Food City 500 Friday Wrap-Up

 

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – WHAT DID YOU DO TO YOUR RIBS? “I wish I had a better story, I really do. Me and a couple buddies went out fishing on Tuesday night and we were just messing around in our cove right there and we came back to the dock. I jumped over to the dock and the boat was kind of drifting out a little bit. One guy had the front corner and I said, ‘I’m gonna jump back over and grab a rope and then jump back again.’ It was about 11:30, so there was a little bit of dew in the air and the platform must have been wet, and when I jumped over it just shot my foot out from underneath me. It turned me around backwards and put me right on my side and on my back on the edge of the boat. It’s not a normal boat. It’s got a sharp edge on it because it has a platform on the front, so it’s just one of those freak, stupid accidents where you take a fall and you have no way to stop it or brace it or grab because I was over top of water. You’re gonna land on your ribs with all your weight, plus you jumped on top of it, so it was a stupid deal. If I had to do it over, I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Everybody’s jumped onto a boat before, but I just lost my footing.” 

 

IT’S 500 LAPS HERE ON SUNDAY. “It’s 500 laps and it’s my right side. I went down yesterday as a precaution and got in my Martinsville car because the Bristol car had already left, and I feel better in that seat than I do sitting in anything. I drove over there in my truck and I actually feel better sitting in that seat (race car seat) because it’s hard foam and it’s molded. It doesn’t create any pressure points. When you sit in a seat that has a lumbar support cushion, it’s pushing in on you when you’re naturally sitting in it like an easy chair or something, whereas this is hard and rigid and it fits your body. It doesn’t have the ability to push in on you anywhere. Remarkably, I cannot believe how much better I feel in three days. I did it Tuesday night and I was really hurting Tuesday night. I felt a fair amount better by the end of the day Wednesday and yesterday I was up and doing all kinds of stuff, stretching and getting ready to go, so I feel pretty good now. I got in the car, just bruised, and the reason why I’m just focusing on the Cup race is you’re bruised and if you get in a wreck in the Nationwide car, you blow a tire, you know how easy it is to get in a chain-reaction crash here. I’m thinking, ‘Why be even more sore for Sunday if something happened?’ Matt and I were fighting over this race to see who was gonna get to run it, so we’re just gonna swap Daytona or something like that so we keep the same amount of races. But I’m disappointed, trust me, that I’m not running the Nationwide race.” 

 

MARK MARTIN IS DOWN IN THE POINTS. CAN HE MAKE A COMEBACK? “If anybody can do it, Mark Martin can. We know he knows how to qualify. He just happened to be on the pole at Atlanta and we know he can drive. It’s just a matter of him not getting in weird situations, an accident, or having a mechanical failure, which he’s had a few times this year. If his equipment holds up, he’ll be there. There’s no doubt in my mind. You can’t even question whether he’ll be there or not.” 

 

WHAT CAN YOU DO ON THIS TRACK NOW THAT YOU COULDN’T DO IN THE OLD CONFIGURATION? “Now you can race side-by-side a lot more productively. It’s still almost a one-groove race track. When a guy sort of runs in the preferred groove right in the middle it’s sort of a one-groove track, but you can get side-by-side more successfully now than you could before. I liked it better almost before because it was harder, it was much harder to stay after it. The track configuration now is actually a little easier because it laid the corners down and kind of smoothed them out and made them longer, so it makes it a little easier, but it puts on maybe a little better side-by-side racing. I liked it better the hard way just because it was harder and less people ran good, let me put it that way. Would you rather compete against six or 26? It’s much harder when everyone is running the same speed. Before, if you got your car working good, you had a big advantage.” 

 

F1 HAS CHANGED THEIR FORMAT SO WHICHEVER DRIVER WINS THE MOST RACES WILL WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT? “I never heard that. That’s the first I’ve heard of it. I don’t necessarily know that I would go with that theory because all forms of racing and all forms of sports, normally, are rewarded for being consistent – not being on one day and off another day. A football team, a basketball team, a baseball team, if they’re on one time and then not, being consistent and being good is what’s important – maybe not so much the stick-and-ball sports – but you can’t be on one day and off another and racing is sort of the same. You have to be at a very, very consistent level. If you want to do that, continue to give wins more points. If you really want to impact your series with wins make it a 50-point bonus to the winner if you want to reward a team for winning. There are ways of doing it versus saying whoever wins the most we’re gonna give the championship to them.” 

