Daytona 500 Friday Advance Wrap-Up

 

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT SPEEDWEEKS SO FAR, CHANGES TO THE CAR AND YOUR FEEL GOING INTO THE 500 ON SUNDAY. “It has been fun so far. It is exciting and different. We really didn’t know what to expect coming down here. I don’t think any of us expected for it to turn out like it has with the two-car drafts. We are getting used to drafting with two cars against another two cars. We are learning very rapidly. It has been a good Speedweeks for us so far. We haven’t tore anything up yet, which is good. We will see how our 500 engine runs and make sure everything is good with it. I think NASCAR has done a good job with the rule changes to keep the cars under control and the track surface is super nice. They have done a fantastic job. I am really excited for the 500. I think it is going to be different than what we have seen so far.” 

 

HOW DO YOU EXPECT THE 500 TO BE DIFFERENT AND HAVE YOU FIGURED OUT THE STRATEGY TO GET UP TO THE FRONT FROM 26TH? “We had a great 150 Duel race going and unfortunately at the end Carl and I got broken up and that wreck happened and we lost our mojo a little bit. I thought we were going to start toward the front. Like any restrictor plate race, I don’t think it really matters where you are going to start here in the 500. We will work our way up to the front. It will be interesting to see if guys push for 500 miles or not. That will be the interesting part of it. That and if NASCAR closes the grill down any more, which we will have to wait and see. I haven’t heard any rumors of that. How the 500 will be different, that is exactly I guess what I am talking about. I don’t know if guys will be pushing each other for 500 miles or not. Maybe it will be a big pack, stay a huge pack with people jockeying for position. We really don’t know yet and I am curious to see how that plays out.” 

 

KEVIN HARVICK SAID THE TWO GUYS RUNNING SECOND YESTERDAY SHOULD HAVE WON THOSE RACES, BUT THEY WAITED TOO LONG TO MAKE THEIR MOVE. DO YOU THINK THAT IS CORRECT? “I only say one of them because I was in the car for the other one, so I didn’t see a replay of it. I only know how close they were at the finish. The one that I saw, yeah, I felt like the guy should have made his move a little sooner and tried to side draft him to the finish line. A win is a win. It wasn’t like the 500 was on the line. I would have certainly tried it. I would have pulled out to see, if nothing else to learn a little bit for the 500, but I didn’t get that chance.” 

 

IT SEEMED LIKE MOST GUYS COULD GO THREE TO FIVE LAPS HOOKED UP TOGETHER YESTERDAY, BUT TREVOR BAYNE WENT LONGER, YOU WENT LONGER. IT SEEMS LIKE THE FORD CARS HAVE AN EDGE THERE. IS THAT BECAUSE OF THE FR9 ENGINE AND THE OPTIMAL COOLING? “I don’t know if the engine has anything to do with it. We have worked really hard on our cooling package. One thing that I saw yesterday is that it appears that the 31 and 33 cars stayed together for longer or as long as we did and were just a hair faster than us. The two Childress cars and Carl and I, they were a little bit faster than us, just by an ounce. I couldn’t see if they were switching places or what they were doing, so it was hard for me inside the car to pay attention of anything else going on around you other than right against your bumper. I don’t know if we are the best at the cooling package right now or not because I think the Childress cars seemed like they were a tick better than us. Whether it was cooling or however they were doing their deal, maybe just pure speed, they were a tick better. We have worked very hard on it though. We will have to wait and see if there are any more changes prior to the 500.”

 

HOW IS IT THAT YOU DECIDE ON AND FIND DRIVERS THAT YOU WANT TO WORK WITH, PUSH AND BE IN TANDEM WITH AND DO YOU FEEL YOU NEED BACK-UPS IF YOU GET SEPERATED? “You definitely need a back-up because Carl and I got separated yesterday and I was sort of our to lunch at that point. There wasn’t anybody around that I could find. There weren’t any single people left, they were all married. I was kind of left out on that island. The rose ceremony ended quickly for me. You gotta have options. The thing about it is, rarely is it that you all of a sudden lose your dancing partner and there happens to be another one there. That is what happened to me. I lost my dance partner and all of a sudden I am looking around and see that everybody is paired up. There were a few guys back there that weren’t. At the end we tried to get paired up with one of them and he was like ‘I don’t want to race because I am in the 500 already,’ he didn’t want to wreck his car. I respect that. It is just a starting spot. You can go from the front to the back in this race. It doesn’t matter if you start 12th or 20th. It is all kind of the same. You are going to have multiple people you can work with come Sunday.”

