CHIP BOLIN – crew chief, No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Matt Kenseth finished 7th) – “We decided before we came up here to test that we were going to build a new car and try something to come up here, and when we unloaded it he (Matt Kenseth) really liked the way it drove, so we brought back and he liked it when we unloaded it. Everybody pretty much busted their butt there in the month of May to get it built so we could bring it up here and test it, a nd I think everybody’s hard work paid off. I don’t think we’ve ever run that strong at Pocono.”
YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS TEAM RIGHT NOW AS POINTS BECOME MORE AND MORE IMPORTANT? “Points become more and more important every week, and the 9 looks like he’s got his game. He’s actually moved up. And now the guys we’re chasing are the 07 and the 20, but we’ve still got to get around the guys that are between us and them. But, it looks like if we all do what we’re supposed to be doing when we’re doing it, we’ll be all right.
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (finished 9th) – YOUR DAY WENT FROM GOOD TO BAD TO NOT TOO BAD. “Yeah, it was not too bad. We have just got to a better job on pit road. But, we went from 34th to ninth, I’m not real good at math, but that’s a lot of cars. This was fun. I mean, I had a good time on that last run. I just wish 10 more laps or something to work on people, you know?”
EVEN BEFORE THAT LAST RUN IT SEEMED LIKE YOU PASSED A NUMBER OF CARS. “I don’t know if anybody passed any more people than us today, but that’s just the way it goes. When you pull on pit road and whether it’s my fault or someone else’s fault, we lose an average of about three spots every time. It’s just unnecessary. We’ve just got to do a little better because we’ve got a great team. If we can put this together, we’ll be great.”
BOB OSBORNE – crew chief, No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – WHAT WAS YOUR STRATEGY AFTER CARL DROPPED BACK? “He’s got a lot of practice coming through the field this year, that’s all there is to it.”
ON THE NINTH-PLACE FINISH. “It’s frustrating. Nobody’s been able to pass Carl all day, and we come from 33rd to ninth on the last run. Waited one lap too long on that caution when we got the flat tire, to pit, really just waiting to see what the 9 and the 11 did for tires, waiting to decide whether I was going to do two or four, and I was going to try to go with two tires and then that caution comes out and the pit road light came on before we got to the line, so we had to go around. We would’ve fared okay there, because we would’ve come out probably 15th or so, and obviously, 15th to first is a lot more difficult group of cars to pass than 30th to 15th. But, still, we had a car – I don’t know that we had a car to beat the 9, but we had a car to finish second, easily. So, it’s frustrating.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (finished 15th) – YOU HAD A CONTENDING CAR TODAY… “Yeah, I think so. I just screwed it up on pit road. I don’t know, something’s not right with the car. I don’t know what happens, we get close to the end of the race and it’s like something changes, either bump stops or something. But, it just got so loose I couldn’t drive it. I think a bump stop broke, maybe. But, we’ll get back and diagnose it, see why it got so loose, and then we’ll go to Michigan and see what we can do.”
WHAT HAPPENED ON THE PENALTY? “I don’t know what happened. I guess I broke out that last [pit] box a half a mile an hour [too fast]. I guess what happened was I was right on the maximum and then I just gave it gas a millisecond before I was across the line. You know, it goes off the rear bumper and I had to learn that last year, when I got caught a couple times – because the timer is on the rear bumper so when your nose crosses the stripe, that doesn’t count, it’s when your rear bumper crosses. I thought I was patient enough to know when my rear bumper crossed before I gassed it, and I must’ve picked it up in the middle of the car, or something, but it was a half a mile-an-hour.”
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WERE CAUGHT SPEEDING? “Last year we had a couple. You know, that happens when you’re pushing the envelope, but it’s unfortunate for us, because we ended up 15th.”
HOW MUCH BETTER THAN A 15TH-PLACE CAR DID YOU HAVE? “I had probably a third-place car. I couldn’t catch the 9. I couldn’t do nothing with the 9, but I was a little better than the 20. I think I was a top-three car or a top-four car.”
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 freecreditreport.com Ford Fusion (finished 16th) – “All in all, a good day. We were off today. Struggled in qualifying and when you get behind, with these cars on this track, track position is just so, so very important, and something we struggled getting today. But, Cully Barraclough [crew chief] and our engineer Jason made some great calls, some pit strategy at the end that put us in position to have a fairly good day.”
YOU SPUN EARLY. HOW DIFFICULT WAS IT TO MAKE UP THOSE SPOTS? “It’s hard. Track position is just everything here, and mentally you just can’t let it get to you. It’s tough, it was a trying day. A long day.”
