Edwards Sends Mustang to Victory Lane For 12th Time in 2011 With Dollar General 300 Win

1^st – Carl Edwards

3^rd – Trevor Bayne

9^th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

21^st – Timmy Hill

26^th – Joey Gase

38^th – Tim Andrews

 

CARL EDWARDS – No. 60 Fastenal Ford Mustang – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – “Trevor was behind me, so that’s what got me the lead – Trevor’s push. That meant a lot. He could have gone three-wide, so this is huge. I hit the wall really hard and messed the right side of the car up, but it’s a big week for Ford. It’s 110^th anniversary of Ford Racing. Henry Ford won a race 110 years ago. We’re leading the Nationwide points and the Cup points and we’re winning with these Ford Mustangs, so that’s huge. I’ve got to thank Fastenal, Valvoline Next-gen, Wiley X, and the fans. This is unbelievable. I thought Brad had it, and then I thought there at the end Kyle was gonna get me. He has an ability to turn it on at the end, and he raced me really clean and I appreciate that.”

 

TREVOR BAYNE – No. 16 Fastenal Ford Mustang – PIT ROAD INTERVIEW “I was hoping for a 1-2-3 finish there, but we still got a first and a third, and I think Stenhouse ended up ninth, which isn’t too bad, but I was hoping we could get a win tonight. We had a really good car at the end. We battled being on the splitter too hard at the beginning and finally got it dialed in right at the end when it counted. The pit crew did an awesome job today and kept us up there, so this is one of those races where we finally had a fast car and everything worked out together. There have been so many times this year where we’ve been really fast and little things have happened to take us out, but I was really happy to see Fastenal in victory lane and we got a good finish for them as well. Pushing Carl to the lead there at the end was kind of fun. I saw him slipping a little bit and then we got him by Kyle getting into turn one. Those guys turned up the wick the last few laps. You really see what these cars have in them when you see Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards battling for a win. They can really wheel these things, but I’m really happy with our finish and our Ford Mustang was pretty good tonight.”

 

TREVOR BAYNE PRESS CONFERENCE – “It’s been a while since we’ve been in here, so we had to get a good run soon enough so I could come and see you guys. I was really happy with that run. I think that we’ve had some really good cars in the past few weeks, but we haven’t been able to show it by the finishes due to little things that have happened on the track or on pit road, but we’ve had speed and I was glad that we finally got to showcase that a little bit tonight with a finish. Chad Norris did a great job all night long. We spent the first part of the race really tight and on the splitter really hard and finally on the very last run when it counted he got me off the track and got it dialed in for us. I’m really happy with that for Fastenal and for Carl to get a win for Fastenal as well. I was able to push him out there to the lead a little bit on that last restart, which was pretty neat.” HOW MUCH CONFIDENCE DOES THIS GIVE YOU FOR TOMORROW? “It’s a lot. Track time is awesome too at these kind of places. With the new pavement, you don’t really think of this as being a bumpy race track or having patches on it, but I learned a lot for tomorrow, I believe as far as the line and little things about the track and its characteristics and not overdriving the race car. We found a lot of speed in that tonight, which was really good, but that Wood Brothers 21 car has been fast all weekend, so that gives me enough confidence in itself – qualifying in the top 10, being really fast on the lap tracker today in all of practice, so I’m happy to get out there tomorrow in that ’63 paint scheme with Glenn Wood above the door. Having that above the door gives you some confidence, too. That’s pretty neat.” 

 

TREVOR BAYNE CONTINUED -- WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT STAYING IN FRONT OF SADLER FOR RICKY’S SAKE IN THE TITLE CHASE? “First of all, I was thinking top three. That was the first thing that crossed that my mind and I just wanted to finish as good as possible, and I knew we were better than Sadler so we could hold him off. You definitely have some more people in your ear when it’s a championship contender behind you when he’s battling your teammate. I knew Jack would be a little happier with me on Monday if we beat Sadler, so you race them all the same, but I think that was good to keep him in our rearview mirror for Stenhouse for the championship there at the end.” HAVE YOU BEEN TOLD HOW MANY RACES IN THE 21 CAR NEXT YEAR? “No. So far I think they have sold 12 to 13 races. How many of those I’ll be racing, I don’t know. Hopefully, all of them, but I think we’re just kind of waiting to see what happens on the Nationwide side first, too. Next year is kind of uncertain right now at this point with a lot at Roush Fenway Racing. If you look at their Cup programs and their Nationwide programs, it’s just really tough right now for everybody. Hopefully, we can pick something up to be full-time Nationwide and then hopefully take on all 12 of those Cup races would be my plan – very similar to this year. But I would love to run for a championship next year in Nationwide. That’s my goal and, hopefully, Roush Fenway will be able to have the funds and partners to help me do that.”