 

HOW FREQUENTLY DO YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT YOUR WATER TEMPERATURE GUAGE HERE AS COMPARED TO A TYPICAL NASCAR WEEKEND? “The answer is kind of a two-part question. Restrictor plate racing you have to pay attention to the temperature gauge a lot more often than other race tracks, because you are always in a pack. Now, being against a guy 24-7, you have to just constantly monitor it. That is all I am looking at, pushing him straight and looking up and down at the gauge. I am starting to get a better feel so that I don’t have to look at the gauge as much. I am getting a better feel for how hot it is or should be and how much I have been able to move out and get air in it. I have a pretty good idea now. I don’t have to look at it quite as much. You have to monitor a tremendous about more than a normal restrictor plate race. On a regular weekend we would look at it about every 20 or 30 laps or so just to make sure we don’t have a bag on the grill or something.”

 

HOW MANY DRIVERS CAN YOU LISTEN TO ON THE RADIO OUT THERE? “We have eight channels on our radios. We have our teammates on there as primary channels, but we also have two radios. We have a primary and a spare. We can take that spare and put other channels in it to monitor it. We can only talk and receive on one channel, being in the car. We can’t scan multiple channels, or talk on multiple channels. Lord knows I don’t think I could manage that either. I was on Carl’s channel, so I would be listening to his spotter and Carl and then his crew chief says something that scares me to death because I can’t understand him and I didn’t know what he was saying. It is different. It is something I have never been involved in before. It makes it interesting for us all that is for sure.”

 

DO YOU PUT LIGHTS ON YOUR WATER TEMPERATURE GAUGE? “Yeah. Those are dummy gauges, we like to call them. They turn red when it is over temperature and then it will flash, that is the dumb effect, that you are about to burn it up. They are fun gauges. They help us out a lot. We don’t have to think anymore.”

LEN WOOD, Co-Owner – No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion – WHAT WENT INTO THE DECISION TO TRY AND REPAIR THIS CAR AS OPPOSED TO GOING TO A BACK-UP? “We were standing there looking at it yesterday and some of the guys in Jack’s fab shop that helped build the car to start with said they could fix it. They said they had the parts to do it, so Donnie was trying to weigh out whether we needed practice or not and how much time we could allot to fixing it, so the decision was made to fix it. They had more parts that came down on a truck this morning. They were swapping the 6 out, bringing him another back-up car, so they brought a few more parts. They’re moving along really good on it. We won’t run today. We’ll put the race engine in it probably this afternoon and get ready to hopefully run some tomorrow and then be ready for the 500.” 

 

IS THERE ANY CONCERN ABOUT POSSIBLE DAMAGE TO COMPONENTS UNDER THE CAR THAT YOU CAN’T SEE? “That’s what we did first. We looked around to see if there was any frame damage. Did we bend the front clip? We didn’t hit anything with the wheels, so nothing appears to be wrong with any of that, so that was one of the decisions. There was grass everywhere. Sometimes you see cars almost fold the front end under when they go through the grass. You can bend a front clip really easy like that. Well, when all the grass came he was backwards and he was catching it with the back of the splitter, so he didn’t tear any of that off. When you put the hood down, the hood still fit, so all of that was still good.”  

 

WHAT ARE YOU REPAIRING? “We’re putting a left side on the car from the rear tire forward, and then there’s a little piece on the left-front of the nose that had to be patched and a piece over the right-front fender. On the right side, they had to beat it out just a little bit, but they didn’t cut anything. We’ll probably do some wrapping and painting. We’ll do a combination. We may not have that part finished until after we run tomorrow. The main thing will be getting it back together and get out there to run a few laps tomorrow. What you’ve got down here is what you’ve got. It’s not like we’re gonna go out there and pick up another quarter-of-a-second by trying this or that. It’s gonna be a lot about who your partner is on Sunday.” 

 

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF TREVOR’S PERFORMANCE YESTERDAY? “We were really impressed because on Wednesday I don’t think anybody wanted to draft with a rookie. It was a little bit frustrating to start because we couldn’t get going, but then late in practice Kyle Busch said he would run with us. They ran about six laps and did the swap and Kyle told him what to do on the exchange and how to drag the brake. He helped Trevor out a little bit, but he only had about six laps of two-car drafting before that race yesterday. In December, we ran 400 miles of drafting practice in that tire test, but none of it was touching anybody. Nobody did that until we came back for the January test. At that test, we were doing single-car runs trying to get speed in the car, so we’ll see what he’s got on Sunday.”

 

 

GLEN WOOD, Owner – No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion – HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN COMING TO DAYTONA? “I started coming here in 1947 and this makes the 65^th straight year I’ve been down here. I came here for the first time with Bernice’s dad and brother in 1947 in a little ’44 Ford. We just sort of started going to races back at home after the war, and I asked them about going down to Florida and they agreed. That was the start and we decided to go back the next year and I’ve done it every year since then. I’m lucky that I’ve felt good and haven’t been sick to where I couldn’t go during this time, but the other thing about coming down here is I’ve always driven. I’ve come down here before by plane for the Fourth of July race. I haven’t been to every one of those, but I have been here for all of the 500s.”

