DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 freecreditreport .com Ford Fusion (Finished 40th) – “You saw what happened. A wheel came off and just hit me and put me out of the race. It’s too bad because we had a good car, but we’ll get it fixed and get out there to collect some points.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion (Finished 12th) – “We had a top-five car tonight. It was good the first part of the race and it was good the last part, but we were counting on getting a caution the last fuel run. We took four tires, which was the right call, and we lost track position. That set of tires must have been a little inconsistent with the previous sets, and we didn’t make many adjustments all night. Our car had good speed and we were just too free at the end and I couldn’t pass. We lost a lot of track position the first 10 laps of the run and then we were fine, but without having a caution and without getting grouped back up, it was just a matter of riding it out.” SO YOU TOOK FOUR WITH 71 TO GO WHEN JOHNSON WENT GAS ONLY TO GET THE LEAD? “Yeah. Some of them took gas only and some of them took two tires, which we were kind of hoping that there would be another caution and then we would have taken two tires our last stop while some of the other guys would take fuel only or have to take four and we’d be back in good track position. We didn’t know the race was gonna go green that long at the end and it was just one of those things. We had a car capable of winning and certainly, if we would have been in the right position, definitely a top-five car. We just got off a little bit on pit sequence there at the end and that just goes to show you how tough the 600 is.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Dish Network Ford Fusion (Finished 2nd) – “Oh, man. I tell you what. That’s probably the toughest car I’ve ever driven – temperamental, stuff was going on with it that I don’t have any idea. That one time when I pitted, I don’t have any idea. It was back and forth and all over the place. Obviously, we have something going on with our front bump stop stuff and something is not happy.” DO YOU LOOK AT THIS FINISH AND WONDER HOW YOU GOT HERE? “We had run good all night. We probably had a fast enough car to run up there with the 9. We ran lap times, but we just never could get track position. Every time we’d lose track position. I was too loose in traffic, too tight in traffic. Once it got strung out about 20 laps in, I would come on. We needed that long green run at the end because my car, I was just mowing guys down. I passed the 18 on the last lap down there in three and four, but the 9 had a lot of track position on us.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion (Finished 9th) – “To get a top-10 finish was good. At the end I thought we were conserving fuel and I thought we had a chance to win. I thought we could win. I didn’t realize that the 9 and the 20 and those guys were there and we couldn’t win the race, or I could have conserved a little bit more fuel. It was just a communication error there, but we will get better.” YOU WERE LOOKING AT A THIRD OR FOURTH UNTIL YOU RAN OUT OF GAS. “Yeah, that’s why I’m upset (laughing). But, ninth place when we probably had about a 20th-place car is not bad. I just wanted to win the Coke 600. That would be cool.” WHAT ABOUT YOUR NIGHT? “I’m just glad we ended up finishing as good as we did. Congratulations to Kasey and his guys. Our Office Depot Fusion was decent, it just wasn’t good enough. We tried to do the fuel gamble thing and that was kind of fun. I don’t think I’ve ever done it like that before, ever. It was fun.”
GREG BIFFLE PRESS CONFERENCE – “I experienced some things with the car that’s kind of new for me. We made some slight adjustments and put tires on it and the thing got so loose, like something was broke on the thing. I couldn’t drive it. I almost wrecked in front of a couple guys and felt like I maybe had a flat tire and pitted under green. I think we tightened it up a little bit just for a precautionary measure and it was a little bit better, and it just drove completely different from one run to the other. I think we’ve got some issues with maybe with the way the car lands in the corner, or our bump stops or something. We’ll go look at that some, but, other than that, it was kind of uneventful. We were in the top-10 most of the night. We had to work our way back from getting a lap down – got the lucky dog and got back on the lead lap and just kept chipping away at it. It seemed like it was hard to pass and lapped cars are difficult because they’re just fast enough to make you aero-tight and it’s hard to get a run on the guys. I was a little bit too loose up on the top some times, so it was hard for me to get up there and get a run at some of the lapped traffic. I was kind of stuck to the bottom.”
AREN’T THE ODDS THERE THAT FUEL WILL PLAY A ROLE IN A RACE THIS LONG? “Yeah, it’s kind of odd that fuel would play a role like that, but caution flags are really what creates it. After 600 miles, most of the guys have their rhythm down and we don’t see a lot of cautions in the last stint, but I don’t know if Kasey pitted or not, but I think most all of the cars pitted. Last year, a guy was able to make it without stopping and won the race, so I think this year everybody had to pit, which made it a little more even for everybody. But it is odd that you get a fuel mileage race at a mile-and-a-half track.”
IS IT SURPRISING OF FRUSTRATING HOW THIS CAR SEEMS TO FADE WHEN YOU’RE WALKING SUCH A FINE LINE? “It is really, really hard because it is frustrating. You feel like when the car is pushing, you’ve got one arm tied behind your back. And then if it’s too loose, you’re about ready to bust your butt every lap and you’re holding your breath and you can’t drive around other cars. It’s so hard to get it right and you get it right for about eight laps and you’re thinking, ‘Man, this is great. Look out, here I come.’ And then you about spin out and wreck and then you’re loose and then it starts tightening up because you start closing your corner up, so it is hard to get it balanced for a whole fuel run, and really you can’t because the fuel cell is in the back of the car. It holds 18 gallons of fuel and it burns it off and it gets harder on the front bump stops. It’s just that simple. And then the thing is hanging behind the rear axle when it’s full of gas on new tires, so it’s hard to get the car to drive reasonable the entire fuel run. Some guys are better at the end. Some guys are better at the beginning.”
WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN SATISFIED TO FINISH SIXTH WITH 50 TO GO AND AS THE RACE ENDED WAS IT A REPLAY WITH YOU CHASING KASEY? “Yeah, it’s the same thing two races in a row and we finish second to Kasey. But, yeah, you’d think 600 miles is a long enough race to get it done and it took us that long to get our track position. We just kept passing cars and passing cars and passing cars. Guys would take no tires and gas and get back in front of us again, so it was a little bit frustrating. But, overall, I was probably more frustrated last week not getting the win because I felt like I had the fastest car. Tonight, I didn’t feel like I had the fastest car. I had a really good, solid car and just kept passing and got the track position where we were at the end. But I would have liked to have a chance to race Kasey. We got pretty fast there the last 50 laps of the race. We were really fast.”