Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion, held his weekly Q&A session prior to practice for Saturday night’s Sprint All-Star Race and talked about a variety of topics.
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – WHAT IS YOUR APPROACH FOR THIS WEEK? “I don’t really approach it much different than any other race. You go there and just race hard and try to win. You try to win every race you’re in, but the only thing we’d probably do a little bit different is maybe try some setup stuff with the car that maybe we haven’t tried before and maybe gamble a little bit on that because if you miss it, it’s not like missing it for 600 miles. So we might be a little bit more aggressive with some of that stuff, but, other than that, we just try to run it like any other race and try to be up front at the end.”
HOW IS THE ROUSH FENWAY INTERMEDIATE TRACK PROGRAM? “Our intermediate program is probably the strongest part of Roush Fenway Racing right now, I think. It certainly has room for improvement and we could make it better, but where I think we’ve really struggled is like Richmond and Phoenix and Bristol and Martinsville and the shorter tracks, so I don’t think our intermediate stuff is as far off as what our other stuff is. I think some of our cars will be pretty competitive here, but we have been working on it. We’ve been trying to work on all aspects of the program.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY SYMPATHY FOR DALE JR. AND THIS DROUGHT HE’S GOING THROUGH? “I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t have sympathy for Dale Jr. for who he is and how popular he is and how successful he’s been. He’s won a couple Nationwide championships and he’s won I don’t know how many race, 20 races or something. He’s won a lot of Cup races and he’s had a lot of success. I don’t think there’s anything to feel bad about. Certainly as a friend and as a competitor and stuff I feel good when he does do good and when he wins and runs good, I’m always happy for him, but, to be honest, for us it’s about us trying to win and we focus all of our energy and effort and time in trying to make the 17 competitive and try to win and don’t really worry about the competition that much. Certainly when a friend wins and you don’t win you feel good for them, but I don’t really spend a lot of time really thinking about his program to be honest with you.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON POCONO? THAT TRACK SEEMS TO BE MALIGNED A LOT. “I don’t know who ridicules it. I don’t know that I have in public, so I don’t know. If you pick out all the facilities that we go to, it’s not one of the nicer places we go and it’s a long race and it’s got a straightaway that’s really long. It’s unique. I enjoy racing at the track and going there and competing, but it’s just kind of an older facility and kind of a big, long race. I think if it was a little shorter it would be a little more exciting, but it’s all right.”
DO YOU LIKE THE ACTUAL RACE AT POCONO? “It’s a little bit like anywhere, if you run good there, you probably really enjoy it and I’ve never really run that great there, so I haven’t probably enjoyed it as much as some other guys have that have run good there and won races and been really competitive, so it’s not up on the top of my list as one of my favorite places, but there are certainly places that I probably look forward to less than Pocono.”
DO YOU THINK THE NASCAR DRUG POLICY NEEDS A BANNED SUBSTANCES LIST? “I don’t know. I’m not uncomfortable not having a list. I’m not uncomfortable with that in the least. When we had the meeting in the beginning of the year Dr. Black gave every single driver and owner and everybody there his personal cell phone number and said if you have any questions about any medication, about any vitamin or supplement you can call me and we’ll talk about it and make sure that’s OK – or have your doctor call. If I got to the point where I had the flu earlier in the year and there was some medicine I had to take and I had any question about it, I would probably call and ask him. So I’m not worried about a list. After we were in the meeting I was under the impression that he was gonna work with us as much as we could if there was any chance at all of it being legit, so I felt pretty comfortable with that when we got done with him.”
HAVE YOU CALLED HIM A LOT? “I’ve never called him. Unless my multivitamins are on the list, I’m good.”
DOES THIS RACE HELP FOR THE 600 SINCE THERE’S NO TESTING? “I kind of always look at the All-Star Race as a test. It’s kind of a fun weekend, but it’s sort of test too. Now these days it’s not quite what it used to be because there are so many rules and regulations on these cars, but it used to be that you’d build kind of maybe a more wild car like Jeff Gordon did that one time – that car that got outlawed – or you try something different on the body or whatever, but these cars are pretty well set. There’s not a lot you can do to them, but certainly the few little things we can change or try different that we think might be better or different than we would normally try, we’d try that this weekend and hopefully it would work and you could go on and run it again in the 600. So, in a way, it’s kind of a fun, relaxing race. The pit crew had their competition last night to have fun qualifying tonight and do a live pit stop and stuff, which is really unique and fun to do in the middle of qualifying, so it’s a fun night tomorrow night.”