 

HOW HAS THIS AREA CHANGED? “I remember when there wasn’t a track here and you’d come by 92 and see stumps rooted up out of the ground because it was just wilderness out here. It’s just like you see in a lot of places where there are swamps, palm trees and water. I’m sure Big Bill noticed that it was getting built up on the beach with houses right along where the track was, and that was a big change. There got to be several houses in that last two miles down to the lighthouse and it got so that they would have to tell them, ‘You can’t go out. If you’ve got to go anywhere, get out of here now and don’t come back until tonight.’”

 

YOU RACED ON THE BEACH. WHAT WAS IT LIKE? – “You would start down by the lighthouse and I can remember the first year I ran it there were more than 100 cars in the race. Can you imagine that many starting and then realizing that we’ve all got to slow down and make that turn at the North Turn (where the North Turn Restaurant is now). What they’d do is they would turn off the ocean and get back up on the highway right there and go two miles down toward the lighthouse. I don’t know how many of us ran over the bank down on the other end. One of the guys asked me one time, ‘How do you keep from running over the bank?’ First thing, when you would come over the last rise, you could see the turn so I would pump my brakes a little bit to see if I’ve got some. Back then, it was common to have a vibration break a brake line and you wouldn’t have any brakes, so that was the worst thing you could do going down in there without any brakes. So, I would pump the brakes and realize the turn was coming up and just slowed down. Curtis Turner was the best that ever was on the beach. I’d say he would throw it sideways for at least 100 feet and it was the prettiest drift you ever saw coming into the North Turn and he never did go wobbling out like a lot of them. He went out of there just as pretty every time. He is one of the legends over here from the very start. I didn’t drive quite like Curtis did and even though I’d have some drift once you got into it, he was just the one you had to watch. He enjoyed doing that on every dirt or half-mile track, but when it got serious and he needed to tighten up to keep things together, he’d drive it a little more stable.”

 

 

DOUG YATES, Head Engine Builder, Roush Yates Engines – CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW THE FR9 IS WORKING AND ITS COOLING ISSUES? “First, I want to say I’m really proud of the Ford FR9 by Roush Yates. We’ve done a lot of work on this engine and I think we all saw how the performance was at the end of the year last year by winning a couple a races there, and to come to Speedweeks and be fast – we didn’t sit on the pole, but Trevor was third, and then to be really fast in the 150s and be able to push that long says we’ve done our homework, not only on power but also the cooling system, so I’m really proud of that. Obviously, it’s in the driver’s hands. They’ve got to watch their gauges closer than ever. It’s up to the driver to get some nose to the air, but, as you could see, Matt could push the 29 for a long time yesterday. I think he could have pushed him the whole race just by ducking out a little bit, so, from that standpoint, we’re really proud. I think NASCAR has done a good job by backing off on the restrictor plate size a little bit. RPM was a huge concern for us. The Bud Shootout was not a sustainable pace for us and I think we would have had issues if we tried to run that fast for 500 miles. We were seeing 9100-9200 RPM, which is faster than we turn at Fontana and Michigan and places like that with a restrictor plate engine. So the challenge with this plate engine is we have to qualify at 8200 and race at 9200, so kudos to NASCAR for backing that off a little bit, which, I think, will give us some comfort for Sunday.” 

 

HOW MUCH OF A THRASH WAS IT TO MAKE THE CHANGES AND HAVE CONFIDENCE YOU’LL BE ABLE TO MAKE 500 MILES? “On the engine side we went home Sunday and our engineering staff does a great job. We had an engine set up with the water system and went through a lot of different iterations and I think we made some really good decisions coming down here. It’s a typical Daytona. You never know what you’re gonna get, but this is our Super Bowl and I’m excited to be here and getting ready to go out and race in what we all see as probably the start of something different for the Daytona 500s as we know them.” 

 

TOYOTA SAYS IT’S AT A DISADVANTAGE BECAUSE IT’S OLD TECHNOLOGY. DO YOU HAVE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY IN TERMS OF COOLING?  “I think we’ve done a great job. We got a lot of criticism because we were the last guys out with our engine, but it seems being the last guys out we combined all the best technology into one and I wouldn’t expect anything else from Toyota to hear something like that. Maybe you should ask Jack about that. He’d probably have some good comments for you (laughing).” 

 

DOES WATER TEMP MAKE THAT MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE OR IS THE ENGINE DESIGN MORE IMPORTANT? “It’s a huge difference. You design the engine to operate in a certain range and when we came down here that range was already pretty high, but when they put the PRV (pressure relief valve) on the cooling system that limited how much pressure the system could see, that made a whole new ballgame. Now it’s really all about what the cylinder head and the block see for pressure and temperature. That’s the critical part. If you start boiling in that combustion chamber, then you have issues. I think, along with Ford, we’ve done a great job on our engine design and, hopefully, they’re saying the same things after Sunday.” 