 

RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 6 Blackwell Angus/Cargill Ford Mustang – “We were fast all night, that part was good. The car ran good and did everything we needed it to do and wanted it to do. We could lead some. It was tough when you got behind to really pass and make up time, but if you could start up there, we were really fast. We took two with 25 to go and if the caution doesn’t come out we’re looking wonderful. We’re running second and running really fast times with Kyle, who has four. I’ve just got to get better at restarts. I’ve struggled with that all year and they’ve been getting better on the mile-and-a-halfs until tonight. I just kept spinning the tires and that’s what got us behind there at the end. The car drove the same as it did all night, I just lost way too much time on the restart.” THIS CHAMPIONSHIP LOOKS LIKE IT’S GOING DOWN TO THE LAST RACE. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WHERE THINGS STAND NOW? “It sure is. That two-car team is running good. What’s cool about it is when we battle on the race track we battle hard. He gives me plenty of room. I don’t question that at all, so it’s fun racing with him for this. We feel like we’ve got good tracks left. We felt like Charlotte was gonna be a good one for us and it really was. We were faster than the 2 car all night. We could pass him and we could stay in front of him, so I think our cars are performing where they need to be, I’ve just got to get better on our restarts. Charlotte always seems to be tough for us on restarts for some reason, but I think we’ve got the car to do it with our Mustang.” IF YOU WIN THIS TITLE BY ONE POINT WILL YOU TAKE TREVOR BAYNE OUT TO DINNER OR SOMETHING? HE KEPT ELLIOTT BEHIND HIM AT THE FINISH. “He did. I’ll definitely take him out to dinner, for sure.”

 

CARL EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE – “The night started out pretty poorly due to my running into the wall, but I’d like to think those were all Fastenal parts on the car so they didn’t break. That was good. We fought back from that. Mike did a really good job of convincing me everything was gonna be okay, and it was. And then that last restart, if Trevor hadn’t given me that push down into turn one – if he hadn’t tucked in behind us and put us out there in front – I think we would have had a really hard time holding Kyle off on the top. It was just a really, really good team effort. The car was the best it had been all night at the end, and that’s what we need to win. I’m just really happy we got it done. We’ve got a lot of folks from Fastenal here. We’ve got a big photo shoot coming up on Monday and it’ll be a good time. I’m just glad we won this race.”

 

MIKE BEAM, Crew Chief – WHAT ABOUT THE JOB YOUR CREW DID TONIGHT? “Those guys do a great job. We’ve been together a little over a year now and we won’t give up. Luckily, Carl is the same way and Jack is, and once we saw the damage flattened the right side out, it hadn’t totally configurated the car to where we couldn’t work on it. We tried to seal up the crush panels, but luckily the toe wasn’t too bad. It kind of fixed what we were fighting, so we got lucky there. Carl just drove his guts out there and luckily we won the race.”

 

JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – “I think I’m gonna lose my mind here. We put all the engineering in the cars, and we got all the manufacturing quality variance to make sure that we can make them the same and Carl wrecked his car today, and the car decided that it wouldn’t give up, so I’m gonna talk to that car. I may give that car a kiss tonight before I go to bed. That car had heart. It was bent and it was aerodynamically not sound and it was mechanically not intact, and it stood up under Carl and carried him to a victory. Mike thought about trying to repair the toe-in, but it seemed like it was running pretty good. Mike and I agree that we think maybe the toe-in business we’ve got on our Goodyear tires maybe is not where we need to be now, anyway, this was look as far as the alignment is concerned more like what we had five or 10 years ago. The car liked it and congratulations.”

 

CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – HOW DO YOU VIEW THIS STRING OF GOOD LUCK? AS THOUGH IT’S YOUR YEAR, OR THAT IT’S GOING TO END SOON? “It’s like a roulette wheel, just because it goes one way one time doesn’t mean it’s gonna go the other way the next time. We’ve had our share of bad luck over the years and I don’t think that this means anything for the future. I’m just grateful for the way things went tonight. They went really well in the Cup race last week and at the end of the day, if things would have gone normally, if Brad hadn’t got that flat tire and spun out down there and caused a caution, and if Trevor hadn’t been behind us on the restart – all those things – we wouldn’t have won the race. But all you can do in racing is put yourself in a position to win and if circumstances work out right, you can win. But, no, I don’t feel like I’m owed anything and I surely don’t take our good fortune for granted.” 

