ERIK DARNELL – No. 99 Northern Tool + Equipment Ford F-150 – (finished 3rd, qualified 3rd) –“It was a pretty good night for our the Northern Tool + Equipment Ford F-150. We just kind of missed it. It’s tough during these short races where you only get one chance or one pit stop to get the truck right. We got it good in the middle of the race, but we weren’t where we needed to be at the end. Unfortunately, it kind of bit us a little bit. We were too tight and I didn’t have anything for the 23 or the 33. Matt Puccia and all the guys did a great job this weekend. The truck was good again. We qualified well, we ran up front all night and that’s what we’ve got to keep doing. We’ve got to keep knocking out these top five and try to make up points on these guys to get back in the championship hunt.” WAS YOUR TRUCK BETTER ON THE LONG RUNS OR THE SHORT RUNS? DID THE NUMEROUS CAUTIONS AT THE END BREAK YOUR STRIDE? “It was long run early on, but at the end, it was just bad. I was really tight after the restart and it just didn’t seem to get much better once we got rolling. I’m a little bit disappointed to run the way we did at the end, but we got another top five out of it. We finished third and that’s what we’ve got to do – keep plugging away.”
ERIK DARNELL PRESS CONFERENCE
ERIK DARNELL – No. 99 Northern Tool + Equipment Ford F-150 – “Our Northern Tool + Equipment Ford was decent tonight, but not quite where it needed to it to be at the end of the race. We had a pretty good practice yesterday. We qualified well and we ran up front all night. We just didn’t have anything for the 23 and the 33 at the end. These races are tough when you’ve got only one pit stop to adjust on it and get the truck right at the end. Unfortunately, we were good in the middle of the race, but we weren’t good at the end. Realistically, I think we would have finished fifth, but the 14 and the 22 had their problems and we were able to capitalize on it and come up with another top five finish.”
ON THE LATE RACE TROUBLES OF THE 14 AND THE 22. “Yeah, he got by us. We were really tight on restarts and we just kept getting worse as the night when on. He got by me in the middle of one and two. Then with about two laps later he caught the 14 and really drove down into three pretty hard. Then Rick was down on it pretty hard and Mike just cut the wheel a little too hard and lost it. It was tough racing between those two guys, but fortunately for us, it helped us out and we picked us up another spot.”
ON RECENT TOP-FIVE FINISHES.” If you look at our last five races, four of those finishes have been in the top five. We’ve been running very strong as of late. We may not have had a truck to finish third tonight, but we were able to finish third, which is what you’ve got to do as far as the championship goes. Last week in Kentucky, we had a top five truck and ended up getting wrecked 30 laps from the end, so it kind of goes both ways. We’ve had our bad fortunes, but tonight, good luck smiled down on us and we were able to capitalize on that and come away with another top five. That’s what we need to do to get ourselves back in this championships chase. It’s disappointing that you go out there and finish third and you still lose 25 points to the guy that won the race. Everybody up front in the top five in points ran very strong and we’ve just got to do everything that we can to make up points on them.”
RICK CRAWFORD – No. 14 Power Stroke Diesel by International Ford F-150 – (finished 12th, qualified 7th) – “We tried our strategy and our strategy worked. Kevin ‘Cowboy’ Starland and the whole Ford Power Stroke Diesel by International crew did a good job on the pit stops adjusting the truck for a late race charge. The Ford F-Series pick up was doing its job. We were going to finish third with two of the best drivers in the series and it’s just a shame where you come up finishing where we did. We don’t know what the problem was, but it didn’t want to run there on a green-white-checkered and so the best thing we could have done was get out of the way.”
BOBBY EAST – No. 09 Zaxby’s Ford F-150 – (finished 19th, qualified 1st) – ON THE INCIDENT WITH STACY COMPTON AND BRENDAN GAUGHAN THAT PUT THE NO. 09 FORD F-150 ON TWO WHEELS. “I was just getting clarification from Brendan and Stacy. I guess Brendan ran Stacy up the track, which put him into me. I was already up the side of his door and he put me into the fence and ruined our night. We were running in the top five. We had a top-five run going and that little incident pretty much ruined our night. And I really hate the result for the Zaxby’s Ford F-150 team. They put a lot of hard work into tonight and for it to end the way it did, I feel real bad for them.”
KEVEN WOOD –No. 21 The Barnhill Group Ford F-150 – (finished 24th, qualified 26th) – “We didn’t have a great night, but I’ll take it as a learning experience and character building, lots of character building.” WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU LEARNED TONIGHT? “There was a lot of stuff going on during the restarts because I was just getting beat around. I don’t know if it’s so much if I learned anything, it’s just having a truck that works. We got it to where we were actually decent there at the end. We finally got it freed up enough. We had an idea going into it that we were going to be tight, but it was just so tight that I couldn’t do anything with it. Then we got it freed up enough to where I could get on the gas hard and we were already three laps down by then. We just pulled to the back and let the guys run hard. I give my guys credit. They worked really hard getting our Barnhill Group Ford F-150 where it needed to be. I’m looking forward to Nashville. It will be my first speedway. I’ve got some laps there, so it’s one of the few tracks that I actually have laps on. I’m looking forward to going there.”