 

CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT THE COOLING SYSTEM WITH THE FR9 THAT MAKES IT MORE EFFECTIVE? “I think it’s a combination. What we’ve done good as a group with Roush Fenway and Robbie Reiser and all the guys is work on our system as a combination. Maybe the other guys have or haven’t, but, together with the radiator and the header tank and the engine, we’ve designed it to run hotter and to have less grille opening. We saw that from the first day we rolled it on the track. It’s hard to speak to exactly what everybody else is doing, but the way we’ve looked at ours is it’s a system and let’s work on it that way.” 

 

WHAT’S YOUR OPINION ON ALL THESE CHANGES? SOME FEEL THE LAST COUPLE MONTHS OF TESTING HAS BEEN A WASTE. “We chose not to come and work on something that we felt like we couldn’t race. I saw some guys working on systems that were unconventional, so we stuck to try to work on speed in the race cars, try to work on the package and the things that we knew that we could race good, and I think we made a good decision on that. We’ll see how it turns out Sunday.” 

 

DOES IT MATTER WHERE THE GRILLE OPENING IS AND WHETHER IT’S UP OR DOWN? “The noses are the same, but different. We’ve studied that in the wind tunnel and the positioning does matter. Also, where the opening is for a single-car run versus when you’re running right behind somebody – where the air is – is different, so the guys have worked hard on that, so the opening position does make some difference.” 

 

WILL IT BE HIGHER FOR SUNDAY OR LOWER? “You guys can look at the cars and answer that for yourself.” 

 

ARE THERE TEAMS IN THE TUNNEL NOW TESTING THAT SORT OF THING? “We went back in our data from the tunnels and we had tested some of those configurations and felt like we understood it pretty well when they changed the rules, but the fun part about being in NASCAR, and I do sympathize with those guys because they came here and were running super-fast and had to really react on the fly, but I heard Dale Inman say something the other day which I thought was really cool. He said, ‘There’s gonna be a race and there’s gonna be a winner,’ and we just want to get ourselves in position to do that.” 

 

HOW DO YOU EXPECT THE 500 TO BE DIFFERENT THAN THESE SPRINT RACES? “I think you get 43 guys out there, I’d hate to be the 43^rd guy because he’s not gonna have a partner, but, hopefully, we don’t have that in our camp, but I think it’s gonna be more of the same. I think we’re gonna see some two guys and one of the guys will spin out like we’ve seen. You saw the closing rate of the 20 car to the pack yesterday. That’s something guys are gonna have to really be aware of and make sure they’re on top of that so they don’t get themselves in trouble, but it’s gonna be interesting. At the end of the day, some cars are faster and some drivers do a better job drafting. At the end of the day, you’re still gonna see the best guys rise to the occasion.” 

 

ARE WE GOING TO SEE SOME ENGINES BLOW? “I hope not. As an engine builder, I think the situation is controlled for everybody, but we’ve seen some and we probably will, especially if the drivers let the temperatures get out of control or if the cooling systems exceed their capacity and then have to come back down and operate the rest of the day, which is really tricky and something we have to be on top of.” 

 

HARVICK SAID HE THINKS HIS ENGINE BUILDERS ARE TERRIFIED. ARE YOU? “As an engine builder you live a little on the nervous side anyway and expecting the unexpected. I’m anxious to get into the race and get through the race and then go from there, but I like what I see so far. I like the fact that our cars can push so long and just as long as our drivers do their job right and position ourselves at the end where we’ve got a shot at this thing, I think we’re gonna be good.” 

 

DO YOU THINK THE FR9 HAS BETTER COOLING OR COULD SOME OF THE OTHER MANUFACTURERS BE SANDBAGGING? “Just the talk in the garage and listening, it’s interesting the guys that approach you and ask you questions when you’re doing well, so it’s clear that our guys are doing a good job with the cooling systems and the engines are doing a good job. Now, I think it’s just up to us getting these cars ready and going out there and being smart about it.” 

 

HOW MUCH EMPHASIS WAS PUT ON COOLING WITH THE FR9? “If you go back through all of our press releases, the cooling system is one of the biggest things that we focused on. Right now, if you can push somebody longer or have a couple horsepower, you’re gonna choose to push somebody longer today, so I think that was a good choice and it was by design. We didn’t know that this day would come and we’d be racing two-by-two, but I think the design group and Ford did a good job in working on that part of the engine.” 

 

WAS THE FR9 DESIGNED WITH PACK RACING AND RESTRICTOR PLATE RACING IN MIND? “No. It was just designed so we could run more tape on the front end – more downforce and less drag was really the intent and today we’re in a situation where that’s pretty important.” 

 

IT LOOKS LIKE THIS IS THE STYLE OF RACING WE’LL SEE HERE AT DAYTONA FOR A FEW YEARS. “I would say the cat is out of the bag. You even see the Nationwide guys over there trying to do the same thing, so it’s clear two cars are faster than one. Everybody has asked the question, ‘Why didn’t we do this before?’ But I think the car, the track, the situation has presented itself to do this. We saw it at Talladega a little bit, but not to this extreme and now as soon as they start the race you’re picking your partner and you’re hooking up.” 

