Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, and Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion, held press conferences in the Martinsville Speedway infield media center prior to qualifying today. A transcript of each follows:
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – “I guess I don’t need to tell anybody that this probably isn’t my stellar race track. We didn’t have a chance to do a qualifying run. We decided to work all on race practice and didn’t make a run in practice at qualifying because the weather is sort of iffy and we wanted to get all the practice in we could for the race Sunday, so we elected to do that. We’re curious to see how it’s gonna qualify. We’re just copying the best Roush car setup in qualifying trim and put a couple laps in and see how that works.”
WHOSE CAR ARE YOU COPYING? “Here, it’s probably more technical than a big, fast place and you don’t know what to expect when you drive down in the corner. We’ve got an idea on how we’ve qualified here in the past and how our car is set up now, so we’re leaning towards copying whose car is similar to ours in race trim or how they were running their car. It’s gonna be a conglomeration – something like what the 96 has and the 26 and the 17 a little bit. We’re kind of looking through and kind of getting an idea of all the guys. We’ve got the rear springs really the same, so we’re gonna be really close to all three of those cars. Actually, all of our cars are real close. We don’t change a tremendous amount qualifying here.”
CAN YOU LOOK BACK TO 2005 WHEN ALL FIVE ROUSH TEAMS MADE THE CHASE AND COMPARE IT TO WHAT HENDRICK IS DOING THIS YEAR? “It’s probably real similar to that. All of the cars competed very well. I can remember those were the good old days when we had all five of our cars running really good. We kind of had, I don’t know a secret, but our cars were running faster than everybody else’s and it’s nice to be in that position. But that kind of faded. We switched to the new car, obviously, and that was a big step for us. It’s apparent over this last year that all the teams have continued to find new ways of running this new car. We kind of sat in our old ways and sort of polished and fine-tuned our setup, which we probably need to take a different route. Last year wasn’t too bad for us, either – nine wins for Carl and we had two – but it’s funny how it goes in cycles. You would think when you won all those races like that, you wouldn’t think about just throwing that whole notebook in the garbage can and starting over for this year and literally that’s what we’ve done. We’ve had to do that because the way we ran them last year just isn’t competitive anymore, and it really is mind-boggling to us why. Why are they not competitive when we won nine times and you just can’t run like that anymore. That’s really mysterious to us why that’s happened, so we’re looking around. We’re hitting and missing on some stuff, but it’s gonna take us a little bit to really fine-tune that in – being at the race track for the first time with something quite a bit different. We’re gonna have to keep dialing it in until we get back competitive again. I think we’re gaining on it. We’re definitely gaining on it.”
HOW DO YOU INTIMIDATE OTHER DRIVERS? “I think when you’ve got a car fast enough to run with him is the key that you race hard. I race all those guys in the top 10 fairly hard. We’re racing for position quite a bit. At Charlotte, we raced around each other a little bit and I just didn’t pull over and let him go by and he didn’t pull over and let me go by. I passed him once and he passed me once. You have to run him hard. You can’t give him a bunch of room. You’ve got to keep the pressure on and that’s all you can do, unless you end up making some contact. It all depends how hard he wants to press, too. If he wants to run right down on the outside of you, you could get the inside car turned around and kind of get collected in that, so you’ve got to make a decision on how hard you’re gonna press the issue. If he’s the 48 and I’m on the bottom, he’s on the top, there’s a lot of things that go into calculating how we’re gonna race one another and I think he played it pretty cautious at Kansas when we were racing for the lead for quite a while there. We were battling and I didn’t give up. I was racing my butt off to stay in front of him. That was as hard as I could drive.”
IS THIS POINTS RACE OVER? “I don’t know, I really don’t.”
HOW CLOSE ARE YOU GOING TO BE WATCHING MATT AND DAVID WITH THE NEW ENGINE NEXT WEEK AND ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT IT? “I’m really excited. I know Doug Yates and that group at Roush Yates Engines have really, really worked hard on this engine. I had a meeting last week with Doug, or got a chance to talk to him a little bit about the engine and how they’re gonna start cycling them in and how the durability testing is going on it, and I think it’s exciting for us to start phasing that engine in. It’s gonna take some time still because with the amount of teams we have, plus if the merger happens, that’s a few more for them and that’s a lot of engines to transition into. Probably for some of us it will be as late as the second half of next year before we start running them full time, probably, I would think, because this is a lot of engines to get built up.”
