Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 Carhartt/DeWalt Ford Fusion, held his weekly Q&A session prior to practice on Friday, where he addressed this weekend’s race at MIS and his visit to Ford World Headquarters on Thursday with his fellow drivers.
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Carhartt/DeWalt Ford Fusion – ROUSH FENWAY HAS HAD GOOD SUCCESS HERE. WHY? “Yeah, we’ve been able to do pretty well here. I think it all started with Mark Martin. He gets around this track probably better than everybody. When I showed up at Roush he was winning here all the time and he’s been able to teach a lot of us maybe some tricks on how to get around here.”
IS IT MORE PERSONAL FOR JACK TO COME HERE? “I don’t think it hurts. He’s only an hour or so from here and all of his businesses are here with Roush Industries, so I’m sure it probably means a little more to him than maybe some other tracks.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE COMFORT YOU HAVE BEING WITH FORD THESE DAYS? “I don’t know about comfortable, but I’m happy we’re driving Fords, obviously, but you always feel comfortable going to a track that you’ve had some success at, so we feel comfortable coming here, but anything can happen. But we feel good about being here.”
WHAT ABOUT AS A MANUFACTURER AND THE HEALTH OF THE COMPANY? “I’m not really an insider, but I’m thankful that Ford has been able to stand on their own and be able to run the business the way they want to run it and be able to do it, so far, without any government aid. Hopefully, that doesn’t end up being a disadvantage for them. They’re pretty strong and healthy. They’re making some great new products that we got to drive a bunch of them yesterday, so I’m excited about representing Ford and driving one.”
WHAT DID THEY DO AT FORD YESTERDAY? “We didn’t go to a plant, but we went to headquarters and talked a little bit about what’s going on. We went and saw some new vehicles at the proving grounds and drove some of them, so it was fun.”
WHY IS THIS TRACK SO GOOD FOR YOU AND ROUSH? “I don’t know about always being good here, but we sure try hard. It’s been a pretty good track for us in the past, but it’s like any other track, really, when you’ve got fast race cars it makes your job a lot easier. But certainly it’s a track I really love racing on. I’m looking forward to racing on it and going two-wide and three-wide and going real fast. It’s a good track.”
DOES THIS HAVE ADDITIONAL INCENTIVE WITH IT BEING JACK’S HOME TRACK? “It’s basically the same every week. You put in 100 percent every week and try to run the best you can, but, certainly, if you’re fortunate to have success here it’s cool for Jack. A lot of his employees from Roush Industries get to come out here and watch – a lot of people from Ford and the manufacturers – so whenever you run good here, it’s pretty cool because you’ve got a lot of other people here that make it all happen.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR TRIP TO FORD YESTERDAY? “It’s always fun to go out there and check out the new products that are coming on line for the next year, or some of the current ones that are in the showroom. They’ve got a lot of exciting new vehicles coming out. We had a lot of fun running them around there yesterday and putting them through their paces.”
ANY REACTION TO THE REPORT ABOUT JEREMY MAYFIELD THIS WEEK? “I haven’t really even checked out any news, to be honest with you. I’ve been kind of busy and haven’t paid any attention, to be honest.”
FANS LIKE YOU AROUND HERE IN THE MIDWEST. DO YOU FEEL HOME HERE? “Yeah, it’s always cool to race in the Midwest, it’s just across the lake from where we grew up, so it seems like we get some more family and friends that come out here, and maybe some people that saw us race in the past in this area while I was growing up than a lot of other areas, so it’s cool to come here.”
WHAT IS THE ELEMENT OF THIS TRACK THAT CHALLENGES YOU? “It’s the same as any other track, it’s getting your car to handle good and trying to get it to go through the corners fast. That’s the main thing. I don’t think the double-file restarts will really be a big issue here. There’s a lot of room to move around and it should make it exciting for a couple extra laps at least side-by-side, so it’s probably a good place for it. Hopefully, the wave around thing doesn’t work as badly here, where the people can pit and get free laps back all the time and get back out in front of the leaders. Here, I think we can get back around and lap them if they pit under green, at least, so I think that part will be better.”
CARL HAD AN IDEA ABOUT THE LEADER STARTING BY HIMSELF AND THE OTHERS WOULD BE DOUBLE-FILE. WHAT DO YOU THINK? “I don’t know. We could probably change stuff every week if we wanted to, I guess. In my opinion, we’ve probably had enough procedural changes for a while, so I think we should just let it sort out and see how it works.”