WHAT WOULD YOU DO TO MAKE THIS ALL-STAR RACE MORE EXCITING OR DEVELOP SOME CONTINUITY? “I don’t really know what you could do to make it more exciting. The way they try to set it up, the double-file restarts and the short run at the end and the break and the one live pit stop – all that stuff – qualifying with a pit stop – I think they do everything they can to try to make it a show and make it as exciting as they possibly can. I really have never honestly sat and thought about, ‘Boy, how can we make it more thrilling,’ because that’s not really my job. I try to look at the rules they come up with and say, ‘OK, how can we figure out how to try to take advantage of that and try to win the race?’ I haven’t really thought about that. I think they do a good job every year of trying to make it as entertaining as they possibly can.”
Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion, held his weekly press conference following practice for Saturday night’s Sprint All-Star Race.
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – IS IT NICE TO HAVE A RACE WHERE NO POINTS ARE ON THE LINE? “This is kind of a relaxed weekend because there aren’t points on the line, but right now we’ve lost so many points the last few weeks that I’m excited to go race some more for points, so I’m really looking forward to next weekend. Tomorrow night will be a good, fun time just to relax a little bit, race real hard, and have a good time behind the wheel without a lot of stress.”
IS THIS A TEST SESSION FOR YOU AS WELL? “Oh yeah, this will most definitely be a test session. We’re gonna learn a lot. Even the guys that aren’t in the race, just watching their teammates be in the race is gonna help them a lot. This is as good of a test session as you can have.”
IS THE 600 LIKE A GRUELING BIKE RIDE ACROSS MISSOURI? “I’d say the 600 is a little harder than our bicycle ride. Sometimes it feels like you’re racing for days in that race. It’s cool, though. The neat thing about the 600 is it’s like a couple different races in one. There are the guys who are fast in the beginning, fast in the middle and fast at the end and it’s pretty cool.”
IS THAT HOW YOU GET THROUGH IT, COMPARTMENTALIZE IT IN YOUR HEAD? “Yeah, there’s nothing like when they say halfway. The spotter says, ‘All right, halfway,’ and you think, ‘Man, that’s a long halfway.’ And running the Nationwide race the night before that’s 900 miles in 27 hours or something, so it’s a pretty cool weekend. I enjoy it. It’s too bad you can’t try to run the Indy 500 still. That was neat to watch those guys do that.”
WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO THAT SOME DAY? “Oh man, I’d love to run the Indy 500 someday, but there’s no better racing on the planet than NASCAR and I’m glad I’m here running the Coke 600 next Sunday, but the Indy 500 would be cool to try, that’s for sure.”
ARE YOU GOING TO DO THE GATEWAY BIKE RIDE AGAIN? “Yeah, we’re gonna do the Gateway bike ride. We’ve already got a ton of people coming. I’m pretty excited about it. The more the merrier in my eyes, so we should have a pretty good group this year.”
THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF TALK ABOUT NASCAR’S DRUG POLICY THIS WEEK. SHOULD THERE BE A LIST OF BANNED SUBSTANCES? “Yeah, I think definitely there needs to be and I think there will be. NASCAR is doing their best. We all agree, every competitor in here and everybody in that NASCAR trailer, wants this to be a clean sport and we all want to know and feel comfortable with that. I’m sure that NASCAR will work it out and it’ll be as good a policy as anywhere as it evolves.”
AS A GUY WHO WORKS OUT AND IS PHYSICALLY FIT DO YOU THINK TWICE ABOUT WHAT KINDS OF SUPPLEMENTS OR VITAMINS YOU CAN TAKE? “Those are all good questions. I’ll drink like a shake or something after I work out sometimes, but that’s it, so I don’t really have much concern for that. The number one thing is you just don’t want a mistake to turn into something huge. You don’t want something that you don’t even know about affecting you as far as their drug testing. I think NASCAR realizes that. I get the sense that they will tweak this and make it better and better.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE RACE TOMORROW? “It’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be good. I was just looking at the format and going over it with Bob and I think it’s gonna be pretty exciting for the fans with a 10-lap shootout at the end. It’s gonna be crazy. They’re not gonna invert and I think that’s good. That will give everybody a chance to just base this on speed and strategy and that will be cool.”
THE 10-LAP SHOOTOUT IS BACK. “Right, the 10-lap shootout will be neat and you’ve got to decide whether or not you’re gonna pit. You’ve got to kind of see how this thing evolves and it will be cool.”
HOW DIFFERENT IS TOMORROW NIGHT COMPARED TO THE 600? “It’s completely different. Next week we’ve got to come out of this race with the most points we can – the Coke 600 – and that’s it. There’s no other mission for us, just to come out with the most points we can. Tomorrow night, it’s just, one, win the thing and, two, learn as much as we can. It doesn’t really matter where we finish, so it’s all or nothing tomorrow night.”