 

WERE THE GRILLE OPENINGS DIFFERENT SIZES FOR EACH MANUFACTURER OR THE SAME SIZE? “It’s been standardized. They were larger. If you watched the Bud Shootout, there was no tape on the front end of these cars. The guys were just running max opening because when you’re pushing, all you want to do is keep it as cool as long as you can, so they closed that up to limit that. So far, it doesn’t look like it’s had the effect they thought it would. It’s the same for everyone.” 

 

IS THERE ANYTHING THAT CAN BE DONE TO ELIMINATE THE TWO-BY-TWO RACING? “I don’t know. The track is so smooth and they did such a nice job, and the bumpers line up, that’s probably a better question for a chassis guy than me.” 

 

DALE JR. DOESN’T LIKE THIS KIND OF RACING AND SUGGESTED A BIG TEST AT DAYTONA OR TALLADEGA, TO TRY STUFF ON THE ROOF AND CHANGE THIS STYLE OF RACING. WHAT DO YOU THINK? “That’s the guy that was on the pole? (laughing) You like what you do well at and what you excel at, and I think our guys in the 150s yesterday did a great job. We did everything but win the race, so I think if you ask our guys today, they liked it. If you ask the Hendrick guys, they don’t like it as much today.  It’s racing. You’re never gonna make everybody happy, but, at the end of the day, you’re here to get an advantage, you’re here to try and win the race and I like our position as Ford Motor Company and Roush Yates Engines, so we’ll go out and try to do a good job with it.” 

 

DO YOU EXPECT ANYMORE CHANGES? “We try to stay really close with NASCAR on where they’re going and what they’re feeling, and I think they like what they saw yesterday and I think that’s what we’ll have on Sunday.” 

 

HAVE YOU LEARNED ANYTHING FROM THE NEW FUEL BLEND? “What we’re seeing is it takes more laps on the engine to really read the spark plugs. Obviously, we try to do as good a job as we can at the shop understanding the air-fuel ratios and from the test, but, still, you want to get that plug check and do that last minute tune-up and it just takes longer to get a build-up on the plug, which is a little bit of a learning curve in itself.” 

 

WHAT IS THE FUEL MILEAGE HERE? “Our fuel mileage is somewhere in the range of 6.0, and it really depends on if you’re out front and you’re pushing or if you’re getting pushed because your mileage is gonna vary.” 

 

WHAT IS YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF HOW MANY LAPS OTHER MANUFACTURERS CAN PUSH? IS IT 3-5 LAPS? IT SEEMS THE FORDS CAN PUSH LONGER. “I think we all kind of watched the same thing and that’s what it appeared like yesterday.” 

 

IT LOOKED LIKE YOU GUYS COULD PUSH THE ENTIRE RACE? “That would be a nice scenario.” 

 

HOW MUCH OF IT IS THE DRIVER DOING THE RIGHT THING AT THE RIGHT TIME? “The driver is huge like always. This is a driver and equipment sport. The driver is our quarterback, our all-star, and it matters. The best drivers, the ones that figure it out the quickest are gonna excel and the other guys are gonna have to play catch up. I think yesterday you could see Harvick and Matt really did a nice job and Greg and Carl did a nice job. Hopefully, those guys will do the same on Sunday.”

 

 

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT BEING IN DAYTONA SO FAR, THE RULES CHANGES, THE CARS AND WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED GOING INTO SUNDAY? “I think we have all kind of seen what is going on with the two-car drafts and we got to run yesterday, Greg and I had a lot of time in the Gatorade race to try to learn about that and I feel like we did. I don’t think anyone really knows how the race is going to be on Sunday. Have you guys heard if they are talking about any rules changes yet? Nobody has said anything? I don’t think we are going to have much more time on the track to look at what things are going to be like. We have seen what it is going to look like, generally. I feel like if that is how we are going to race, then we are prepared.” 

 

WITH THE APPARENT EMPHASIS OF THE NEW ENGINE ON COOLING PROPERTIES, DO YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT BEING ABLE TO DRAFT LONGER BASED ON WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN OUT THERE? “I feel like Matt (Kenseth) showed us in the first qualifier, by pushing the 29 car, showed us what could be done by sticking the nose out there a little bit. I did not push anyone for a long period of time, so I didn’t get to see the temperatures and how it worked. I believe that one of the positive things about this FR9 that I didn’t really think much about until we got down here, is that it cools better or at least seems to. That could be really beneficial for us on Sunday. I still don’t think we have taxed these engines long enough to know where the breaking point is. We will find that out Sunday. Guys will be running right at the upper limit of temperature and RPM’s and I think engine failures will become a big part of the race. That FR9 engine seems to be one that can stay cooler, which is great.” 

