CARL EDWARDS – No. 60 Save-a-Lot Ford Fusion (Finished 37th) – “We had some sort of failure with the right-front tire. They (Goodyear) said that part of the bead melted and blew out. We did nothing different than we’ve done here in the past and it’s just real frustrating. I was just telling Elliott (Sadler) that I feel bad for those guys that they got caught up in it, but it was a total surprise. I was just driving along and the tire blew.” WITH BRAD AND CLINT FINISHING ONE-TWO IT PUTS YOU IN A TOUGH SPOT POINTS-WISE. “Yeah. Congratulations to Brad. He did a great job and Clint did a great job, too, but that’s as bad of a points night as we could have. We just have to keep our heads up. We don’t ever give up. We know we’re good enough to go win this championship still, we just have to dig hard.” HOW WAS THE CAR BEFORE THE TIRE WENT? “The car was pretty good. It was just a tick tight, but I really felt good about it. I figured we had a car that could fight for the win and at least run top five no problem. It’s just frustrating.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 Discount Tire Ford Fusion (Finished 25th) – “It felt like we had a top-five car in practice and we just seemed to dial ourselves out. Poor track position and back there beating and banging certainly doesn’t help the cause any and in these Nationwide races we can’t afford to have to pit three times to get our car driving good. We’ve got to get it good from the get-go because you just lose too much ground. It’s kind of pitiful to run 20th in these things. We should be able to come out and run in the top 10 it seems like every week. It’s just a disappointing night. We unloaded and thought we had a car that possibly could have won, but just didn’t do a good job keeping up with the track and making the right calls between practice and the race.”
KELLY BIRES – No. 47 Bush’s Baked Beans Ford Fusion (Finished 17th) – “We just missed the center of the corner. We were tight all night. We took a couple shots at it, but we didn’t quite get it. We managed to make it a little freer getting into the corner and it never really helped to the point where we were tight, so we kept all the fender on it and completed all the laps. It’s not as good a finish as we wanted coming here, but we’ll take a top 20. I’ve got to thank Bush’s Baked Beans for coming aboard this weekend. We had a good car, but we just missed it by a little bit and it seems like if you’re just a touch off at Bristol, you just can’t go forward. We’ll do our homework before we come back here next year and make it a lot better.”
MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 59 Kingsford Charcoal Ford Fusion (Finished 34th) – “It just stopped. We have back-up boxes and stuff, but nothing worked so we had to come in and change the whole panel and away she went. We’re just tripping over ourselves. We’re trying to get in the top 10 in points and we’re not going to do it if we’re not a race team that can get us to the end.” YOU STILL HAD A LONG RACE TO GO AFTER GETTING THE CAR FIXED. IT HAD TO FEEL LIKE A LONG NIGHT. “Yeah, you’ve just got to go. I tried to look after the car and be nice to the people out there while trying to stay interested, so I got stuck in it a little bit there when I got some clear track and just got more laps at Bristol, which always helps, but it is really disappointing.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Citifinancial Ford Fusion (Finished 3rd) – POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE – “We didn’t quite have the fastest car. Brad and Clint and the 33 car, I think, was a little better than we were, but we just got track position. We took two tires at the end and tried to get out front. I don’t think it would have made a difference, but we just tried something a little bit different. We didn’t have a good enough car. We thought maybe we’d get a little track position and try to hang out up there. We knew there was gonna be some cautions late in this race and figured we’d be able to hang on for maybe a second-place finish or something or get a chance to race with the leader, but we just weren’t quite fast enough tonight. We had a pretty good night – uneventful – the guys did a great job in the pits and Eddie did a good job with the car, I just had it probably a little bit too loose to run with Clint and Brad and all the guys.”