CAN YOU LEARN ANYTHING FROM TOMORROW NIGHT? “Oh yeah. It’s the best test session you could have. We’re racing and that’s pretty cool. We’ll learn a lot for a week from now.”
THERE’S A MILLION BUCKS ON THE LINE TOMORROW. HOW DO YOU GET READY FOR THAT AND PREPARE FOR THE BIG RACE AS WELL? “If this is a test session, this is a real good one. You get to race. It’s a million bucks if you win and, really, all the things that we’re gonna do in this All-Star Race you’re gonna apply to the Coke 600, so it’s a totally different mentality from next week, but we’ll try to learn as much as we can. We’re definitely going for the win because that’s a cool race to be a part of.”
IF YOU HAVE AN AILMENT OR SICKNESS WHAT KIND OF STEPS DO YOU TAKE TO GO THROUGH NASCAR TO MAKE SURE YOU DON’T GET IN TROUBLE? “The way it was explained to all of us is that if we take anything you’re supposed to ask NASCAR and say, ‘Is this OK?’ That gets really tough to do in everyday life, I imagine, for a lot of people, so I believe what you’re gonna see is the NASCAR testing policy evolve and they’re gonna figure out how to make it better so that everyone understands it more completely because, myself included, there are a lot of people that don’t really understand exactly what’s going on and how all the procedures work.”
WHEN SOMETHING LIKE THIS COMES UP HOW DO YOU POLICE IT? “I don’t know. I don’t envy NASCAR’s position trying to implement something new and wide-sweeping like this that has such a huge impact on people if there’s a mistake. That’s what’s dangerous about this. It’s just like any sort of thing like this.”
Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, finished second in last year’s Sprint All-Star Race. He spoke about his hopes for this year’s event after Friday’s practice session.
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS TOMORROW NIGHT? “I’m certainly excited about it. I was probably more excited after I showed up and we got practice in. The car just isn’t quite as fast as we anticipated. The track’s a little different and it’s a little different tire, but finishing second last year to Kasey, we definitely had a good run and we had a great run at Darlington and we’re hoping to come here and continue that. These two race tracks don’t look similar, but are a little bit with surface and speed and all that. We were hoping to be a little bit quicker out of the truck. I think we ended up fifth in that last practice, so we can maybe adjust on it. We’ve got a great format as far as the race lays out. It gives us opportunities on pit road to make big changes and breaks to try different things. It’s sort of like a little mini-test along the way, so it’s a great event. I think the fans really enjoy it and get their money’s worth because we’re just going all-out.”
WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION WHAT YOU HEARD FROM BRIAN FRANCE? “First of all, I think that NASCAR has really done a great job with their new policy and bringing it up to standards, so to speak. We know a lot of rules were put in place a long time ago and can be polished on, and I think the random test that they do is good and being able to get a prescription drug and then get it approved and move on with whether you’re able to take it or not, I think, are key factors in being able to – sometimes it doesn’t happen as quick as we’d like it to. I had a small injury before Bristol and was prescribed a prescription that was probably questionable on my part and then tried to get in touch to make sure that it was OK to take and never really got an answer quick enough, so I just elected not to take it and stick with ibuprofen or something and I guess that was probably the right thing to do. But those things like Mr. France said, those are things that need to be addressed in January. If it’s a prescription you’re taking year-round, well then that’s one thing.”
HOW MUCH DO YOU FEEL THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES ON THE DRIVER’S SHOULDERS TO MAKE SURE THEY’RE NOT TAKING A DRUG THAT COULD EVEN BE ON A BANNED LIST? “Well, considering there’s no list, anything you take is questionable – even over-the-counter stuff. With these different drugs or different things that you can take, we know we’ve all heard of certain, not like Claritin, but certain drugs even like that show up in some kind of testing. I don’t know if it’s that particular one, but there are others, so I think anything along the lines other than aspirin or ibuprofen or things like that have to be questioned whether you really need to be taking them or not. And I don’t like taking stuff to start with, but some people have medical conditions that require them to take other stuff, but I just say tough it out.”
IS THERE ANY CONCERN AMONG DRIVERS THAT PENALITIES LIKE JEREMY IS GOING THROUGH WOULD BE APPLIED EQUALLY IF IT WAS SOMEBODY WHO CAME FROM A TEAM WITH A BUNCH OF SPONSORS AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS AT STAKE? IS IT A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD FOR PENALITIES? “There’s no question in my mind that if I was tested and found positive with the same results or tests that Jeremy was that I would not be driving the 3M car this weekend – 100 percent. Erik Darnell would be driving it or somebody else. That’s what I believe.”
