JAMES BUESCHER – No. 10 International MAXXFORCE Deisel Ford F-150 (finished 8th) – THAT DIDN’T LOOK LIKE AN EASY TOP 10. “It wasn’t a very easy top 10. My International MAXXFORCE Diesel Ford F-150 was not the bebst today. We struggled in practice, struggled in qualifying. We were 20th in the first practice, 23rd in the second practice, and qualified 21st. I went a lap down twice, got the Lucky Dog once and then topped off with fuel, and ran green forever and everybody had to pit green flag, and we lucked out and got back on the lead lap, and we came out, like, 12th. But, the truck, this one’s just not very good in traffic at all, so anytime I was around anybody I just lost a whole bunch of ground. To come out of here with an eighth-place finish is, like, I don’t even know. This is one of the worst trucks I’ve had all year and the second-best finish I’ve had all year, so, I don’t know.”
SO, WHAT DOES THAT SAY FOR PERSEVERANCE? “Perseverance, for sure. These guys didn’t give up in the pits and made good pit stops, even though we came in a lap down, and we’d go back out and they’d still keep up with the guys that are leading. We’d come in third in line, we weren’t running third, but we’d come back out third, so they did a great job in the pits. I want to thank Ford. We had plenty of horsepower down the straightaway, just couldn’t get the thing to handle in the corners. So, we’ll go to ORP and get another top-10 or go to a top-five, hopefully.
COLIN BRAUN – No. 6 Con-Way Freight True LTL Ford F-150 (finished 20th) – WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END? “It’s just disappointing. We had a really good truck during the race, I thought, and the guys did a great job on pit road and made up a lot of spots there – and it’s just disappointing to have it end like that.”
BEFORE GETTING SPUN, IT LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE HEADED FOR ANOTHER TOP-10. “Yeah, I thought I certainly had a top-10, if not a top-five truck there at the end. Like I said, it’s just disappointing to racing like that and have somebody do that.”
THE RESULT DIDN’T SHOW IT TONIGHT, BUT YOU HAVE TO BE HAPPY WITH THE PERFORMANCE OF THE TRUCK, NOT ONLY TONIGHT BUT DURING THE SUMMER STRETCH. “It’s good to do that, but we’ve got to keep moving up in points, and it’s tough to do that when you have days like this.”
MIKE BEAM – crew chief, No. 6 Con-Way Freight True LTL Ford F-150 – TONIGHT, THERE WAS AN UNFORTUNATE ENDING, BUT CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE JOB COLIN BRAUN HAS DONE THIS SUMMER? “He’s done a great job, everyone has, it’s just that we’ve worked on these trucks and it’s just one of those situations where, like tonight, the guys are driving just crazy, and unfortunately, Colin was trying to race that 81, and he just got down into him and tore our truck up.”
TONIGHT, THOUGH, THE RESULT DIDN’T EQUAL THE PERFORMANCE. OTHERWISE, IT COULD’VE BEEN FIVE STRAIGHT TOP-10S FOR THIS TEAM. “We always pride ourselves on being good down the stretch, and we’ll just have to work hard and try to get our momentum back next week at Indy, because this team can definitely do it. Colin, he did a great job tonight. We really didn’t have a good truck in practice, and his feedback was good and changed a bunch of stuff this morning. I’ve been doing this a long time. This series, it’s just crazy. It’s just crazy. It’s no fun like this for people working at the shop, day and night, the wind tunnel, and then you come and people race like this. It’s just very disheartening.”