 

IT HAS BEEN A BUSY OFF SEASON, HOW GOOD WILL IT FEEL TO GET OUT ON THE TRACK SUNDAY AND HAVE THE SEASON OFFICIALLY BEGIN? “This season kind of snuck up on me. We had a really busy off season with a lot going on at the shop and traveling with my family. It feels like it has come really fast. I am excited though for it to get started. I am really excited about hopefully getting out of Daytona with a good finish and then Phoenix; we could not be going to a better track for us right off the bat. Vegas should also be great. I don’t know about you guys, but there is something about this season that feels different to me. It feels like all the teams and drivers and NASCAR and even the media are all positive. There is a lot of positive energy and coming off last season I am really excited about this one.” 

 

YOU MENTIONED PHOENIX, BUT THEY ARE GOING TO CHANGE THAT TRACK AFTER THE UPCOMING RACE, WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THAT? “I will be out there laying in front of the excavating equipment trying to get them to leave it. I really like that surface a lot. Everything they have done out there through the years has been better. The way they changed the outside wall off of turn two was good change at the time. I really liked that wall, I thought it was neat. I feel like the pavement will be positive. No matter how hard you try, I don’t think you can mess that race track up. It is the right size, the sun beats down and it gets slippery. It will be neat with the new pavement as well.” 

 

WHAT IS THE MAXIMUM SAFE SPEED FOR THESE CARS? “That is a good question. I got that feeling driving with someone pushing me that if we had a little trouble, like let’s say I drive through turn one and blow a left rear tire and the guy behind me doesn’t realize it quick enough, I think there is a dynamic with two cars with one being sideways is bad. We saw that with Brad and I, unfortunately, with the car pushing the car that is sideways it does something to the aerodynamics and makes it more likely the front car will go airborne. With these two car drafts it concerns me a little bit that it could be more likely to happen. I think NASCAR has answered that by trying to keep the overall top speeds down to try to answer that. You just don’t know though, it is all about how the cars are positioned.” 

 

ARE YOU SPENDING MORE TIME PAYING ATTENTION TO THE GAUGES IN YOUR CAR AND HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO HAVE A DRAFTING PARTNER? “It is all there is. Yesterday the most important thing was the guy that was pushing you or that you were pushing. In my case, Greg was pushing me. That was the most important thing and there is nothing more important. If you come apart or are not working well with that guy and really helping one another to do the best you can together, then you are going to have no chance at winning. This race, I believe, is truly going to be the biggest exercise in team work that we have ever had to be a part of. You can’t just jump ship and go, not like a pack of cars is, you have got to pick a guy and work with that guy. You are going to have to work with him for the last 10 or 15 laps to be in a position to win. As far as the gauges, I have never messed around with my radios and stared at my gauges and looked in my mirror ever at a race track. You have to pay attention. This will be a much more draining race. Much more difficult to keep the attention level where it needs to be to avoid disaster.” 

 

KEVIN HARVICK SAID THAT HE WOULD PREFER TO BE IN SECOND PLACE COMING TO THE FINISH LINE, YET ALL THREE OF THE RACES HAVE BEEN WON BY THE GUY BEING PUSHED, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON BEING BEHIND OR IN FRONT? “I think you want to be leading if there are a bunch of cars racing toward the finish line. For instance, if I am pushing Greg on Sunday and we are battling another two car group or two different groups, six cars total and we are two of them, I am going to just keep pushing. I want my teammate to win the 500 more than I want for both of us to lose to somebody. If you are out there by yourself and have that lead, then I think what Kurt (Busch) did by holding off Regan, that is not going to be the norm. It is going to be very difficult for the guy in front to hold off a guy in second if it is just the two of them. It all depends on the situation at the end of the race, if it is a whole mess of cars or just two.” 

 

GUYS ARE TALKING ABOUT NEEDING PARTNERS AND FRIENDS OUT THERE, HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT THAT EXACTLY? “You definitely want friends for sure. It also can change in a heartbeat. Yesterday, Greg and I got separated and I got lined up with David and all of a sudden David is the guy that I had to work with. That is likely to happen on Sunday too. You could work with someone for three hours and get stuck with someone else the last 15 minutes. You better get to like that guy really quick.” 

 

IF YOU ARE PUSHING A CHEVY DOWN THE LAST FEW LAPS LIKE BAYNE WAS WITH GORDAN YESTERDAY, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR DEAL WITH THAT? “Good question. I can just picture Jack Roush if I finish second and push some other manufacturer across the finish line. He probably isn’t going to want to say much to me. I guess you have to make those decisions at the last minute. There is going to be a lot of thinking and break power being used the last mile of this race and guys determining how much they really like that guy in front of them or that manufacturer or car owner. There is a lot to it. It really at the end of the day, for two guys to do well, they have to go with one another almost to the very end.” 