DID YOU EVER NOTICE ANYTHING ABOUT JEREMY OR IS IT A SHOCK? “It was really a shock because I know Jeremy and talk to him, but really hadn’t his whole 41 career, driving the 41 car. I hadn’t really crossed paths with him that much, hadn’t seen him that much. I saw him at driver intros briefly, but I talked to him some when he drove the 19 and the other cars, and I think it was just that we were around each other in the garage more or whatever it was, but, ironically enough, never really talked to him in the past six months more than, ‘Hey, how’s it going.’ So I wouldn’t be a guy to judge whether I saw a difference in him.”
ALL-STAR QUALIFYING
BOBBY LABONTE – No. 96 Ask.com Ford Fusion (Qualified 7th) – “I think overall the guys did a great job. Our pit stops, we’ve changed a lot of guys around this year and we’re trying to get better and better as we go. I think tonight Ben said it was a 12-something stop and I don’t know what our lap time was because they don’t give you that stuff here for this deal. The car didn’t drive as good as I wanted to, but it seemed like it had some speed to it, so I feel like we’re sitting second right now. I don’t really know. When you go out early like that it’s kind of hard to gauge, but I think we’re only a tenth off of where Jeff is at, and we had no penalities, so we’ll take that and see what we’ve got.” ANY CONCERN ABOUT LEAVING PIT ROAD FOR THIS QUALIFYING SESSION? “Yeah, you don’t do that every week. We build our stuff nowadays to obviously last 500 miles, but we don’t usually leave pit road like we are for this deal here. Our guys do a good job on that and when we leave pit road we try to leave as smooth as possible, but as fast as possible. Overall, tonight we just had a smooth one, so that’s good. We’ll take it and see where that ends up.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Qualified 14th) – “It’s a fast race car, very fast. It was good. My crew was real fast, but we had one loose lugnut. It’s frustrating, but that’s kind of how our season has been. We’ve just had little bitty things that keep us from reaching our potential and now is a better time than any to work them out. We’ve got a real important race next weekend that we’ve got to get geared up for.” DO YOU GET REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS RACE? “I was real excited for a minute. That felt good. That felt real good and then we had a penalty. That’s all right. My guys have been working hard. They got a little excited. They went a little crazy. They tried to get me out quick and they did, but NASCAR will get you. They’ll get you.” BUT YOU HAVE SOME SPEED UNDER THE HOOD. “Yeah, it feels good. Let me tell you, that feeling right there, that’s worth a lot. It was only like a minute that I thought I was on the pole, but that was one nice minute right there. I liked it.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Qualified 3rd) – WHAT IS IT ABOUT YOUR PIT CREW ALWAYS BEING SO GOOD? “They do a good job. They work really hard at it. They take a lot of pride in having good pit stops on these kind of days and on race day, so it was pretty solid. We’ve been really good this year. They obviously won a couple races for us and have had us in contention to win. We’ve been a little more inconsistent than we’d like, but they’ve been working really hard on it and our cars have been getting better and the pit stops are getting better, so I feel good about that.” THE PIT STOP IS THE KEY HERE, RIGHT? “Yeah, to lose a half-second on the track or a second is harder than it is to lose it on a pit stop or getting in a pit stall or something like that, so that’s the most important part. But you have to have it all right. We were just a little off on the track. We were real close, but we were just a little off and that was probably the difference for us.” YOU BROKE THAT HENDRICK LOGJAM UP FRONT. “When I rolled out there and saw those Hendrick cars there I kind of laughed because they’ve got everything going so good. Their cars are good. They’re good on pit road. All of the guys are driving them, so they’ve got their stuff together right now. They’re tough to beat no matter what we do.”
MATT KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE – WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TOMORROW. “I don’t know. We weren’t really very good in race practice today, but our qualifying run – our first lap – wasn’t really great. I was pretty loose and lost a lot of time for those guys there. I thought we got on pit road good. Our pit stop was pretty good. I don’t think it was the fastest one, but it was pretty close to the fastest one and I didn’t do very good leaving pit road. There are a lot of things that go into qualifying good here and you’ve got to him them all just right to be able to run as fast as Jimmie did.” WHAT’S UP WITH YOUR QUALIFYING EFFORTS ALL OF A SUDDEN? “I always qualify good when there’s a pit stop in the middle. I don’t know. Last week was probably just dumb luck. I think last week was our fourth pole or something like that, so every 100 starts or so we’ll win a pole (laughing).
