Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion, and Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, held separate Q&A sessions Friday at Texas Motor Speedway. Both spoke after practice about this weekend’s race and other issues.
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT DANICA PATRICK POSSIBLY COMING TO NASCAR NEXT YEAR? “Here’s the deal. It’s simple. If Danica Patrick could come over here to NASCAR and run well, it would be great for the sport and it would be great for the sponsors that she brings over here. The fans would love it, so I think the better she does over here – barring running in front of me – the better it is for the sport and I think that’s good.”
WHAT IF SHE DOESN’T DO WELL? “Then she doesn’t do well. There are a lot of people who have come over here and not been able to do well, and I think Juan Montoya is the best example, to me, of a guy who has huge talent, who came over and had a mass of success in other things, and was able to do it. He’s as good as any of us over here now, so if she doesn’t do it, I don’t think it would be a huge surprise, but, like I said, for all those reasons I hope she does well.”
WHAT ABOUT DOING INDY CAR AND STOCK CARS AT THE SAME TIME? “I’ve never driven and Indy Car, so I don’t know. But it is a fact that these cars are different than almost anything else out there, I guess, so the more time you can spend in these heavier cars, the better. I know for me personally, what I came from were lighter-weight dirt cars, USAC Silver Crown stuff, and these cars were quite different, so that will take a little while. But I don’t think running another car at the same time hurts you.”
HOW IS YOUR CAR? “We’re good. This is the best we’ve been in a long time and I’m happy. We need to go out here and get a top-three or top-five qualifying effort, and then go out and race well. That’s a fast race car over there. To me, this is a really fun race track. This would be a great place to get that first win of the season. This is the best we’ve been in the first practice in a long time.”
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? “I don’t know what the difference is, but I’m sure if we end up running as well as we think we can this weekend, we’ll know what we need to work on. This is the point in the year where you really want to build some momentum, you want to have something good to go into the winter with, and this could be a good weekend for us. We’ll see what happens.”
ANY FEEDBACK FROM OTHER DRIVERS ABOUT THE NATIONWIDE TEST AT TALLADEGA MONDAY? “No, I didn’t talk to anybody about the Nationwide test at Talladega. I got to run the new car at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, and I think I ran it somewhere else. I ran it twice and it was good. There wasn’t anything bad about it, so from what I read about the test at Talladega I think it went pretty well, so that should be good. The biggest thing they could do with those cars is give them about another 200 horsepower and it would be great.”
HOW FRUSTRATING HAS IT BEEN THIS YEAR COMPARED TO LAST YEAR AT THIS TIME? “It’s really frustrating. I don’t know how many wins we had at this point last year, seven or something, but we had nine wins last year. That was an amazing year. I’ve kind of tried to think of it differently, it’s not that we haven’t had no wins this season, it’s just that we’ve had nine wins over the last two. That sounds a lot better, but I’d like to have 10 or 12 wins over the last two seasons by the end of this year, but it is frustrating. You go out and you do the very best you can. I feel like I’m doing sometimes a better job in the race car and we’re not getting the same results, but that’s what makes this sport tough. The good times are good, the bad times you’ve just got to dig in and work.”
YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T IMAGINE THIS COULD HAPPEN. “No, I know the possibilities. In 2005 and 2006 were a lot like this, where we had huge expectations. The media is so nice to me. Everybody was so pumped and voted us to win the championship and everybody was on board, but I knew in the back of my mind that things can go great or they can go bad and no amount of speculation can affect that. It’s just how hard you’re working and whether you’re working on the right things, so, yeah, it’s frustrating but I know how cruel this sport can be.”
DOES IT MAKE YOU APPRECIATE LAST YEAR EVEN MORE? “Oh yeah.” WHAT ABOUT THE NATIONWIDE SEASON? “The Nationwide season I feel like we’ve been as good as we can be. I made a mistake at Michigan that cost us 80 or 100 points, but, other than that, we’ve won when we could win and we’ve run second when we could run second. I feel like we just have to have more horsepower there. Literally, we need more horsepower and that’s what we’re fighting right now, but once we get that, I think we’re gonna be really good. Hopefully, the things we’re doing here with the crew chief changes, hopefully that stuff helps for next year, and then the new engine stuff that they’re working on, I hope that pays off too.”
DID YOU QUESTION THE CREW CHIEF CHANGES? “We all agreed that the crew chief change could be good. Right now, the first week out, David Ragan is screaming fast, I’m fast, and it’s working. Dan Stillman was over in our hauler talking to us, and it’s pretty cool to have a team like that where you can move people around and see how it goes. But it’s a three-race trial, really. Our Scotts Save-a-Lot team, we need a little boost and maybe this will be a way to get it.”
HOW DO YOU COMPARE THE COMPETITION LEVEL THIS YEAR FROM LAST YEAR? “I may not be the right guy to ask. To me, the competition wasn’t easy, but I felt like when we got our stuff right, when my car was balanced, I felt like I could win almost every race that we were in last year, and I really felt good about most of the races. This year, from where I’m sitting, the competition level has increased hugely. Not only are guys faster, but there are more fast guys and that’s tough. Compared to five or six years ago when I started this, there’s no comparison. It’s way tougher now.”