WHY NOT HAVE YOU AND CARL RUN THE NEW ENGINE? “Because rarely in our sport does horsepower win a race. It comes back to the handling of the race car. Now Talladega, I’ll agree with you, is a race track where three or four or five horsepower can make a difference. It’s risk versus reward. So if the engine blows up and we’re seventh in points, it’s gonna be a pretty big hit to us for the finishing of this season. If the engine blows up in the 6 or the 17, it’s gonna cost them a good finish, but it’s probably not gonna pummel them the points because our points have been reset. And us winning at Talladega isn’t gonna catapult us into the point lead, so it’s kind of a double-edged sword.”
IS THERE A PERIOD OF TIME AS FAR AS DEVELOPING THIS NEW ENGINE? “Absolutely. It will continue to get better over the next five years, just like this new car. Other teams are continuing to find speed in it or find things out about it. We’ll be learning for 10 years with this new car. We’ve had this engine since the seventies, so we’ve got a long ways to go with this new engine. The engine that we have, just on record, it appeared that we have the most horsepower after the Michigan race. They took all the engines to the tech center and dyno tested them and the numbers show we’re within one horsepower of the entire sport. We were one better than everybody in the garage, so the new engine is not gonna make us win races also.”
HOW WELL CAN YOU FINISH IN POINTS AND IS IT REALISTIC FOR GUYS AS FAR BACK AS YOU ON BACK TO THINK HE COULD STILL WIN THE TITLE? “I don’t think it would be realistic for a guy from us on back could win it, just simply for the fact of doing the numbers. Yes, can the wheels fall off that thing (Jimmie’s car)? Yes. Can the brakes go out on Sunday, he gets in a wreck at Talladega, gets a flat tire at Texas – that can happen. For that to happen to him, Mark Martin and Juan Pablo and Tony Stewart are pretty unlikely. So it could happen to one of those top four guys, but the facts are we’re gonna have to have some help, so to speak. If we won the next five races, we still wouldn’t win the title, so something is gonna have to happen to them. That may happen in one race, for instance next week, but that’s not gonna happen in every event or more than one time and that’s what would have to happen to every guy up front. So if you just look at it logistically, it just doesn’t make sense that anybody on back has an opportunity. I think I can get to third or fourth, if one of those guys has some trouble and we get going here pretty good, we stay out of a wreck in Talladega and get a decent finish Sunday, we’ve got some good tracks coming up where we can climb on up there. We’re seventh now. If I can stay out of the grass. I’ve been in the grass the last two weeks and finished 16th and 20th. That hasn’t helped my cause any.”
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT THE NEW ENGINE TO DO BETTER THAN THE CURRENT ONE, AND WILL THIS BE INTERCHANGEABLE IN CARS OR IS IT PURPOSE-BUILT? “Yes, everything you said is correct. I think it has a little bit better cooling, or maybe slightly improved. Maybe slightly lower center of gravity – marginally at this point – and it does not interchange, although we don’t have to build a new car, I think they’re gonna make the cars interchangeable so the car will have both mounts in it. One uses engine plates and one uses mounts, so if I understand it right, the cars will be able to accept both engines and during the transition period, I believe that’s the way it’s going to work. Or, which the second scenario which is unlikely, we’d have cars that fit that new engine and then cars that fit the old engine. I don’t believe that’s the case. I think they’re gonna be able to retro-fit the cars and leave both assemblies in them.” HAS ANYTHING CHANGED ABOUT THIS TRACK? “I think we will see a little bit different race for the pure fact of the double-file restarts. I think that’s gonna be a big deal. It’s been a fairly big deal everywhere we’ve gone. I think here more than anywhere the bottom groove, I think, will be the place to be. It’s predominantly been the fastest way around forever, so if you do get third row on the top, we’ve seen a car get shuffled out of line and he goes to 20th – sort of like restrictor-plate racing – before there’s an opening. So that could happen to the fourth-place guy. He could get stuck out there forever, I don’t know, so I’m curious to see how it works. But as far as the race track goes and the racing, that could be a huge difference.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – “I was in practice and we struggled. I was actually over there talking to David Ragan. He was really fast and he’s had some really good runs, so we’re leaning on those guys a little bit. I have no clue what my car is gonna do in qualifying, so I’m just gonna go out there and go for it. Bob and I talked about it a little bit this week. We had a miserable race at Charlotte and we’re at the point right now where we’re just gonna go try new things and take risks, maybe take gambles that we wouldn’t on strategy. I’m gonna drive maybe just a little harder if it looks like that’s what needs to be done and that’s how we’re approaching all these races. We’ve got a little bit of time to try to make up some ground, so that’s kind of our attitude right now is just go out here and try our hardest and get what we can.”