 

HOW WOULD THAT CHANGE THINGS IN NASCAR? “That would be a hard question to answer. I don’t know how it would change. I know one thing is the next rule that would come is, ‘Are you going to black-flag people?’ I promise you that the guy who is leading on the last lap wouldn’t be the guy winning if a championship is on the line for, just, wreck the guy because all you car about is getting the win. That takes all the skill and all the fun out of the sport of being consistent and running good and all that. I wouldn’t base a series on wins alone. You may weight it more for wins, which we did a couple of years ago. People said, ‘We want to see it be more important to win,’ so they gave us more points to win. Like I said last year, California is a perfect example when I was trying to catch Jimmie Johnson. It was the same thing. Somebody said, ‘They should just pay $1 million to the winner every week.’ I don’t care if you paid me $100 million, I finished second at California. It’s the best I could do. I could not catch Jimmie Johnson. Nobody could catch me. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if it was $1 million or $10 to win, I couldn’t catch him. Don’t tell anybody, but we’re doing all we can do and we’d do this for free. Winning the money has nothing to do with it – winning has to do with it. All the rest is just there. Trophies are nice because they’re something you have forever, but we’re all trying to win.”

 

 

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – WHAT CAN YOU DO ON THIS CURRENT TRACK CONFIGURATION YOU COULDN’T DO BEFORE? “I think the biggest thing with this new configuration is it’s created more grooves. You can actually pass somebody without hitting them or somebody can pass you without hitting you. It’s a little easier to pass, a little bit more forgiving. If you get out of shape, you’ve got a lot of banking. The banking builds as you move up the track to kind of catch the car, so it really just kind of gave you more options and more places to try to pass.” 

 

DO YOU HAVE A PREFERENCE? “As good as we did there towards the end with the old car and the old track, I think we might have won the last race or one of the last races before they switched cars and then they switched the track shortly thereafter, so with the old car and the old track I like that a lot just because we kind of had some little things figured out and ran pretty good with that and that was pretty intense. If we would have never raced with the old configuration I’d say I probably liked this better because it’s more forgiving, but I kind of liked the old one just because it had a lot of character and a lot of little bumps and little things you could do.” 

 

HOW BIG IS THIS RACE? “Honestly, every weekend is really important and a really big race, so it’s important for us to try to run good here. I don’t know if it’s any more or less important than any other weekend, but it’s important for us to try to run good here. We’ve been a little off at Bristol since we switched to this car, really, and the configuration. I think Carl has maybe won three out of four of them with this car and this track, so we know the stuff is there. We just have to get our stuff running a little better.” 

 

HOW IMPORTANT IS KEEPING YOUR HEAD HERE? “I think it’s important to stay patient everywhere, but especially here. There are two sides to that. It’s a small track and you can’t really be too patient or too careful or you’ll get a lap down. It’s not quite as important as it was before because it is a little more forgiving and there’s a little bit more room to pass and move around, but certainly you’ve got to keep the car in one piece and you’ve got to be there at the end.” 

 

F1 IS GOING TO CROWN IT’S CHAMPION BY WHO WINS THE MOST. COULD THAT WORK HERE? “I have zero opinion on that. Usually, whoever does run the best throughout the entire year usually does win the championship more times than not, I think.” 

 

IS QUALIFYING HERE A CASE OF JUST GOING FOR IT? “Yeah, we go for it every week qualifying, I guess I’m just not the best at it so we’re not always up there, but, yeah, I think it’s important to qualify good everywhere.” 

 

WHAT ABOUT HERE? YOU DON’T LIKE QUALIFYING MUCH, RIGHT? “I like qualifying, I’m just not really that good at it, but I like qualifying. We just focus a lot more on race setup. We spend most of our day, even today on pole day, we spend most of our time on race setup because that’s really what’s important. Qualifying is just a starting position. We’re worried more about our finishing position.” 

 

HOW WOULD THAT F1 RULE CHANGE NASCAR? “I don’t think it would change the winners at all. It changes the points. I kind of said that when they gave the extra bonus points and all that stuff. I’ve never showed up at the track and not wanted to win. I’ve never been in the middle of a race and not wanted to win or not done my best to win, so I don’t think it would really change that. Formula One is a lot different racing. There are only a few real competitive teams. I don’t know how many cars start on a week, but I think it’s less than 20 and they only have a few races a year, they only have 10 or 12 races, whatever it is, so I think it’s kind of comparing apples to oranges. I don’t think you can even compare the series or the style of racing or the kind of racing that we do. They usually drop the green and nobody passes each other all day and they watch them run around single file and the race is over. I don’t think that’s the kind of racing that we want or we should aim for. I think stock car racing is more side-by-side racing. There are 43 teams out here trying to compete for a win and the best finishes they can and the most points each and every week.” 

