GREG BIFFLE – 3M Ford Fusion (qualified 7th) – “I try so hard, I guess I probably try too hard sometimes. I was a little nervous, too. I knew we needed to start good here. I was a little bit loose in the bottom of the esses and it cost me some time going up them, and then tried to make it up in the bus stop. You always do; your natural instinct is, ‘I need to make up for it.’ Well, you’re already going as fast as you can, so you can’t make up. And, I got in there a little hot and got sideways and gathered in back up, and drove out of the esses and lost a little time there. And then the rest of the lap was pretty good. I’m really happy with that. You get frustrated with yourself when you leave a tenth or two, which means a lot right now.”
STARTING TOWARD THE FRONT ON A ROAD COURSE, WHAT DOES THAT ALLOW YOU TO DO – OR NOT FORCE YOU TO DO – EARLY IN THE RACE ON SUNDAY? “Road racing is all about track position, and you absolutely have to have good qualifying and have good track position. We’re going to be in good shape.”
BORIS SAID – No. 08 U.S. Chrome Ford Fusion (qualified 9th) – STARTING TOWARD THE FRONT ON A ROAD COURSE, WHAT DOES THAT ALLOW YOU TO DO – OR NOT FORCE YOU TO DO – EARLY IN THE RACE ON SUNDAY? “It forces you not to have to use up your car, really use the brakes and really try to make those bonsai passes. And, it just gives you a little extra confidence, basically. This is the first time I’ve ever gotten to run my own COT car here, so I’m really glad the weather held off this year.”
THIS TEAM DOESN’T SHOW UP AT MANY RACES, BUT ALWAYS SEEMS TO BE A FACTOR… “With Frankie Stoddard leading the way and all the help we get from Jack Roush and everyone at Roush Fenway, we bring competitive cars to the track every week that we come.”
PAUL MENARD – No. 98 Sylvania/Menards Ford Fusion (qualified 14th) – “This car’s really good. We’re running a Nationwide car, too, and you drive the cars pretty similar but your brake points are a lot different, and so I left some out there. I didn’t want to over-drive the car; I’d rather under-drive it. I wish we would’ve run a 12-flat or somewhere in the 11’s – I would’ve been happy with that, but that was a solid lap, anyway.”
THIS WILL BE THE FIRST RACE HERE WITH DOUBLE-FILE RE-STARTS. WILL THAT CREATE SOME OPPORTUNITIES FOR DRIVERS? “Yeah, everybody was worried about it going into Sonoma, and I think it’s going to be crazier here than it was at Sonoma. You get a little braver here, it’s a wide race track, a little straighter so you’ve got some more room, but we’ll see. Hopefully, it works in our favor. A lot of times you get shuffled out, a lot of times you can make up ground, so we’ll just have to find out.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (qualified 40th) -- “I was a little disappointed with my lap; the car felt really good. We had more speed in practice and we lost a little bit of that in qualifying. For me, it usually takes a few laps around here to get my rhythm up and I know that we’ve got a lot better car than we’ll be starting. Jimmy Fennig and the UPS team will have to be on top of things on pit road and have a little bit of pit strategy. I look forward to Saturday to really getting our car fast. I feel like we’ve got a top 20 car right now and we’ve just got to be smart and try to be around at the end of the race.”