WHAT DID YOU TAKE AWAY WITH THE MEETING YOU AND THE OTHER FORD DRIVERS AND OWNERS HAD WITH JIM FARLEY AT FORD YESTERDAY? “I don’t think anything has changed on their commitment to NASCAR. It’s always been strong and they’ve always said that the very last thing they would ever cut is the NASCAR funding because they realize how important it is to their brand and to their success in selling vehicles. It was just an update of what’s all going on and what they have coming up in the future.”
WAS THIS YEAR’S MEETING DIFFERENT THAN LAST YEAR? “Yeah, it was a little bit different, but it was just kind of an update of where everything is at. I think they’re seeing some signs of recovery, but, certainly, I don’t think they’re comfortable where they are because they’re not at levels where they were a few years ago. Auto sales aren’t at that level overall, but they seem to be gaining some market share, which is good.”
CHEVY ANNOUNCED TODAY THEY’RE GOING TO CUT SOME SUPPORT FROM THEIR TRUCK AND NATIONWIDE TEAMS. DO YOU FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE TO BE WITH FORD? “Yeah, certainly more comfortable. Obviously, it’s still a struggle for everybody. Me watching the business, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I don’t know what’s gonna happen with basically the government running two auto companies and another one running itself, so I don’t know how that’s all gonna work out. But, certainly, I’m proud to drive a Ford and I’m glad they haven’t had to go down the avenue the other two have.”
HAVE YOU BEEN INVOLVED IN DRIVING THE CARS AND DOING TESTIMONIALS LIKE CARL AND GREG HAVE? “Yeah, we all did.”
DO YOU FEEL NOW MORE THAN EVER YOU GUYS ARE AMBASSADORS FOR THEM? “I think we always should be, but it’s probably a little more important than it would be if they were profitable right now. Last year, it was pretty cool how we got to drive all the vehicles. I think it’s important for the people that are trying to talk about the vehicles, and sell the vehicles, to be in them and drive them, and learn as much as you can about them, and be honest about them. When you drive something that’s really great, you want to tell other people about it.”
Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion, was a winner here at MIS last year and is still in search of his first victory in 2009. He addressed reporters at his hauler after Friday’s practice.
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – HOW WAS YOUR CAR IN PRACTICE? “We spent a lot of time in race trim. Bob said there’s a slight chance of rain tomorrow during practice, so we focused on race runs there and then went to qualifying trim. We only got two quick runs, but Greg was real fast so we’ll lean on him maybe for a setup for qualifying. This place is an easy place to pass if you’ve got a fast race car, so I think Bob is doing the right thing. It’s a little painful to watch that chart, though, but we’ll be alright.”
IS THIS THE PLACE TO GET BACK ON TRACK? “I felt like we were in pretty good shape at Dover. I felt like we ran really well at Pocono, exceptionally well. If we can run that well again here on Sunday, that’s what we need. Sonoma should be pretty good. We’ve run pretty well there the last few years. I kind of look at this stretch that it has the potential for us to gain a lot of points if I don’t screw something up or without bad luck. Last week, this week, next week, it should be good.”
CAN YOU PINPOINT A REASON WHY ROUSH HAS BEEN SO GOOD HERE? “It’s been great crew members. We run well here. The first Cup race I ever ran was here and I finished 10th and all of our cars finishing in the top 10 and I thought, ‘Boy, this is gonna be an easy career (laughing).’ The fact is we don’t run that well at all of them, but we do run well here and I don’t know why. We’ve got great engines. I think all of my teammates do a really good job with this style of race track. I don’t know if Jack does a little something extra because this is in his backyard. I don’t know if Ford is doing something extra, but we do run well here. I like it.”
DO YOU FEEL A COMFORT LEVEL KNOWING FORD IS IN BETTER SHAPE THAN GM OR CHRYSLER? “I couldn’t be more proud to be aligned with Ford Motor Company. I’m not an economist. I don’t understand everything that’s going on with all the money in the country, but what I do know is that Ford is standing on its own feet. They make good decisions and the best thing that bodes well for Ford in the future is that the cars that they make are the best cars on the road. They’re fun to drive. They get the best fuel mileage, and, hopefully, that’s what allows Ford to be the number one auto manufacturer in the world in the future. I’m just glad to be a part of it.”
