CARL EDWARDS – No. 60 Miracle-Gro Ford Fusion – (finished 3rd, qualified 4th) – HOW WERE YOU ON FUEL? “We were pretty close. We had a half a gallon left. We get really good fuel mileage and I was hoping those guys would run out. It’s great for Scott [Wimmer], though, he’s a really good guy. It’s cool to see him win.”
EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE
ON THE RACE “We did our very best in that Miracle-Gro Fusion and we just were not as fast the whole weekend as we have been here in the past. Scott’s a good guy. It’s good to see him get a win. But, yeah, we really wanted to make it four in a row. I don’t know what happened to the 20 car [Kyle Busch] there. He was the class of the field. Once he had damage to his car, I thought we had a chance. Then they were telling me you guys short on fuel and we weren’t. We get really good fuel mileage. I just kept waiting for you guys [Bowyer] to slow down, but you didn’t, so we got third.” ON WINNING THE OWNER POINTS THIS YEAR. “Owners points is huge for us. We just want to win the owners points because we didn’t do it last year. I’m real excited that Clint and all these guys are running for points. It makes it fun. I like the competition.” WHAT’S GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND WHILE KYLE AND CLINT WERE RUNNING UP FRONT? “It was really, really frustrating time for me for the first part of it, but we got better. I just know we have to work on some stuff. Anytime somebody checks out like that, you know it ain’t the driver. They’ve got their cars good or something. We just have to work on our stuff. It’s also cool to see fans in the stands for this race. This is a great race track and it ought to be full every time.”
KELLY BIRES – No. 47 Clorox Ford Fusion – (finished 5th, qualified 5th) – “It’s our first top-five finish. The guys did a great job preparing this car and getting it here. It’s been fast ever since we got on the track. I think we probably were a top two car here today but we just a bad day on pit road it cost us a lot of spots on the race track. Overall, we’re getting better. That’s what we came here to do, finish in the top-10 but we got a top-five out of it. We look to improve next week.” YOU SAID EARLIER THAT THE FINAL PIT STOP WOULD DETERMINE WHO MIGHT WIN THE RACE. DID YOU HAVE THE RIGHT PIT STRATEGY? “The car was in position to be fast. It was probably the best we were going to get it there at the end. We’ll take the top-five and move on. I’ve got to thank all our sponsors, Clorox, US Air Force, Glad and everyone else that helps us out here.” HOW CLOSE WERE YOU ON FUEL? “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. They never said it was an issue. We must have been alright, I think we were just within a few laps.”
SCOTT ZIPADELLI – No. 47 Crew Chief – (finished 5th, qualified 5th) –“We’re very pleased. The car was strong right off the truck and we tinkered with it and got it better. We ran a lot of laps in practice. Kelly did a great job. We lost a little bit in the pits and struggled there. I think we could have been a couple spots stronger than we were. I’m pretty pleased with the progress in our program. I think we’re on the right track and we’ll keep working hard.” HOW MUCH GAS DID YOU HAVE LEFT? “From the time we pitted, we were going to be three laps to the end. I’m guessing we maybe had two laps.”
BOBBY HAMILTON Jr. – No. 25 Smithfield Ford Fusion – (finished 10th, qualified 17th) – “They guys [team and crew] did this. I had no idea we’d come back to a 10th place finish because we were absolutely horrible the first run. We figured some stuff out for the next time that we were here. Overall, our Smithfield Ford Fusion was good. At the end of the day, I’m just tickled to death. I was figuring we’d be 15th to 20th here by the end of the day. We battled back. Where we ended up, it was right. These guys did a fantastic job.”
COLIN BRAUN – No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion – (finished 15th, qualified 9th) – “It was a really good day. Everybody on the whole 16 CitiFinancial team did a good job. We had great pit stops there. We definitely started off the whole weekend off with the outlook of being safe and making sure we’re competitive. We wanted to make sure our car was tight and things like that. We definitely were tight in the middle of the race and we knew that was going to happen. We worked on freeing it up there on every stop and got it a little bit better. At the end, I think we had some pretty competitive lap times to the leaders. We were happy with that.” WHAT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU LEARNED TODAY? “These guys definitely race at a little higher level than some of the truck guys do. Instead of 10 guys that were racing pretty aggressively, you have 20 guys that race aggressively. It makes it a lot of fun. I learned a lot. I think I can go back to racing my truck and it might not seem as aggressive as I thought it was before.” ON WORKING WITH CREW CHIEF EDDIE PARDUE. “Eddie is a great crew chief. He has a lot of experience here in this Nationwide series. He really does a good job. It was cool to work with him and I really enjoyed working with him this weekend. He has a little bit different mentality than Mike Beam. Eddie is a little more laid back and a go-with-the-flow, whereas Mike is pretty intense all the time. I like working with both of them. It’s nice for me as a driver to kind of see what different crew chiefs do and think and I’m sure that when I come and talk to Eddie on some things I have a little different opinion from what Mike says. Then when I go and talk with Mike, Eddie has a different opinion on that. I think I’ll learn a lot from working with both of them.”
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