 

HOW DOES A DECISION GET MADE IF YOU ARE PUSHING SOMEONE OF WHEN TO SWITCH AND TAKE YOUR TURN IN THE LEAD, AND DO YOU LIKE THIS STYLE OF RACING? “Coming to grips with the fact that you might not be the guy to win the race is tough. Jamie pushed Kurt first in the Bud Shootout I think, so that is a case from the outside looking in, that is pretty interesting. He just said that he was going to stick with it and push him and he wrote that race off. Now Kurt owes him a little bit and maybe that pays off on Sunday. You have to think bigger than this one race. You have to know we are coming back here in July, going to Talladega, come back here and have the same type of racing next year, and all of that makes that decision easier. It makes it easier to push a guy and know that maybe next time it will be reciprocated. Now I know it is the Daytona 500, but if you always abandon ship, trust me I have tried, I used to be the first guy to jump out of line and go for me, but pretty soon guys won’t work with you because they know you will jump ship and that doesn’t pay off in the long run. You are investing in future partners. Right now I am sitting here at this nice desk and once I have a helmet on sitting behind the wheel looking at the checkered flag at the Daytona 500 I think we all might think differently. Do I like this style of racing? I like racing where the driver and crew chief and the way you drive the race car are the things that dictate whether you win or not. This style of racing is not my favorite. I do think that the way the car is driving now where two guys can separate themselves I feel like there is a lot more control. I would much rather have that than just running around in a big pack of cars. I think this is a really big step forward, in my opinion, for restrictor plate racing.” 

 

THE GOODYEAR GUYS SAID THERE WAS HARDLY ANY WEAR ON THE TIRES AFTER 60 LAPS. HOW DOES THAT WEIGH INTO YOUR STRATEGY? “I guess if wear is not a problem then we just have to worry about temperature. I haven’t heard anything about blistering or anything, so I think you will see guys go as long as they can and somebody will test the limits of the tire. I hope we aren’t the ones to find the limit. Goodyear has done a great job and obviously has a great tire and the surface is nice and it is all working out well. I don’t think that will be a big factor in the race.” 

 

YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT HOW MENTALLY GRUELING THIS RACE WILL BE. MENTALLY, WHAT DO YOU GUYS HAVE TO DEAL WITH AND WHAT IS THE THOUGHT PROCESS THAT IS SO GRUELING? “You have to think about so many things. Communication with the guy pushing you or the guy you are pushing. For instance, Greg was pushing me and the guys wrecked in front of us, so I am yelling in my radio to slow down hoping Greg hears it. There is that and the anxiety that goes with that. We have to monitor the temperature of the car and run in a position so the guy behind you can get his nose out. You try the best you can to keep guys from breaking you apart and all that stuff. You are thinking essentially about two cars instead of your own which is a different style of racing which is much tougher.

 

 

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Crown Royal Black Ford Fusion – CAN YOU TELL US HOW THINGS HAVE GONE FOR YOU SO FAR LEADING UP TO SUNDAY? “It has gone alright. Saturday was disappointing because we didn’t get in the right place and had a disappointing finish. Yesterday was good. I think that was the best finish we have had in a 150. We were in position to have a shot at the win and the late caution took us out to fourth. I was happy with that. The car is in one piece and we had good speed and worked out most of the things that we could work out with the way the track is and the rules and all. Everything seemed to be going pretty good and it has been pretty smooth so far.” 

 

CAN YOU PUT INTO WORDS WHAT IT WAS LIKE COMING BACK TO DAYTONA THE YEAR AFTER YOU WON IT? “It was fun. We came down a little early and did some media stuff which was fun because when we came back last year, well it has been almost two years since we won a race now, we are kind of on a dry spell. It was fun to come back and be the defending champion. You got to think about the year before and it put me in a better mood for the season. It is fun whenever you can win a race, especially one as big as the Daytona 500. The sport is still more of a what have you done for me lately deal. It is more about what we can do today and tomorrow and down the road.” 

 

YESTERDAY YOU WERE ABLE TO DRAFT FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME. WHAT IS THAT ATTRIBUTED TO IN YOUR MIND? “I don’t think our stuff is any different or we have any advantage over anybody necessarily. There are probably a few circumstances where I got some air in there and kept it kind of cool or maybe didn’t take care of that engine as much as I would the 500 engine because I knew we were going to change engines anyway and I didn’t care if it got overheated. It was more important to me to keep our car in position and get a decent starting spot for Sunday. I didn’t want to be in the back and get wrecked. I wasn’t as careful with it as I should have been. I don’t know how you get away from two car drafts, whether they are good, bad or indifferent. You kind of knew it was going to be that way since the last Talladega race and Jeff Burton and I got in front and kept swapping positions until we finally couldn’t get back together for whatever happened there. That is the way the ending the last couple of races there have been. You knew when they paved this place that handling wasn’t going to matter for a lot of years. With these cars and the way they are set up, two cars pushing each other is faster than a big group of cars and that is what everybody is going to try to figure out how to do.” 