 

SO IT SHOULD BE MORE ABOUT CONSISTENCY, INSTEAD OF JUST TRYING TO DO WHAT YOU CAN TO WIN? “What else are you gonna do? You know what I mean? Everybody tries to win, but there are 43 cars and there can only be one winner. If you want to just say there’s a winner and a loser, there’s one winner and 42 losers then. You’ve got to rank those other 42 cars. It’s a lot better to go out here and run fourth than it is to run 38^th. There has to be a way to rank that and I think NASCAR has done a great job over the years to balance the difference between consistency and winning. They’ve done a lot of things to make more incentive for winning and carrying bonus points into the chase, giving an extra 10 points for winning. They’ve done a lot of that over the years to try to find that balance, and I think you always have to have that balance when you have this many cars and this many events.” 

 

ARE YOU AWARE OF THE GUYS ON THE TOP 35 BUBBLE DURING THE RACE? “No, not really. We really have our hands full running our own race and our own cars and going out there and trying to be competitive and trying to win and all that. It’s something you glance at and you kind of know where they are just because the media covers it a lot or you’ll maybe look at the points after the race, that type of thing, but when you’re on the track, you really don’t. You race everybody the same.” 

 

IS IT HARD TO KEEP YOUR COOL HERE AT BRISTOL? “It depends. Every situation and circumstance is different, but it’s not really that hard. You have to realize how long the race is, I guess. There are certain situations you could probably get yourself in or maybe you not be as patient or not be as happy about things, but, really, you just approach it like any other race.”

 

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – F1 IS CHANGING THEIR POINT SYSTEM. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS? “I think if you determine your champion just based on wins, you’re taking a huge gamble of having the wrong champion. If one guy wins one race and runs 20^th in the rest of them, and another guy finishes second in every single race, that’s not the right guy for a champion. The more and more I pay attention to all of these changes with all these point systems all over the board, the more I like the Nationwide Series and the Camping World Truck Series, where the guy with the best average finishing position throughout the year wins. I think the farther we get away from that, the bigger the chance of changing our sport to try to fit in with others and I don’t think that’s best for us.” 

 

WHAT WOULD THAT DO IN NASCAR IF THAT WAS ADOPTED? “The deal is we all race as hard as we can for the wins. The wins, that’s the best feeling. I haven’t won a championship so I don’t know what that feels like, but the wins feel real good. That’s what we race so hard for. It doesn’t matter if the champion is determined on how many wins you have. If they said, ‘We’re gonna pay $5 million to the winner every week,’ we’re still gonna race hard for the wins. At the end of the year, you have to say the champion is the guy who ran the best through the season. I think we kind of have to stay away from messing with the points too much.” 

 

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO DO WELL HERE AT BRISTOL? “This is a wild place. You have to survive first. Three hundred laps on Saturday is a lot and 500 is a ton. You look up at the scoreboard and you feel like you’ve been racing your guts out and there’s 300 laps and you think, ‘Wow, this is great.’ But then at the end you have to be on it. It’s a hard race at the end, so you have to be there and stay mentally in the game.” 

 

IS IT HARD KEEPING YOUR COOL? “Every lap here you’re racing with someone, it seems like. It’s fun in a way. Every track has its good points and its bad points, but this place doesn’t have too many bad points. It’s pretty fun.” 

 

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH THE OLD CONFIGURATION THAT YOU CAN’T DO NOW? “You could complete a pass better with the old configuration because once you got under a guy, you forced him into the outside lane, which was way slower, and you could get by. You could make the pass stick. It was harder to initiate a pass. It was harder to get a run on someone. Now, you can get a run on someone easily, but it’s really hard to complete the pass. The fans see more side-by-side racing, but it’s tough.” 

 

WHAT’S SURPRISED YOU THIS SEASON? “I don’t think there have been any big surprises so far. Matt winning the first two races, that was a good surprise. Him and Drew doing that well, I’d say that’s probably the biggest surprise so far.” 

 

IS THE RACING WHAT YOU EXPECTED AS FAR AS CONTENDERS? “I didn’t expect the 2 car – Pat and Kurt and those guys – to be so good at Atlanta. They came out strong and I think they’re gonna be really tough at all those mile-and-a-halfs, seeing how fast they were there. Other than that, these cars are getting so close that it wouldn’t surprise me this weekend to see someone we haven’t seen win. Every week it wouldn’t surprise me to see someone we haven’t seen run really well. David Reutimann was at the top of the board and he could check out and win this thing on Sunday and everyone would say, ‘Hey, that’s a big surprise,’ but the cars are so close that it wouldn’t surprise me. It only takes a small advantage.” 