HOW DO YOU RATTLE JIMMIE JOHNSON AND BEAT HIM? “Actually, I was wanting to go play a little Frisbee with him this afternoon (joking). I don’t know what you do. The guy is doing a really good job. I’m not gonna wreck him and I don’t think anyone else is. I think if that team deserves to win and they win, that’s what it is. When it’s my day to win and I deserve it, I hope that’s what happens, but, right now, they’re just unbelievable. The way those guys run, you’d spin the guy out and he would back in the wall and they’d fix it and he’d come back and win anyway. I don’t know how you beat those guys other than just figure out how to emulate them and then beat them at their own game. They’re very good and I know everyone, including myself, has a lot of respect for them.”
ANYBODY OUTSIDE THE TOP 5 OR 6 GETTING HOT AND CONTENDING FOR THE TITLE? “I don’t even know who is in the top five. I just saw Greg is seventh, so he’s moving forward. I don’t know. What Kasey said there, it’s just math. If the 48 team were to have a series of bad races, which could be for any reason – meteorite strike, something like that – anything – then something could change. But if you just go off of what’s going on right now, it looks like the guys that are up front deserve to be up there, unless they falter – a lot of them falter. It’s gonna be very difficult for someone to come up there and overtake them, but that’s not gonna keep up from trying. Kasey just left here. I’m sitting here thinking just like racers do, ‘We can still win this thing if we just keep going.’ The only way to surely fail is to give up, but I can’t point to one person.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WOULD BE WILLING TO TRY? “There are things we would be willing to take bigger gambles. Sometimes those can pay off and sometimes they don’t. The reason the guys don’t take them up there is because if they don’t pay off, it costs you so much. So if I were tied for the points lead right now, I would probably race a little bit differently than I’m gonna race because of my 10th-place points position. So you could see that come into play. That could be a factor. It’s cut-throat out there right now. It’s competitive. If people start taking it easy and people start being aggressive, there could be some things shaken up because of it.”
DO YOU FEEL YOU AND BOB ARE STILL ON THE SAME PAGE AND OTHER FACTORS ARE AT WORK HERE? “I have to personally not get down because we’re not performing at the level I know we can. I think it’s just human nature you want to start finding the weaknesses and everything, but Bob and I’s relationship is good and it’s good because we respect one another as people. It’s been successful and I think that’s what keeps us going the same direction. We argue with one another when we’re doing well and we argue with one another when we’re doing badly, but, right now, I would say our relationship is as good as its ever been. I know from my side, and I think from his side, I realize that it’s not our interaction that’s keeping us from running well. But what is fleeting is on-track performance. For us it has come and gone and that’s difficult. That’s difficult on everybody.”
HOW WOULD YOU COMPARE WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THIS SPORT WITH OTHER SPORTS? “I think that it’s important, trust me, everybody in the garage but that 48 team is thinking, ‘How can we stop this guy.’ So I think it’s a reasonable question. That’s what is so great about sport. The idea is it’s the same rules for everyone, unlike the free market we have out here – whatever it’s called now – it’s supposed to be the same rules, the same playing field. That’s what makes it interesting and that’s what makes it fun and competitive. If Jimmie and those 48 guys can come out here and beat us and do what they’ve done the last three years, then they need to be respected for it. I think, in the end, they will be, but I think while it’s happening people want to find fault in it or change the rules or do something like that. It’s the same for everyone and it’s like that in all racing. If you change the rules or do something, there’s nothing saying those guys won’t be as good at the new rules. I just look at them and go, ‘How can I be as good as them and how can I beat them?’”
WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE NEW ENGINE? “I don’t know a lot about it. I just found out they were running at Talladega and I’m really curious to see how it goes. It’s cool of them to do that and be the first ones out there to do it. I’ll be watching closely and I’m sure after that race we’ll go in-depth about what they felt. It’s still a restrictor-plate race so it may or may not apply to the other tracks, so it’s just a piece of equipment. We’ve got to look at how much it weighs, how much tape can we run, how much horsepower does it make, and then the durability of it, so I’m pretty excited to see how it goes.”