 

AS A DRIVER, CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE IN THE PAVEMENT FROM LAST YEAR TO THIS YEAR? “It is totally different. The old pavement was like driving down a gravel road and the new pavement is like driving down a freshly paved road with your street car. It is really that extreme. With the old pavement you could run wide open for five to 12 laps and then you had to start letting off the gas and it was almost like a plate race for 5 or 10 laps and a big track race after that where you had to start hitting marks exactly right. Toward the end of the run a lot of people would be lifting and you could pass by yourself. It was a lot different race. There is so much grip right now and they are so good at making asphalt now so I think it will be like that for a long time. Handling is such a non issue that you can run 210 or 215 at least before you have to start getting off the gas. It is going to be more of a Talladega style race.” 

  

CAN YOU TELL IF THE MOMENTUM ROUSH FENWAY HAD THE SECOND HALF OF LAST SEASON HAS CARRIED OVER TO THIS YEAR? “I think you have to at least get through Phoenix, Las Vegas and probably a couple races further than that down the road to really see where you are at compared to your competition. I do feel like we are prepared for Daytona. Although qualifying was disappointing, it seemed like we had good speed out there. I don’t think that will matter a whole lot because of the draft, but I would still rather have a fast car than a slow one. People will want to hook up with you more if you are fast. At the end of last year we got much stronger and finished the season on a good note with Carl winning a couple races and Greg winning a couple races. We were more competitive toward the end of the year even though we didn’t win, so that has our hopes up for this year.” 

 

HOW DID YOU GUYS ARRIVE AT YOUR PRACTICE DECISIONS FOR TODAY? “We didn’t, Jimmy did. Basically we just changed engines today and put a couple laps on our 500 engine to make sure there were no vibrations or oil leaks or anything. Tomorrow we will practice a little bit to make sure the cooling system and everything is okay. Try to draft just a little bit. We did the tire test for two days and the other test for three days and with the amount of grip you have here, there are no handling issues to work on. Once you get the car trimmed out and the platform right and the aero and all that stuff, there is really not a lot to work on. The rules are pretty tight and they don’t allow you to work on much, so there isn’t much reason to put a bunch of laps in practice. I don’t think a big group is going to win the race, so I don’t think you want to go out there and get behind 15 cars to see how your car reacts. Maybe you want to push and look for a car your car reacts well with and go out there and race.” 

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK NASCAR COULD HAVE DONE TO PREVENT THIS TYPE OF RACING AND DO YOU THINK NASCAR MIGHT CHANGE ANYTHING BEFORE TALLADEGA? “First of all I don’t know that it is a bad thing. We had a really good finish to the shootout. It is just different. Once they paved it, we knew this is how it would be like. I guess if they don’t like the product and want to change it I don’t know what they would be. I guess you would have to go test stuff at Talladega to see. I don’t know that there is a lot more they can do this week to get a big group together, although I will say that in the second 150 there was a bigger group and the cars got shuffled and didn’t lose a couple spots, they lost eight or 10 spots. I think when you get twice as many cars out there; the potential is there to have a lot bigger pack and more jockeying for position. I think you will get some groups in the front that get locked up, but I think you will have a lot more action and a bigger pack. 

 

WAS THERE ANY DROP OFF IN TIRES YESTERDAY AND HOW FAR DO YOU THINK YOU CAN RUN ON THEM? “I think you could run the whole race on one set of tires with absolutely zero issues. There have been no tire issues at all. I think people will get tires just because if you are getting 16 or 18 or 14 second of fuel, or you get a yellow then you might as well put tires on. I think that honestly you could go the whole 500 miles on one set of tires because we didn’t see any wear at all.” 

 

NASCAR HAS BEEN TALKED ABOUT IN TERMS OF TV RATINGS AND LENGTH OF RACES. WHAT CAN HAPPEN IN THIS RACE ON SUNDAY TO REVERSE THAT TALK? “How do I answer this one? I think the product is pretty good. Last year I think was the closest Chase in history and there were a lot of really exciting races. Texas comes to mind. There was a fight and a guy flipping off an official and two lead changes in the last two laps. There was a little bit of everything. I think the product has been really good. As far as being picked apart, you guys do that. The media writes the stories. I know you guys don’t create TV ratings and attendance numbers, but you guys do that more than we do and that is your job. I think that last year the racing was pretty good and pretty competitive. The Chase was competitive right down to the end. I know we have a different point system this year, but I thought last year was good with different winners. Denny dominated most the season and Jimmy came on at the end and won again. I thought that was pretty exciting.” 

 

HOW IS KATIE DOING AND TO WHAT DEGREE HAS THE IMPENDING BIRTH AFFECTED YOUR SPEEDWEEKS? “She is doing pretty good. I am probably doing better than she is, but she is doing alright. It hasn’t affected me yet. I told her to wait until Monday and she always listens to me, so I am not too worried about it. I hope it will be next week. I am not a woman, but I would assume when you get to the end of a pregnancy that you are ready for it to be over. Hopefully that happens next week when we are getting ready to go to Phoenix.”