DO YOU SEE YOURSELF HAVING A RUN NOW LIKE THE END OF LAST YEAR? “I hope so. At the end of last season, I felt like every track we went to we could win, even our worst track – Martinsville – we ran third or fourth there and we were just running great. We haven’t had as much strength or speed this year, but we’re kind of creeping up on it. Last week felt like 2008 to me. We had great pit stops. We were fast on the race track. We had good strategy and if we can kind of peak at the right time with 10 races to go, it’s gonna be good.”
WHY HAS IT BEEN A STRUGGLE? “We haven’t struggled, but we just haven’t been as strong and it could be any number of reasons. Sometimes you’re a victim of your own success. You run really well at places and you think, ‘We’ll not mess with that,’ and everybody else kind of catches up or surpasses you a little bit and then you have to go back to the drawing board and catch up again. That’s the sport. It goes up and down. You look at anybody in the garage and they’ve gone through those waves. The goal, though, is to keep the amplitude of those ups-and-downs real small, so we can kind of keep to the upside. I can’t point to one reason. The one thing that stands out is our pit crew. We had guys with injuries and we really struggled at the beginning of the year and that’s finally coming around, so that’s good.”
HAS IT BEEN FRUSTRATING NOT TO WIN? “Trust me, every single guy in this garage wants to win every race, but I’ve learned to base my satisfaction with a race on a performance and not on a result. I feel like personally I’ve performed very well and I feel like Bob’s done a really good job, and there’s nothing saying we won’t go win 15 races in a row. Anything can happen. I think we all learned that last year with the chase, how things shook up from Richmond to Homestead, so I’m feeling pretty good, actually. This is probably the best week I’ve had. I feel the most confident after these last couple of weeks than I have all year.”
HOW SPECIAL WOULD IT BE TO WIN HERE? “We stopped up at Ford yesterday and we got to drive all the new vehicles. We abused some of them terribly, but we had a good time. It would be great to win here. The wins here are very special. I mean, when you see Jack Roush’s face light up in Victory Lane and all the folks from Ford and all the pride they have to run well here, that would be a special win.”
ONCE YOU WIN WILL THE MEDIA AND FANS GET OFF YOUR BACK? “It doesn’t matter. I know how well we can run. If we don’t win a race this whole season, we can still win the championship by a landslide. You just go do the best you can and, like I said before, we’re victims of our own success last season. Everyone expects so much, but I’ve been through that in 2006 when everybody picked me to win the championship and I didn’t win a race. So I know how it goes and, yeah, it will feel real good to win.”
DO YOU HAVE TO REMIND YOURSELF ABOUT THE BIG PICTURE? “No, it’s hard to explain it to you guys because you look at it from a high altitude and the way everything goes. You look at the stats and everything and the fact is I get in that race car and I drive my butt off, and I do it every week, and I do it the same every week and, if I win the race, that’s great. If I run 30th, I still drove just as hard. Sometimes my little victories, you might not see them in the highlights, but taking a 20th-place car and running 10th with it is often times a lot harder than winning a race with the best car, but it did take me a while to learn that. When I first came into this sport if I wasn’t winning or I didn’t finish as well as I wanted to I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, the world is gonna end. It’s terrible,’ but I’ve learned if you just stay true to the course and do your best, you’ll get the results eventually.”
WHEN DID THAT SINK IN? “I think that was 2006, where the season started off and I had such high expectations for myself and everyone had this pressure on us, and I realized about halfway through that season that this is not easy. Your past success does not guarantee you anything in the future, you just have to keep working. I kind of had a little bit of a shift in thinking that season, and I think it made me mature a lot as a driver.”
HOW SOON WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE DOUBLE-FILE RESTARTS IN NATIONWIDE? “Like I said about the double-file restart last week, I think it’s great, but I do think they have to do something to give the leader his own row. It’s just not right that a guy goes all the way up there and leads the race, and has a five-second lead or something and now he has to start right next to someone. As long as they maybe gave the leader a little more something there --- he’s the leader. He shouldn’t have to line up against somebody. That’s the only thing I’m against right now on it, but if they could implement that style of double-file restart in the Nationwide Series, I would be all for it tomorrow night.”
Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, is seventh in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings going into this weekend’s race. He came into the trackside conference room at MIS to talk about Sunday’s race.
