GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (qualified 2nd) – HOW CLOSE WAS THAT TO THE POLE? “It was close. The driver screwed it up. I had a great car. I went into turn one and it carried a lot of speed and the car was so good, I just didn’t push the gas soon enough. I just didn’t expect the track to have that much grip. I got goose bumps all over, and I drove it in down here and I swatted the throttle, and it was ticked off about the time I got over there. I had so much speed it was shoving the front tires. It did that and headed to the start-finish line. Two-hundredths of a second. They gave me a good car. My fault.”
GREG BIFFLE press conference
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – MARK MARTIN IS ON THE BUBBLE. PERSONALLY, YOU’D NO DOUBT WANT TO SEE HIM MAKE THE CHASE, BUT FROM A COMPETITIVE STANDPOINT, DO YOU WANT TO COMPETE AGAINST THE 5 CAR? “From a competition standpoint, I don’t think it really matters to me, whether he’s in or out. I’d like to see Mark Martin in the Chase, personally, but from a competition side, we know that they’re good and we know that they’ve won three or four races, and he’s running well and they’ll be a threat for the title, but I’m not going to pick and choose who I want to race against. Granted, I’d like to race against the last 12 and not the first 12, but I can’t do that. I just hope we’re in it.”
DAY-IN AND DAY-OUT, HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THE CLOSENESS OF THE CHASE RACE? “Nothing I could do about it. All I could do is drive 100 percent as hard as I can, be as organized as I can. I’ve been spending time with the team, talking about what we need to do, just like Mark’s talked about. Those are the things we have to do as a race team, and be prepared when we come here, and be ready to go. We were prepared when we came here off the truck. We had a very good two practices, we only spent two and a half hours working on the race car, figured a lot of stuff out, switched to qualifying when we qualified well here last year, the car went straight to the top of the sheet, made a few tweaks on it. We actually had time to try different shocks and back again. Normally, you’re scrambling just to get in the ballpark, but our car was so good, they gave us a little extra time to try some stuff even though we’re happy with the car. We got some opportunity to make the car better than I thought it was going to be, even. So, I’m pretty happy about that.”
HOW MUCH COMFORT DO YOU GET JUST BY BEING ON THE FRONT ROW HERE? PLUS, YOU AND MARK ARE FORMER TEAMMATES HAVE A LOT OF RESPECT FOR EACH OTHER. WILL THERE BE A GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT FOR BOTH OF YOU TO LEAD A LAP? “I don’t know. I should’ve asked him that before he left. We could’ve figured that out before we get it on the record. Certainly, we’re going to try and lead a lap. I’m going to try and beat him on the outside. The outside groove is really fast here. But, you’ve got to be careful; it’s going to be the first lap of the race. I’ve spun out here on the first lap of the race in the Craftsman Truck Series. I don’t want to do that. But, I want to lead – I don’t need to lead the first lap, but I want to lead one of them. I’d like to lead the first one. Hopefully, maybe the first few laps, I’ll be able to get one and fall in line, or maybe lead the race for a while. But I think we have a good enough car to stay up front reasonably well, in the top 10, at least. It’s going to be important because a lot of stuff happens here. A lot of accidents and bumping and banging and things will go on and every position will be important.”
HOW GOOD WILL YOUR TEAMMATES BE TOMORROW? “It’s good having teammates, and sometimes it’s like, ‘Dang it.’ We’re racing Matt to get in; we want to see Matt make it. Those guys were really, really struggling bad in practice, and put our set-up in for qualifying and didn’t make a lap with it until it was time, so obviously it worked pretty well for him. But I feel good that I was able to help Matt today and hopefully his car will be good for tomorrow. Racing teammates is hard to do.”
WITH SO MUCH AT STAKE, ARE YOU MORE ON EDGE AT A PLACE LIKE THIS? IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE TOO CAREFUL? “Yeah, a little bit. You can be too cautious and too protective and not run good enough. What Bristol is is you run pretty much as fast as you can here and you’re always on the verge of something 24/7 going around this place. I mean, you’re passing lapped cars, you’ve got close calls all the time, when you’re going by them you’re two, three inches from them. You’re driving your butt off this whole race, and you’re just oohing and aahing, trying not to make a mistake, and unfortunately you can’t take any more comfort in that or you;ll get eaten up. You’ve got to run as hard as you can.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (qualified 5th) – “That’s just one lap. I mean, we were so far off today we didn’t get a chance to practice qualifying – we just threw in the 16’s set-up, is what it was. We just got a really good lap there and it ran good for a lap.”
YOU’LL BE TOWARD THE FRONT. IT’S EASY TO GET LAPPED EARLY HERE IF YOU START IN THE BACK. “Yeah, but we’ve still got to make the car better. If we run like we did most of today we’ll be lapped no matter where we start, so we’ve got to get it better. But, that was a good lap for us.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (qualified 23rd) -- “I would have liked to have picked up a little bit more speed on that run. It was a pick up from our practice speed, but you always want a little more. If we could have gotten another tenth out of our UPS Ford, or even a couple hundredths, we would have been there in the top 15 or so. I feel like we’ve got a good car and we’ll make a few adjustments on it during Saturday night’s race. A year ago we started dead last and finished 10th, so we’re right there in the middle of the pack and hopefully we can dodge all of the wrecks and hang around the top 10 all night.”