we felt like we had a pretty good race car, we’ll just keep whittling at it and make it better.” YOU HAVE A LOT OF MILES AROUND HERE. WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW? “We’ll just have to see. I’m just still kind of dumbfounded that we’re where we’re at today, especially from looking back just as short as a year ago – and even six or eight races ago. The way we’ve turned this deal around from Charlotte on, where we qualified 10th and then eighth in Chicago a few weeks ago, they just keep giving me better and better stuff, and that makes it so easy for me to drive a race car.”