 

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO YOUNG DRIVERS AT BRISTOL AS FAR AS SURVIVING? “Give, give, give all day. You can race someone so hard 100 laps into these races and we’re all races, so you feel like, ‘Man, I’ve got to beat this guy. I’ve got to pass him. I can’t let him pass me,’ but it seems like at this place you should just give the spot and give a little room. If you do that the whole race, I’ve learned that I end up better at the end than if I just go like hell from the beginning. I won my first Cup race and the next week we came here. I wrecked in qualifying. Jack Roush told me before the race, he said, ‘You know, don’t take this the wrong way, but you would be better off when they drop the green to pull to the inside and let them lap you once and race the whole day a lap down.’ I thought, ‘What are you talking about,’ and he said, ‘Well then you wouldn’t race people so hard and you’ll probably make it to the end.’ I thought, ‘Oh, that’s crazy,’ and I ended up wrecking about 50 laps in and I thought that would have been a lot better, so it’s a tough place.” 

 

DO YOU FEEL FOR MARK MARTIN BEING 35^TH IN OWNER POINTS? “I’m not gonna feel for Mark just yet. He’s too fast. I was talking to him last week or the week before and I firmly believe he’ll be in the top 12. I don’t know how far out he is, but that guy could run in the top three for the next 20 weeks and it wouldn’t surprise me. If they can just have a little bit of luck, I think they’ll be fine.”

 

BOBBY LABONTE – No. 96 Ask.com Ford Fusion (Qualified 37^th) – “We rubbed the front splitter a little bit too hard on that qualifying lap and that cost us some grip. But you’ll have that here at Bristol. We’ll be ready to race on Sunday.”

 

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Qualified 4^th) – DID YOU LEAVE ANYTHING OUT THERE? “I don’t know. I drove it off in there to three and four really hard and got back in the gas the best I could. It pushed up a little bit off of four and I tried to wheel it to stay down, but I had to come out of the gas. I might have been able to make it, but it was gonna be close and I didn’t want to take a chance. I knew we were already second-quick. I don’t know if I was gonna beat Mark or not, so I just shut it off.” HOW ARE YOUR RIBS NOW? “They’re hurting after that lap. I don’t know. I kind of grunted hard on that last lap there coming off of turn four. I’m a little sore right now, but I’ll be good for Sunday.”

 

JAMIE MCMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Qualified 9^th) – “We ran a little better than we did in practice, and the track maybe seems to be a little off, so that should be 10^th to 15^th, which will be OK for the day. It’s not great, but it’s OK.” HOW ABOUT SUNDAY’S RACE FROM A PHYSICAL STANDPOINT? “I’m not worried about that. I’m not sick at all anymore. I feel a ton better than what I did at Vegas, so I should be OK.”

 

TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 28 Golden Corral Ford Fusion (Qualified 17^th) – “It was a good lap. I’m just proud of my team. From off the truck we were top 10 and I think we’ll end up somewhere in the top 20 here. Definitely from this point on there’s a lot of uncertainty for our team, so we need to go out and have a good run. We’ve had just an incredible amount of bad luck, I feel like, this season and at the time where we need the most luck to have a couple of good things go our way. We’ve had very fast race cars and have raced competitively, but just haven’t had the results with our finishes. Hopefully, we just have a good day on Sunday and run all 500 laps.” IF YOU DON’T HAVE A SPONSOR YOU WON’T GO TO MARTINSVILLE? “That’s my impression. I feel like, though, everything is set and ready to go and at a moment’s notice we could pull the trigger on it. I think that’s the plan is to kind of not go to Martinsville, but, at the same time, we’ll see what happens this weekend and we definitely are still in the middle of talking to a couple sponsors. It seems like they have a lot of interest, but time is running out.” HAS IT BEEN GUT-WRENCHING THESE LAST COUPLE OF WEEKS? “Yes and no. Every week I tell my guys that they give me great race cars. There’s nothing you can do about some racing luck with the engines and blown tires and things like that, but I feel like I’m much more competitive this year than I was a year ago, but we’re just not getting the results to show for it. Anything can happen here at Bristol, but we just want to go out and have a good, solid day. I think if we do that, we’ll have a good, solid top 10 and then you never know about next week.”