GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – “I don’t even know where I finished. I have no idea. I tell you what, that was a hard-fought battle. Our car wasn’t that good. If it wasn’t for my pit crew, I wouldn’t be standing here plain and simple. They gave me four spots every single time – four spots – and I’d maintain, maintain, maintain, lose a couple and then a caution would come out and I’d gain four spots. It was quite a night.” DID YOU THINK EARLY ON YOU WERE IN TROUBLE? “Oh, yeah. Early on when I couldn’t get it going I was like, ‘Dang it,’ but we kept working on it and got it going.” WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MAKE THE CHASE AGAIN? “It means everything to me. 3M is such a great partner of ours, and Jack and the Fenway Group and everybody at Ford. Everybody works so hard to give us the best equipment possible and I’m just lucky to be where I’m at. It’s pretty special for us.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – YOU CAME UP 38 POINTS SHORT. “Honestly, we did approach it like any other race. This is about how we ran the last four Richmond races. We just haven’t been competitive, so, really since California it’s been a downhill slide for us. We’ve slowly fell back in the points every week, so I can’t say I’m very surprised we didn’t make it, but we’ve been working on it hard, we’re just weak in a few areas. We need to figure out why because none of our cars really run the way they should. I wish we weren’t in this spot, but we did the best we could and we’ll try again next week.” WHAT CAN YOU DO THESE LAST 10 RACES TO IMPROVE? “I’m not really sure. We’re always trying to get better, we just haven’t been able to do it. We’re missing something, in my opinion, with the organization to start with to make all of our cars faster because Carl hasn’t won a race all year and he won nine of them last year. I think we need to really look hard at engineering and some of the stuff we’re doing to make these cars run to start with, and on the 17 we need a little work, too. We’ve been inconsistent on pit road. I’ve been inconsistent. I missed the pit box tonight. There are certain things I can do better as well, so we just need to evaluate the whole thing and try to get back to where it needs to be. The first year they had the chase we had five of us in there and we just have to keep working at it.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – “This is good. At the beginning of the year this is what you hope for, that on this night you’ll be sitting here and be part of the chase. We’ve done it and that’s the first step, so now we just have to go seal the deal.” DID YOUR HEART SKIP A BEAT WHEN YOUR ENGINE SKIPPED A BEAT? “Yeah, my engine missed there a couple of times off the corner like it might be a high load or something. It kept doing it a little bit all night, but it never got any worse, so that did scare me quite a bit when it happened.” YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE NEXT 10? “We’ve just got to go do it. We’ve got to buckle down and take the gift that is the reconfiguration of the points and make the most of it.” HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW? “The first season of 2009 is over and we’ve achieved our goal, so now we just have to take advantage of the points being re-set and make the most of it.” ROUSH HAS BEEN DOWN A BIT SO FAR. ANY WORRIES? “You never know what’s gonna happen. You look at last season the way Greg started the chase. Boy, if he could have kept that pace up, he would have been unbeatable and I didn’t plan on Greg Biffle being one of the guys to beat if you looked at the first 26 races. We haven’t lit the world on fire, but, trust me, 10 races a lot can happen and I’ve just got to bank on that and just go do the best I can.”
MATT KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE – “It was disappointing. This is about how we ran the last three or four times here for some reason, but, really, since California we went to Vegas and broke on the second lap or the first lap and everything has been really downhill since there, so I can’t say I’m really surprised that we didn’t make it. I’m really disappointed we didn’t make it, but we just didn’t perform good enough. Yeah, there were some mistakes here and there, and there were some points left on the table, but you can say that every year. Basically, we didn’t perform good enough. We didn’t run good enough to be in and the way we ran the last three months we didn’t really deserve to be in there.”