 

COULD YOU TELL RIGHT AWAY THAT THE CAR WASN’T ACTING LIKE A CAR THAT HIT THE WALL SHOULD ACT? “Yeah, I was pretty surprised at how fast it was after it hit the fence. I slowed down for a lap or two just to kind of make sure nothing was gonna fall off and we got back going and it was fast. It’s pretty impressive that we could run into the wall that hard and the car would still go. We came down and put tires on it and fixed the body as best they could and it was screaming fast. Track position was really important, though, and it did take us pretty much the entire race to get back up there to the front. I had one bad restart where I got shuffled back, and, luckily, the restarts went well there at the end.”

 

MIKE BEAM CONTINUED – HOW WERE YOU ON FUEL IF YOU HADN’T GOTTEN THE LAST CAUTION? “No, we wouldn’t have even been close. We would have had to stop with probably 10 to go. We were just gonna go as hard as we could. Nobody was gonna make it, so we were probably stop there and get two-and-a-half seconds of fuel or something like that. That was the plan. I know Jack and Scott Graves, our engineer, they pretty much had the same number, so we knew what we needed to do. We were three gallons short. We knew what we needed to do. There was no use in messing around with it and just go as hard as we could. Our pit crew is pretty awesome and Darren Beecher, our gas man, I really stress that if it comes down to two or three seconds what we’re gonna do and he practices that sometimes. It just worked out for us.” 

 

WILL YOU MEASURE THIS CAR WHEN IT GETS BACK TO THE SHOP AND IMPLEMENT IT? “Yes, Monday’s car will be scrutinized as far as the toe-in and exactly if it knocked the housing back and exactly what it did do for Texas or Homestead. We were fortunate. We won Texas in the spring and this car here will go to Homestead, so we’ll definitely take the information and let Scott, our engineer, run it through the computer and calculate exactly what was going on there and see exactly what road we need to go down, especially with this tire here.”

 

CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – WAS IT A CASE OF WHOEVER GOT IN FRONT ON THE LAST RESTART WAS GOING TO WIN? “I don’t know I would have been able to get back around him. I did have a lot of speed in the car there, though, the previous run. I planned on having to pass him those last few laps. I did not plan on getting out front down into turn one, so my plan was to go on the attack and have to pass him and I felt like we had a shot at it, but you never know. It was very, very fortunate that we ended up in front. That made it a lot easier.” 

 

WILL THIS HELP YOU IN TOMORROW’S RACE? “I think the biggest thing running the Nationwide Series helps me with is there are a lot of mistakes you can make in a race car and tonight I made at least one or two. Running into walls usually doesn’t work out that well for you, so that was a good reminder for tomorrow. Sometimes I’ll speed on pit road or do something silly in the Nationwide race and sometimes it gets me a little focused for the Cup race. But the main reason I run the Nationwide Series is because Jack and everyone at Fastenal and Ford give me these cars that are a blast to drive. Mike is fun to work with. I’ve got a great group of guys and it’s just fun. It’s a great training ground for pit crew members and for sponsors like Fastenal that is gonna move up with us to the Cup Series next year, so, in general, it’s just a fun way to spend your Friday or Saturday and there’s no place I’d rather be right now.”

 

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – KYLE SAID TOYOTA HAS A HORSEPOWER DEFICIENCY. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT? “We’ve all got the same parameters. We’ve all got the same deck height. We’ve all got the same cam shaft dimensions and valve sizes. The Ford was disadvantaged in those things for years, until we got the FR9 going last year. So he certainly doesn’t have the advantage, or the Toyotas don’t have the advantage that they had over the Fords before. It would be a travesty, I think, on top of all the money we’re spending on the 2013 car and the fuel injection and on top of the fueling apparatus we’ve got for the fuel cells and dump cans if we spent money building another engine that we don’t need. If Toyota got another engine, then Chevrolet would be due one and Dodge would be due one and Ford would have to do one as well. Right now, there’s no reason to change the engines. They’ve all got the same parameters and it’s a matter of what carburetor jets you put in it and how much ignition timing you put to it.”

 

CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – “I sit in these race cars every week twice a week and been doing it for a long time and we do not have a horsepower advantage. Those are political statements that people make to try to get us back to where we were for years, just like Jack said, at a disadvantage. Right now, we have the same engine – as close as I’ve ever seen it from the driver’s seat. I still think there’s one manufacturer that has a little more engine than us in the Nationwide Series and maybe in the Cup Series, but from the Toyota side, they’re combining with TRD – the Gibbs folks are – to make their engines better next year and there is no reason to give any on the parameters. I believe the engines are as close as they’ve been.”