Biffle Survives Last-Lap Melee to Finish Seventh in Phoenix NASCAR Race

7^th – Greg Biffle

11^th – Carl Edwards

14^th – Matt Kenseth

16^th – Aric Almirola

18^th – Marcos Ambrose

22^nd – Casey Mears

29^th – Timmy Hill

33^rd – David Ragan

36^th – David Gilliland

37^th – Josh Wise

38^th – Michael McDowell

40^th – David Reutimann

 

DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Loan Mart Ford Fusion – “That was really big, probably the hardest hit I’ve ever had. It blew a right-front tire. We were struggling a little bit with the car, which wasn’t handling the way we needed it to at the start of the race. It was still a bit tight and we were just biding our time for the next pit stop where we could come in and work on it. It’s too bad. I didn’t know you could hit that hard on a mile race track. That was a tough one.”

 

DAVID RAGAN – No. 34 Barrett Jackson Ford Fusion – “We had no tire issues all day. Everything looked good on our car. I very well could have run over something, but I don’t really know what happened. I cut a tire going into turn three and that was ultimately the end of our day. The Barrett Jackson guys did a good job and made the car better throughout the day, but it won’t turn when you’ve got three tires.”

 

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Filtrete/3M Ford Fusion – “I took a pretty hard hit right there at the end, but, other than that, it was actually a hard fought day. We came back from not having a very good car to being really good. We kept working on it and working on it and I never thought we’d get that good, but we probably had a car that could run with the leaders at the end. That’s remarkable. I don’t know what happened at the end, but I think the 10 car blew up.”

 

ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Farmland Ford Fusion – “We started out really, really good and then took two tires on one of those stops and started going backwards. Our car never handled the same after that and we just lost some track position, so it’s disappointing. We’ll keep going. We’re still running good. We have to look at the positives and the positive was we qualified fifth and had a really good car in the beginning of the race.”

 

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Fastenal Ford Fusion – “We were very fortunate to finish 11^th because we just struggled all day. We hung on really hard to stay on the lead lap and that kind of saved our day. There at the end, I’ve never seen a finish like that – ever. It was just chaos.”

 

CASEY MEARS – No. 13 Geico Ford Fusion – “That was a crazy race. We were really loose all day and just couldn’t get the power down, but we hung in there. We made some changes overnight thinking it might be better, and I think it just went in the wrong direction, but we’ll keep working at it.”