GREG BIFFLE PRESS CONFERENCE – “I’m certainly excited. I’m with Brian, it’s been a stressful eight or 10 weeks leading up to this. I know I’m gonna sleep good tonight and re-focus for the chase and go to Loudon. Hopefully, we started off the chase last year as a miracle chase – I won the first two events, so, hopefully, we can mirror that or get a couple top fives or something. But we’re just happy that we ended up 11th in points before the seeding process. We ran good enough tonight to get in. We knew we were gonna run in the top 10 or top 15 and we did all night, but I’m just real excited for the guys at 3M and Roush and everybody that’s worked so hard to get this team where it’s at.” HOW CAN YOU ROUSH TEAMS IMPROVE AND HAVE A SHOT IN THE CHASE? “We just have to keep trying to figure out how to make our cars faster and that’s what we’ve been doing all season. We don’t have any wins and we only have two wins as an organization this year and they both came from Matt the first and second race of the year, so we know we’re off a little bit, but we’re not gonna give up. We’re gonna keep working as hard as we can and we know we need to be a little bit better. We thought this front suspension package we tried here was gonna be the deal, and it wasn’t. I don’t know if we ran any better or worse than we would have, but we’re gonna continue to work on it. That’s all I can say.” HOW LONG CAN YOU ENJOY THIS? “About six days until the Loudon race comes around and we’ve got to get it done in Loudon and go to Dover, Kansas and all the places that we love. The one plus for me is California is in the chase lineup now, which is good. Now, if we could just get Las Vegas instead of Martinsville and maybe trade Bristol for Talladega, it would be perfect for me.” IS IT FAIR TO SAY THAT RIGHT NOW THINGS ARE GETTING WORSE THAN BETTER WITH ROUSH FENWAY? “I don’t know if I would say that. We’re not getting better, but I wouldn’t say we’re getting worse. We qualified 24th and I think we were eighth on that last restart and ended up 13th, so that wasn’t worse than what we ran here in the spring, but it’s certainly not as good as we want to run. So we need to continue to work on it and try to get better, but that’s all we can do right now.” HOW MUCH CREDIT DO YOU GIVE YOUR PIT CREW FOR THIS AND ANDY WARD? “Those guys are probably the reason why we’re sitting here tonight. Our car wasn’t that great in the beginning. Through the middle part of the race I gained every single time I came down pit road, whether it was one, two or three, and one stop I gained four spots. We were in a good spot on pit road, too. I could get in and out of my pit box really fast, so that helped, but they just did a fantastic job. I can’t say enough about them. I’m so excited about it and I just hope we prove some people wrong once this chase gets going, that we’re gonna be ones to be looked at. We’ll just have to wait and see.” CAN YOU TALK ABOUT ANDY WARD, YOUR PIT CREW COORDINATOR? “I don’t know what I can say about Andy. He’s a great guy. He does a great job with the pit crew guys, the training, all the coaching that he does. It takes a lot of special people. People is what wins championships – not a good engine, not a good car – it’s the people that will win a title and you’ve got to have all the right people to get your equipment right.” CAN YOU CLARIFY YOUR FRONT SUSPENSION PACKAGE? “I think every team here had it. We’ve been testing down in Florida a little bit and it wasn’t some revolutionary thing, it was just a little bit different package than we had been running. I definitely don’t think it was worse, but it wasn’t like a miracle fix, but I think every team had a version of it.” CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW THE POINTS BEING RE-SET HELPS? “I’m excited about it because if I win the first two races, I’ll be leading the points this year, instead of last year I won the first two and I still wasn’t. It’s pretty tight. Forty points, that’s reachable in a couple of races. We’re just gonna have to run better and I think we’re capable of that. We’ve got good race tracks coming up, so that’s what I’m excited about. A lot of it has to do with the race tracks as well. We finished fourth at Bristol, led some of it, so we’re definitely a fast enough car. The race track lineup is pretty good for us in the chase but a couple spots.”
CARL EDWARD PRESS CONFERENCE – “I’m real excited. This season is so much different than last season. I guess we had six wins or something at this point last season and, right now, we’ve struggled a little bit as a group – Roush Fenway – so I feel like this is our opportunity to be only a few points behind the leader – kind of gather all of our energy and all the things we’ve been working on and head into these last 10 races full force. I’m real excited about it and, hopefully, we can have some good runs and get back up there the way we know we can run.”