Allmendinger Paces Ford With Ninth-Place Finish in Phoenix Cup Race

9^th – AJ Allmendinger

12^th – Matt Kenseth

16^th – Marcos Ambrose

20^th – Greg Biffle

22^nd – David Gilliland

24^th – Mike Skinner

25^th – Tony Raines

28^th – Carl Edwards

36^th – David Ragan

39^th – Travis Kvapil

40^th – Trevor Bayne

 

TREVOR BAYNE – No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion (Finished 40^th) – “I don’t know what happened. We were battling with the 13 car a little bit and I don’t know if it was the 38 car behind us or who, but something happened. Either I came up or he poked his nose in there at the last second on the top of us getting into one. After that, there was nothing we could do. I tried to stay in the gas and keep it turning, but it just backed into the wall. That’s tough coming off of our high at Daytona to come to this, but we’ve got a great race team behind us. We’ll be back at Vegas. I hate it ended this way this weekend, but we’ll be back.”

 

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Finished 28^th) – “I’m not exactly sure what happened. I’ll have to talk to Kyle about it. I thought at first he was just frustrated and he turned left to get back in line and he didn’t know I was there, but I watched the tape and I think he really did get loose. He hit me hard and I was left with nothing. I got rammed to the infield. If I would have turned right, I don’t think I could have made the corner to clear that curb, so that’s just the way it is. That is the fastest car at the race track. It’s just a shame it’s on jack stands. We’ll get it put back together, though, and we’ll get all the points we can. We can win this championship. I’ve never had a run like this where our cars are this fast. We’ve just got to keep digging.”

 

TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 38 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion (Finished 39^th) – “We were a couple rows back from it and I saw somebody get sideways way up by the wall. Everybody checked up and I thought I had it cleared and somebody came from the infield and just KO’d me in the left rear and went around for the ride and hit the walal pretty hard on the inside. It’s unfortunate. We had a pretty fast Long John Silver’s Ford. We were up in the mix and trying to make some gains on it. We still had some work to do to get the car handling better, but it was a positive day for us even though we’re sitting here in the garage wrecked.”

 

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 36^th) – “We just blew a right-front tire. We got caught up in that big wreck on the back straightaway and our UPS team did a great job of getting our car back out. We stayed on the lead lap and we were gonna be able to make something out of the day, and then we just cut a right-front tire. We were probably within 10 or 15 laps of pitting and I don’t know if we ran over something or something was rubbing, but we were just riding around and the right-front went down.” DID YOU HAVE ANY WARNING? “No, we were actually racing Montoya pretty hard and I was feeling good. We were probably right there in the top 20 and I was like, ‘Man, our car is gonna be OK. We’ve got a good car and we don’t have much damage,’ but it just blew out of turn four and hit pretty hard.”

 

AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 43 Valvoline Ford Fusion (Finished 9^th) – “It was all right. I don’t know why this race kind of works out like that. You always get some yellows early and guys doing two tires and no tires. We got in the back and got in that wreck where we got a little bit of damage, but I don’t think it really affected the car. I felt like, overall, we had a pretty good car. We were on a fine line with the long runs. We would either be really good or we’d be a little bit loose and struggle, so I felt like if we could have stayed green a long time, we would have been really good. There at the end it was a good battle with Kurt. I was trying to get him for eighth, but, all in all, to start with an 11^th and 9^th with as many wrecks that we’ve been in and not actually gotten wrecked is all right. We’ll take it.” IS THAT WHAT THIS TEAM NEEDED TO START THE YEAR? “Definitely. You always want a little bit more and you always think you can get a little bit more. I’m not sure where that puts us in points, but there were a lot of guys ahead of us that had a lot of trouble. All in all, Vegas is not the best race track for us, so to have two good finishes going in to that and build something off of it should be good.”

MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 9 Stanley Ford Fusion (Finished 16^th) – “We got a finish. We got in a hole after Daytona and we just had to finish today. It was a good first day and a good learning experience with Todd Parrott. I know I’ve got great stuff and I know I can really do well, we just had to get a start somewhere and today was a pretty good start.” HOW WAS THE DAY OVERALL? “Our communication was really good. We stayed calm and I felt fresh in the car. We’ve got a good vibe going. We just had to get a start. We had one bad run and it was a long one where we went a lap down. It happened towards the end of the race and we just couldn’t get it back.”

 

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Finished 12^th) – “We didn’t really perform that well. On long runs we were really good, but other than that we just really struggled, especially on restarts and short runs. That really hurt us.” WHAT HAPPENED IN THE INCIDENT WITH VICKERS? “To be honest with you, I didn’t know there was an incident. I was surprised when I got out of the car and everybody said he was mad at me. I’m not sure for what. Maybe I’ll watch the replay and see something different, but from where I was he kind of held me close to the middle of the corner on the restart, which you should, and I came off the corner and I never even felt us touch. I know I left plenty of room to the wall and I looked in my mirror and saw everybody crashing. I really don’t have any idea. Maybe I’ll watch it and see something else, but I really don’t know what he’s talking about.”

 

DAVID GILLILAND – No. 34 Taco Bell Ford Fusion (Finished 22^nd) – “Our team has definitely taken strides. I’m really disappointed. I felt like we had a better car than that today. We got involved in one of those accidents and kind of messed up the left-front fender and front end. Overall, we’ve made huge gains for Front Row Motorsports at these type of tracks. Last year we were terrible at these type of tracks and from the time we unloaded this weekend we were competitive, so I’m real proud of that. We’re gonna take what we learned here, hopefully not get tore up in the next one, and bring it home a little better, but it was a good points day overall for what we’re trying to do here.” IS IT ALL HAVING THE FR9 ENGINE OR OTHER THINGS AS WELL? “Oh yeah, the FR 9 engine is awesome. I just told Peter today, we got in that accident, but last year we left here thinking we could use a little more motor to run with these guys and we needed to upgrade that with Roush Yates and we did that this year. That is no longer an issue and that really feels good coming to the race track knowing that you have the power to run up front.”