EXPLAIN THAT. “If I had a really good race car five years ago, my car was perfect and we had a competitive car, I could go out there and I might have to race two or three other guys – maybe only one – and, other than that, we had everybody beat. Right now, if you’ve got a perfect car and everything is good, there are six or seven guys – maybe 10 or 12 at a given race track – that you’ve got to beat. It makes the strategy on pit road, driver input, changes on the car by the crew chief, it puts all of that at a real premium.”
HOW DO YOU SEE THE DOUBLE-FILE RESTARTS AFTER 20 RACES? “I think the double-file restart is good. At first, I was really nervous about the potential for a disaster, but all of the drivers seem to be doing really well with it, and the fans I’ve talked to – even the people close to me like my brother and my dad and my friends at home – they’re like, ‘That’s the greatest thing ever. It’s so much fun to watch,’ so I think that’s a good move NASCAR made there.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – DO YOU GO BACK AND LOOK AT WRECKS LIKE TALLADEGA? “I just saw the replays is about all I’ve looked at. There might be some more work with the roof flaps that need to be done with these cars. I don’t remember the old car getting turned around backwards and up like that right away, but they’re going pretty fast so they got turned around backwards pretty fast. Normally, you go sideways for a little bit before it ends up backwards and cuts the speed off. Those spins were pretty fast to be backwards, so you’re pretty much full-speed backwards, so it may be hard to keep those cars on the ground. That’s just restrictor plate racing. We could have a half-dozen of them upside-down, or we could have none for a year or two. It all just depends.”
IT DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE BUMP DRAFTING RULES? “No, that had nothing to do with it. There was no new bump drafting rule. All I heard is everybody talk about a new bump draft rule, there was no new rule. You’ve never been able to bump draft in the corner. They’ve said it for the last 10 restrictor plate races – no bump drafting in the corner. Granted, guys have bump drafted in the corner and not been penalized for it, but there has always been the rule of no bump drafting in the corners. That’s what they’ve said.”
WHY ENFORCE IT NOW? “Keep in mind nobody got penalized at Talladega, but because that’s what causes about 70 percent of the accidents is the guy pushes on a guy in the middle of the corner. For instance, the previous Talladega race when Carl spun me out it wrecked half the field. He tried to push me in the middle of the corner. NASCAR has to say, ‘Don’t push in the middle of the corner. We’ve told you over and over and over, do not do it. Now, we’re gonna penalize you if you do it.’ They could have penalized us before because they did tell us, but they elected not to and now they’ve elected to say and put it out there that ‘if you do, we could penalize you.’ They didn’t say they would. They said they’re gonna be watching very close. I pushed Jeff Gordon a couple times in the entry part of the corner – didn’t actually push him but touched him, just riding the brake pedal and trying to stay right close to him. I think it’s a matter of a guy abusing that just shoving them all the way around the corner down the straightaway and driving away from the field. And here’s the other thing, when two cars do it, it’s hardly ever a problem going straight or in the corner. We’ve been successful about it in the corner when two cars do it. When three cars do it, it’s gonna be a wreck, especially in the corner. You get three guys bumper-to-bumper in the corner, bang, you’re gonna wreck. Down the straightaway we’re having a hard enough time managing it – three and four pushing each other – you see the line looking all nervous going down the straightaway and that’s because everybody is against everybody’s bumper, and they just simply want when the corner comes to quit doing that. Be as aggressive as you want, but don’t be hitting the guy in the corner. A lot of people criticized it, but it didn’t affect the racing. The only thing pushing in the corner does is gets two guys to break away from the pack for half-a-straightaway. That’s the only thing it does.”
DID IT AFFECT HOW THE RACE PLAYED OUT WITH SINGLE-FILE RACING? “No. Remember in 2007 when we were single-file up against the outside groove? I was running fourth. I was smiling because we were gonna end up finishing, no wreck, everybody is staying straight, and then all of a sudden guys started dropping down on the bottom. I knew that if we all stayed up at the top the bottom row couldn’t get a run, and I think Michael Waltrip or David Reutimann blew up in front of me, but we were running single-file against the wall when that happened, so we’ve done that before. We’ve done that a lot, and that race track has taught us that you can get up there and hold off the guys behind you. That’s all we were doing. When you’re back there in 25th you’re frustrated because you can’t go, but that’s a product of what we’ve learned.”
AT WHAT POINT DOES IT NOT BECOME ACCEPTABLE TO SIMPLY SAY, ‘THAT’S JUST RESTRICTOR PLATE RACING?’ “I don’t know what we can do to change it. We try all kinds of stuff constantly to make our cars faster. We bump draft. We push. We figure out if we get two of them hooked together we can drive away from the field. We’re always learning. We learn if we get up against the outside wall it keeps the guys on the bottom from getting a run on us for some reason – because the air buffeting off the left side of the car doesn’t give the guys enough to get up there. We’ve learned all kinds of things. That’s just the evolution of restrictor plate racing. We can’t turn the clock back four years to how we ran here in 2005 at Texas, when I won in the spring and Carl won in the fall. We ran really good and the racing was different then. We can’t reproduce that, so whatever expectation you have of five races ago, it’s hard to reproduce that when we continue to learn and do different stuff.”