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS TRACK? “You can ask me throughout the season what my favorite track is and it’s here this weekend – Michigan. I just really enjoy the racing here. You can run two, three-wide with a downforce car with plenty of room to race, so I think it bodes well for fans that really see good side-by-side racing on a big race track. There’s a lot of strategy involved and kind of semi-technical type of race track. We normally always have green flag pit stops here, which I enjoy doing. I think the double-file restart is also gonna be a little more exciting when we get those caution flags, so I’m looking forward to this weekend.”
GM ANNOUNCED SOME CUTBACK IN NATIONWIDE. CAN YOU GIVE US SENSE FOR THE LEVEL OF CONCERN YOU HAVE FOR THE AUTO INDUSTRY? “Certainly we’re concerned about the auto manufacturers because even though Ford thankfully has positioned themselves in the right spot in the car market with great vehicles – I don’t want to sound like a salesman – but they’ve got really, really good cars, a great truck platform, and over the next couple of years they’ve got some really exciting small cars coming to this market. They’re gonna be the leader, I’m confident, in the car industry, so to take it a step further, GM and Chrysler or Dodge have probably made some mistakes along the way. It certainly affects Ford as well as far as supplier issues. They need those other car companies to survive. As we probably know, there have already been cutbacks from the support of those auto manufacturers and what people have to get through their head is that we’re gonna be racing race cars – and certainly there is always going to be auto manufacturers – but we’re gonna be racing race cars with or without them. The amount of support they provide us is important, but we can continue to race without that support. It just means the amount of cutback on technology or testing or whatever else. I can think back to when I was late model racing or Camping World East or West racing, there’s no support there. You go to your local Friday or Saturday, a guy has a Chevy, a Dodge, a Ford or whatever, and nobody is footing his bill. He chooses which manufacturer he wants to race in the series and that’s what he does. Hendrick Motorsports is gonna be racing cars, whether they have any support or what the level might be. I’m pretty confident of that, but, yeah, it’s important for them to continue to be around. I’m just happy that Alan Mulally and the whole group at Ford did what they did and got in the pipeline some great vehicles coming. There was some really exciting stuff I saw yesterday. I got to drive a lot of it and it’s gonna be spectacular in the next couple of years.”
WHAT DO TOWN HALL TYPE MEETINGS MEAN ABOUT NASCAR AND WHERE THEY’VE COME RECENTLY? “My straight-out opinion of the whole situation is that NASCAR wanted to make this racing safer. You have to admit that we had the cars so whacked out of shape on the bodies and the rear-end housings and all this crap – we had the cars going sideways down the straightaways. We’d figure out another way to trick them as soon as they’d catch us on something. Look at the Nationwide cars when you walk through the garage. The roof is all pulled down. The bumper cover is super-high, all swung to the left, they’re still the same way. So NASCAR said, ‘We’re gonna do something about this. We’re gonna come up with a new car and we’re gonna fix a lot of these issues.’ Which, we agreed, probably needed to be fixed. The issue is they sort of went off on their own and built this car somewhat, and we as all the race teams and all the drivers probably wanted to have a little bit more input with that and maybe wanted it a little bit different. But it’s what they chose as a car, so, of course, when we didn’t design it, we didn’t build it, and this is what we’re racing now, we were happy with it. We couldn’t get the car to do what we want. We like the old car and all this, so it sort of painted the car in a bad light. Well, after spending a year on this car – two years, now three – we’ve gotten he car pretty damn competitive. We’re putting on some pretty damn good races out on the race track. I don’t think anybody can argue that. The thing about it is everybody feels like this car is a piece of crap because that’s how we began life with it. We hate it. Kyle Busch gets out of the thing and says I hate this thing. This is the worst car I’ve driven. Well, all of that has changed and the car is a good platform, so to take it to today, they haven’t really changed the car over the last three years. It hasn’t been pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. You think about the old car, we were changing rules constantly. This, that, that, that, so it’s been pretty consistent. So we’ve come a long ways with it and now we’ve got three years on it, and now I think it’s time to see what can we do to make it better or can we. Everybody knows you can improve anything. It doesn’t matter what it is. Ford continues to improve their cars that drive on the street through better fuel mileage or whatever, so we can make it better in different areas. So let’s take a second round and look at what kinds of things could we make better and put on better shows for the fans, more competitive, better for the driver, we can race side-by-side in the corner, and I think that’s a positive for NASCAR to involve us in saying, let’s not rebuild the car because certainly we don’t have the budgets for that, but what things can we do to make the racing better and none of us know. Like we talked about, it’s a matter of testing some issues. Test some wickers on the fenders. Test less weight, more left-side weight, all kinds of ideas came out of that thing. So I think it’s a positive thing where we’re at today, that NASCAR is involving us and what can we do – small tweaks and changes to this car – and I think we’re gonna have more in the future and I think it’s great that NASCAR is involving us in trying to make some of those decisions – educated guesses is what they are because nobody knows the perfect answer.”