CAN YOU REMEMBER A WORSE WEEKEND WITH BOB THAN CHARLOTTE? “I can’t remember a weekend that was that bad. That was it. That was the low point of our performing on the race track and I guess what I learned about Bob through that is how self critical he is – in a good way. I haven’t heard him say one bad word about the car or the data that he receives to set it up or anything like that. After the race he said on the radio, ‘Look guys, it was my mistake. Everybody did a good job. We’ll be better next time.’ That’s the kind of guy he is. He’s a stand-up guy, so that just reiterated that to me and it’s good to have a guy like that – a guy that can say, ‘I’ll do better.’”
WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO TRY THE NEW ENGINE BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR? “I think we can get the data we need. Right now, our engine is good. That’s not the weak link, so I think we can get the data we need from those guys using it without taking any risk. If it looks like it’s positive, that there are better things about it that we’d want to use, we would probably gamble and use it, I would think, especially if we are where we are now in the points at that point. If it looks better, like I said at the beginning, we’ll go for it, but that’s really Bob’s decision and Jack’s decision.”
IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE RUNNING THAT ENGINE NEXT YEAR WHY NOT RUN IT NOW? “I think the reason is there are so many things that can happen. I’d really like to finish as best I can in the points. If it gets down to the last two races and there’s no hope, there’s no way and we can’t fall out of the top 10, then we would try more risk, but still, no matter what testing they do, no matter what is said there’s always that on-track dyno that has to be run on the track. For us, we’re not willing to take the risk just yet, but I know what you’re saying. The earlier we can run it, the more we’re gonna learn.”
WHAT MADE YOU CONTACT THE FAN THAT WAS HIT BY DEBRIS FROM YOUR TALLADEGA WRECK AND HAVE YOU TALKED TO THEM SINCE? “Yeah, we’ve been talking a little bit and I think she’s gonna come out to the race. Hopefully, we’ll be able to meet up, but that was crazy. I hope nothing like that happens again. That’s the worst feeling I’ve had in racing. When I landed my airplane in Washington (DC) after that race, I was going to a Ford appearance, Randy, my PR guy, told me, ‘Look, there were some people injured.’ That was a really bad feeling. NASCAR raising the fences is good. Hopefully, they made the screens tighter – the holes in the fence smaller – and hopefully we don’t have anything like that happen again. But her name is Blake Bobbitt. She’s really nice and she’s a pretty cool chick.”
ANY TREPIDATION ON YOUR PART GOING BACK THERE? “That’s a good question, but not really. I know it sounds silly, but I was thinking about Talladega and going back there and everything that can happen and that really wasn’t part of my thinking until I saw a picture on NASCAR.com or something yesterday and I thought, ‘Oh yeah, that was a pretty wild wreck.’ To me, that’s not the thing that’s forefront in my mind going there, it’s the strategy that I’m gonna use. I did learn something about the end of the race – block once, I probably won’t block twice, but, really, personally, I feel good about it. I think that wreck showed me you can have a pretty good wreck and walk away from it.”
MARTINSVILLE QUALIFYING
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Qualified 14th) – “It felt really close to the same lap as practice and it was. It was so close that you’re splitting hairs here at Martinsville. When it’s all said and done, a tenth is gonna probably put us 10-12 spots higher and there will be 10-12 spots behind us. It was an OK lap. I thought we could pick up a little bit more, but I think we’ve got a great UPS Ford for Sunday and we’re just gonna need a hair more in practice on Saturday to get perfect.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Qualified 29th) – “I probably could have driven a little bit better there. I probably gave up a tenth of a second, but we focused on race trim, we didn’t focus on qualifying trim. Hopefully, that will pay off on Sunday. That’s the key because I don’t think we’re gonna get practice tomorrow considering the forecast.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Qualified 20th) – “That was much better. I probably left a little out there because I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve learned here that you don’t overdrive it, so I was a little light getting down in there, which is about perfect, and we were just sitting there talking about a half-a-tenth is eight spots. I could have easily gone a half-a-tenth better than I was, so that was a little frustrating. We didn’t really do any qualifying runs in practice because we thought it might rain because we were trying to get ready for Sunday. That’s not terrible.”
BOBBY LABONTE – No. 96 Ask.com Ford Fusion (Qualified 8th) – “That was definitely better than what we practiced, so I’m real happy with it. We thought we could run a .69, but I didn’t quite get there. It was close, but we really unloaded good in race trim. We were kind of halfway in qualifying trim, but still mostly in race trim, so I felt good about that. And I just feel good about the weekend so far. What we did is we came back with what we raced here last time with a few little things, instead of something totally different which helps me out.”