HOW WAS YOUR CAR TODAY? “My car is really good. I’m really happy with it. We were second on the speed chart. I think we can make it a little bit better for qualifying and looking over our qualifying notes from Texas, we think we may not make the mistake we’ve made in the past and hopefully have a chance at being on the front row at least.’
YOU AND YOUR TEAMMATES HAD LUGNUT ISSUES HERE IN THE SPRING. WHAT IS YOUR OUTLOOK FOR SUNDAY? “I’m real excited, especially the way the car is running. A lot of places we’ve been fast in the spring and gone back and haven’t been fast in the fall, so this is an exception. That’s good for us. At this race track we’re fast now. This is the car I almost won the Kansas race with earlier this year, so I’m pretty happy. It’s a good car. I like the car and the car is running good.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT DANICA PATRICK POSSIBLY COMING TO NASCAR? “I think it’s great for our sport to offer drivers from all walks of life, whether it’s Formula 1, any kind of open-wheel racing, I think it’s great. This is a tough business and a tough sport and people come over here and learn. Tony Stewart was successful at it and other drivers have had moderate success, so there’s no reason why a driver can’t come in and be competitive in one series and work their way to another.”
CAN SHE HANDLE DOING INDY CAR AND STOCK CARS IN THE SAME SEASON? “I think so because I don’t know a lot about the Indy Car Series schedule, but I know they don’t run as many races as we do and they have weeks off, so I would think that she should be able to run – obviously not both full-time – but be able to run some races for sure.”
WOULD YOU BE COMFORTABLE IF SHE RAN DAYTONA AS HER FIRST RACE? “I would be. That’s a pretty tough spot to be in because restrictor plate racing is a different animal altogether. It’s almost a bad influence to have a restrictor plate race for your first time thinking, ‘That’s the way these cars drive,’ because it’s a whole different mindset. If you historically get out the finishing order from restrictor plate races, they don’t look like normal finishes from our meat and potatoes race tracks. That’s the first thing that comes to mind with me is for your very first time being in restrictor plate trim is different. We don’t draft on a race track like this (Texas). We try and get away from the other car, whereas it’s different at Daytona. I’ll be OK with it, but I think it would be difficult for somebody. I think it would be for me if I look back at how I got started.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE BANQUET BEING IN VEGAS? “I’m a little bit more of a Vegas guy than New York. I don’t have anything against New York. I enjoy going there, but it’s cramped and busy and all that. I love to gamble, so I don’t know if Vegas is good or bad for me.”
TEXAS QUALIFYING
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Qualified 30th) – “I’m happy with the pickup and the car drove better, so I’m happy about that. I just didn’t get the best lap. I did pretty good in three and four, and just kind of left a little time out there – probably almost a tenth-of-a-second in one and two, so I’m disappointed I missed it, but I’m happy that the car drove a lot better.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Qualified 17th) – “Our Cup car drives really well. We picked up some, but just needed a few more one-hundredths to be up there in the top two or three. Hopefully, that will stay there in the top 10 or 15, but our UPS Ford is very fast right off the truck. I think it’s got some pretty good speed. It was as good of a first practice as we’ve had all year, so that’s just a product of some things we’ve been working on to unload better and be more comfortable. That’s obviously working, but it helps bringing the same tire back, so we’ve got some notes from the spring to work on. It’s not like we’re starting all over again, so anytime we can come back with the same car and the same style of tire it just helps out.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Qualified 8th) – “I feel like I let the team down a little bit. We had a little faster car than that and I just didn’t realize there was gonna be that much grip. I just didn’t quite get to the bottom on three and four. I backed off because I knew last year that was a problem, but I sort of squared the corner off a little bit, making sure I get to the bottom, and that’s sort of backwards thinking. You need to kind of arc it out to get down there, and then it’s a little hard to see, a little intimidating to not kind of feel the car and how it’s turning. I left a little bit out there.”
AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 44 Ford. Drive one. Ford Fusion (Qualified 16th) – “It was pretty good. It’s a process. I’ve got to keep remembering that. Obviously, you want to go out there, you’re excited to be a part of Ford – all of us are – and you want to go out there and right away just think, ‘We should be on top of the board,’ but it’s not that easy in this sport. We started off practice and struggled a lot. The car is brand new, so there are a lot of things to work through. I’m proud of everybody on the 44 team for working through it. In qualifying, the times are so close that it just felt like I didn’t get everything out of it. Then you look at the board and half-a-tenth would pick you up five or six spots, but, overall, we’re pleased. Like I said, it’s a process. We know that and hopefully that will get us inside the top 20 and we’ll go racing on Sunday.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Qualified 6th) – “Qualifying was pretty good. It’s not the pole, but, hopefully, it’ll be a top 10. If it is a top 10, it’ll be like a victory for us. We’ve worked pretty hard and I was real happy with the pickup there. We’re competitive. I feel like we can hold our own against these guys today and that’s big.”