KNOWING YOU’RE WITH THE MOST FINANCIALLY SOLVENT COMPANY OF THE BIG THREE, DO YOU THINK THAT MIGHT TRANSLATE INTO A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE ON THE RACE TRACK? “I really don’t think so, and the reason why is because historically money won’t buy competitiveness or wins on the race track. You could take Donald Trump or whoever has a Godzilla amount of money and come in here with no brand. ‘I’m gonna race my own manufacturer brand.’ It’s gonna be difficult for him to compete with the Hendricks and the Roushes and the Gibbs’. It just is. So I view it as a bigger budget doesn’t always mean they’re gonna be more competitive, so I don’t really feel like it’s gonna be a huge advantage because what they’re doing now they’re gonna continue to do – maybe in a little bit reduced capacity, but they already know where they’re making speed at and what they’re doing and advancing their technology, so with or without them, they’re gonna continue to be able to do it at some level. So I don’t really feel like they’re gonna be missing out on anything. Now maybe with the old car, we’d take the old car to the wind tunnel three times. We’d take a car to the wind tunnel, cut the entire body off it, put a whole new body on it, take it back to the wind tunnel before we’d bring it to the race track. That doesn’t happen anymore, so times have changed, really. I don’t think it will give us any kind of advantage.”
HOW WOULD YOU SAY ROUSH COMPARES TO HENDRICK AND GIBBS AS FAR AS CONTENDING FOR THE TITLE? “I think that the 48 continues to be the best car in the field right now. Today he was fastest in practice again, won at Dover and was pretty damn fast at Pocono. I think he continues to be the benchmark and that’s not surprising. That team is really, really good and really organized at what they do. I think that Roush Fenway is off just a tick this year – not much – but it seems like we’re not quite as competitive as we were last year just ever so slightly. I had this conversation earlier and I don’t think it’s that we’ve slid down the slope any, it’s that the other guys have gotten a few steps up the slope and gotten a little better. We haven’t really gotten any better. We’re where we were last year, but we need to improve that, so it’s a constant improvement and I don’t think our graph is quite as good as some of those other teams that have beat us a little bit, but we’re working hard.”
HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO PINPOINT A REASON? “Not really. That’s what this sport is about. This sport is about continuing to develop technology and finding stuff out. We’re not testing now, so this morning was out test session to try a few things and throw a few things at the car and see what it does. Somebody will inevitably get a little bit better mouse trap than you and then it takes you a month or three weeks or 10 races or whatever to figure it out or catch on to something else, and then you kind of leapfrog them. That’s what happens. That’s how this sport runs. It’s this team and then that team and then that team. Sometimes you’ll see teams on the bottom of the cycle for quite some time – like Childress a few years ago – and then last year they were back in the chase and winning races and doing all kinds of things. So it’s a vicious cycle and we don’t know what it is. A good example is we showed up at Richmond this year and all of our cars were terrible. None of our cars would turn. We were all looking at each other, ‘This is what we ran last year. We were pretty dang good,’ but we just don’t know what happens and why that is. Have other guys gotten better? Probably, but that’s just the way it is. We don’t know what it is. The funny part about that is if we knew what it was, we would fix it.”
IS JACK PUTTING AN EXTRA EMPHASIS ON THIS WEEK? “It certainly would be big for us. All of the big three auto manufacturers are here. We’d like to win here for Ford and for Roush. We know Jack has a huge stake in Michigan and a big engineering deal here. He works with all of the auto manufacturers across the board and builds the Roush Mustangs and Roush Performance Vehicles up here, so there will be a lot of Roush folks at the race this weekend, so we would certainly love to win here. He’s certainly in a good mood today, so, hopefully, we can keep that up and qualify good here this afternoon. We’ve got a good draw and try to run good on Sunday.”
