CARL EDWARDS – No. 60 Save a Lot Ford Fusion – (finished 2nd, qualified 1st) – KNOWING THAT YOU’VE HAD PROBLEMS WITH THE TAPERED SPACER, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WHERE YOU GUYS ARE GIVING THIS FINISH? “Obviously, I want to win. It’s no fun watching someone else win, but Denny and those guys did a good job. I’m so proud of Save a Lot food stores guys. We’re recovering. We’re doing better every week. And they’ve got good food cheap. We might go have a little dinner. I wanted to win this race, but it just wasn’t meant to be, but it was still a good performance for us.”
CARL EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE – TALK ABOUT YOUR RUN. “It was all right. Second place is not a lot of fun, but I do enjoy racing here. My hat’s off to Denny and everybody over there at Gibbs, they’ve been doing a great job. It was a good points day for us, which is the only conciliation for not winning the thing, but it’s good. I’m proud of my guys for getting this car fast. In practice we were not good at all. We qualified on the pole and ran second, that’s a step forward and hopefully we can continue this and run better and gain some more points for this championship.” DID YOU HAVE ANYTHING FOR DENNY? IF THEY WERE TOO STRONG, WAS THAT JUST THE ENGINE? “Both Denny and Kyle were real good. They’re good drivers and their teams are working well together. It’s not just one thing; I don’t think it’s just the engines. With as much as we have to gain in the way we do our team and our engineering and things like that, I’m just excited to be able to stay that close to them. I think we have a lot to look forward to, some of the things we’re starting to work on. I’m excited about hopefully catching them and being able to have them chase us by the end of the year. I don’t think it’s one thing, I think, they’ve got the whole package right now.” TALK ABOUT THE BATTLE FOR THE POINTS, ESPECIALLY GOING INTO THE NEXT THREE WEEKS WHEN YOU’RE GOING TO BE FLYING BACK AND FORTH EVERYWHERE. “Last year, it was not an issue because we were so great. For the first half of the year, we were just kind of rolling along having fun enjoying it. Now, it’s getting pretty tight, so it’s going to be exciting. It’s good for the fans. It’s good for the whole Nationwide series for us to have a good battle like that. It will be fun. I like this next month, it’s a blast going back and forth and running to your car for qualifying and that stuff. We had fun with that last year. It seemed like I had to run every time, but we’ll have fun.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion – (finished 5th, qualified 10th) – YOU BOUNCED BACK FROM A PIT ROAD PENALTY, A THROTTLE ISSUE. “Yeah, it was unfortunate. I don’t know what happened. We had a throttle return spring break. This of all places is kind of a scary place, we go fast here at Dover and it broke going into one. The throttle stuck to the floor and I hit the brake. We had the Roush interrupter, it shut the engine off and I got it restarted. Then just kept it about three-quarters throttle, I wouldn’t floor it after that. Man, I feel real bad about getting into the 5 car [Landon Cassill], I don’t know what he was doing. He came down the race track then just stopped early getting into the corner. I don’t know if he’s expecting to give me the outside or what. I feel bad. Those kids are just trying to get some laps around and I feel bad I took him out of the race early like that. I don’t know what I could have done differently. He just hammered the brakes and I was right there.” IN THE CLOSE LAPS, IT LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE SEARCHING FOR A SPOT? WERE YOU ABLE TO RUN ANY GROOVE? “Yeah, I was just a little bit tight there at the end. I just couldn’t find any grip. I was just searching for any bit of grip there was.” IF YOU HAD A FEW MORE LAPS? “I don’t know, it’s possible. I might have been able to do something with these guys, but the rest of the cars, I’m not sure.”
KELLY BIRES – No. 47 Clorox Ford Fusion – (finished 13th, qualified 8th) – “It was a good car. We started off and were too tight center off. We made an adjustment. It seemed like the track went through a bit of a change there from the start of the race. It got tight, then it got tighter then I think it freed up at the end because we were running about eighth or ninth right there and then the car all of a sudden just got loose. It was just like light switched. We backed up to 13th there. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if we had a tire going down or what. It hurt us, but overall it was day. We just needed to get a good finish. We just needed a finish basically, that’s what we came here to do, not to set the world on fire, but to get a solid finish. We ran conservative. It probably would have been a better day, but we’ll see what happened there at the end of the race that made it get so loose. Otherwise everyone did a great job this weekend.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 Discount Tire Ford Fusion – (finished 29th, qualified 28th) – “We’re gonna try and go out and make a lap around the apron or something.” WHAT HAPPENED? “The 11 [Jason Keller] just dumped us. It was kinda payback from earlier in the year. We’ve had few contacts here and there and just got back at us. Nothing I should have been ready for it and I should be more on top of things than that. I saw him coming and he hit us and wrecked us. It was one of those things, it’s racing. We’ll learn from it and move on. We’ve got a strong enough team, we can rebound from it.” SOME DRIVERS WERE SAYING THEY WERE TIGHT, WHERE WERE YOU? “We were wrecking loose all night. We went a little different way set-up wise just trying to work a little bit. We were really loose all day, all weekend. I just couldn’t find a handle. We were trying a little different set-up and just trying to find some speed. We learned from it and we’ll do something a little different next time.”
MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 59 Kingsford Ford Fusion – (finished 30th, qualified 12th) – “We just blew a right front. We were the lucky dog fighting hard there with Dario having a great time. But it wasn’t lucky for the Kingsford car. We were in the lucky dog spot looking pretty good, but just got too tight and blew a right front.”
BRAD COLEMAN – No. 27 Scott Shop Towels/Walmart Ford Fusion – (finished 32nd, qualified 27th) – ON THE RADIO YOU SAID YOU KNEW IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. WHAT HAPPENED? “It felt just like Atlanta when we blew a right front. The car was just getting tighter and tighter. We had problems in practice showing cords, so I was a little worried. I tried to take it as easy as I could. The Scott Ford Fusion was awesome at the beginning of the race. We were a top-15 car; just on the long runs we struggled. I just felt it getting tighter and tighter and I took it easy going into the corners because I knew we were abusing that right front. I went down the front straightaway and it blew out.”
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