LIFELOCK 400 QUALIFYING
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Qualified 23rd) – FIRST ONE OUT. ADVANTAGE OR DISADVANTAGE? “I don’t think it’s an advantage by any means. I think later on today, as the track cools down, a little cloud cover will probably help, but I’m real happy with our UPS Ford. It’s driving good. That was better than we were in practice, so you can’t be too disappointed with that. We’re really looking forward to Sunday and I think we’ve got a fast car. It’s as good as we’ve been on Friday in a long time.” CHRIS ANDREWS WILL BE HELPING OUT. WHAT ROLE WILL HE PLAY THE NEXT FEW WEEKS? “Chris is obviously our head engineer and he’s just kind of bridging the gap between myself and Jimmy, and everyone else in the Roush Fenway organization. A little bit of help is always needed when you’re struggling and in a small slump. Certainly, Jimmy is still the guy on our UPS team, but I think Chris can just bring a little extra to the table and give me some things to think about, work with our engineer, and he’ll be helping us for a couple of weeks – just trying to get things figured out. We haven’t been as fast as we’d like, but, at the end of the day, we’re all working together for a common goal and that’s to get the UPS Ford back up front.” DOES IT ALWAYS HELP TO HAVE ANOTHER OPINION OR CAN YOU HAVE TOO MUCH INFORMATION? “It can get to a point where you have too many chiefs and not enough Indians, but Jack Roush really prides himself on keeping all the teams working well together and keeping everybody communicating. I think that’s just another way we can communicate through the 16 and the 17 and the 99 and the 26. Their teams are structured like that with engineering help on the side, so it’s always good to have a different opinion and, like I said, it might give us something to think about when we’re pulling in the garage and getting ready to work on it.”
BOBBY LABONTE – No. 96 Ask.com Ford Fusion (Qualified 17th) – “It was just a little too tight. We were a little tight in practice and we’ve screwed up a couple times this year by getting too free in qualifying, so we backed up a little bit and tried not to over-adjust on it. We didn’t find the right thing to make it turn, but, still, overall, I think it’s a little bit of improvement for us for Sunday because in practice we weren’t as good as we need to be and we made a few progressions there at the end and made it better. I’m looking forward to the race, I just wish we could have gotten a little faster. A tenth faster would have been huge, but the front tires just didn’t want to work for me.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Qualified 20th) – FRONT TIRES WOULDN’T GRIP? “Yeah, that’s the problem we’ve had all year – the same thing. We don’t know what it is. I think we’re just off a little bit on our cars turning. Other guys have been able to get their cars to turn a little better than us and we’re lacking a little bit in that department. We’ll keep working on it. I think we missed this as a whole team. It’s five degrees hotter now with the track temp than when we did our mock-up run earlier. I set the car up anticipating it being a little cooler and a little faster and that’s not the case, so we’ve got to get better communication within our team getting ready for qualifying. Nobody knew it was gonna be hotter now, but we certainly should have been paying attention to that and maybe we’d be top 10 right now, instead of 16th or 17th.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Carhartt/DeWalt Ford Fusion (Qualified 16th) – “It was alright. We picked up a lot. We really kind of concentrated on race trim. We started practice and I was pretty happy with the car in race trim and we just missed it qualifying. We were just really slow. Even when we got our balance right we were just real slow, so we made a huge pickup from practice. We were just off. It was just kind of slow. The balance was pretty good, it just wouldn’t go any better.”
BILL ELLIOTT – No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion (Qualified 15th) – “It slid the nose down a little bit in three and four and I wasn’t expecting that. Everything I had done in practice, the car has been just a little bit freer. When I got down in there I couldn’t believe it and I couldn’t get the throttle like I wanted to, but my hat’s off to these guys. They have done an awesome job. We went to the All-Star Race in Charlotte and were just so-so, and came back for the 600 and we really gained some stuff. We came out of there and did an Indy tire test and we feel like we gained some stuff there and it just keeps paying off week-in and week-out. We just need to keep expanding on what we’re doing, but this Ford Motorcraft bunch has done a great job.” YOU’RE THE TOP QUALIFYING FORD AGAIN. “I’m very pleased with the progress. I think we have come a long way with what we’re doing, but, for us to unload and go from being one of the worst cars on the board to being a very respectable car on the board says a lot.” HOW WAS THE CAR? The car was pretty decent. The Ford Fusion and these guys did a great job. Motorcraft and everybody has helped us out on this deal for this year and believing in us to run a limited amount of races and it’s really paid off. I think David Hyder and all the guys working back at the shop have really improved this car 100 percent. From where we started the first of the year to the last two or three races, I think we’ve learned a lot.”