MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (finished 3rd) – “It ended up being really good. We didn’t qualify very good, but we were really happy with our car. When the race started, I didn’t think we were quite as good as we were yesterday, but we were able to have really good pit stops. We got most of our position through pit stops and restarts. I kept getting in the proper lane on restarts and my car would run for two laps, and then I’d get two or three spots, and you had to do it right there because there weren’t many people that could pass very good. So, we had a nice, solid day on pit road, and the car was okay, also, and I was able to get a decent finish out of it.”
CARL EDWARDS SEEMS TO BE HAPPY WITH YOUR FINISH BECAUSE HE SAID HE WANTS TO PICK YOUR BRAIN ON THE WHOLE THING. CAN A DRIVER WHO IS IN 11TH PLACE AFTER TWO CHASE RACES, LIKE CARL, WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP? WHAT CAN YOU SAY TO HIM? “I think no matter where you’re at in the points, whether you’re in the Chase or out of the Chase or where we are, I think you always want to get your best effort and best finish every day. My approach never changes, everybody asks me, but it really never changes. I don’t come to the race track and say, ‘Man, I don’t want to win today, I want to run fifth.’ So, we always go to win. He’s going to continue to do that. It shouldn’t be a big surprise. It wasn’t a big surprise to me that we missed the Chase – I saw it coming for three months. We haven’t been performing, the whole company hasn't been performing the way it needs to to win a championship, and that’s not being negative or anything, it’s just obvious. Everybody can see that. So it shouldn't really be a surprise, you know, where they're at, considering the results we’ve had all year. You don’t just turn it around overnight, so everybody at Roush Fenway is working really hard to get the cars better, to be competitive. We got behind a little, and we’re working hard to get that back. So, I’d like to say it’s a step in the right direction. We had really good pit stops. Our car was reasonable, it wasn’t blazing fast, and we were able to get a good finish.”
CAN SOMEONE WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP JUST BEING FAST? “Just on speed, without any luck or anything changing, you never know. Like Mark [Martin] said, there are eight races left. That’s a ton of races. That’s a lot of points to beat, 1,400 points or something to be made. So, anything can happen. But, just on speed, do I think one of our company cars can win? No, I don't. But, anything can happen and they might be able to get that fixed and get that turned around.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Ford Fusion (finished 11th) – IT LOOKED LIKE YOU GOT ALL YOU COULD OUT OF THE LAST 20 LAPS. “That’s it. The strategy worked out. That’s the best possible finish we could’ve hoped for with this race car. I’m really proud of my guys on pit road. They did a good job. Bob [Osborne, crew chief] made good calls, but our mousetrap just wasn’t good enough today. Matt [Kenseth] was good, so we’ll go back and learn from that. It’s frustrating, but not as bad as it could’ve been, you know?”
YOU WERE MIRED THERE AROUND 15TH TO 20TH FOR A WHILE. “And racing my guts out for it, too. I like coming here and running top two or three – that’s a lot more fun, a lot easier. Definitely, a lot of respect, I’ve got a lot of respect for all the guys I was racing with. They did a really good job. Everybody did a really good job, I thought.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (finished 13th) – “It was a frustrating day. What’s probably most frustrating about the whole thing, and I hate to beat a dead horse, is that the 42 and the 48 and I don’t know who else came up here and tire tested, and when we came back, look at the guys that didn’t tire test, we ran terrible. It was a completely different tire, it had us off our game right when we unloaded off the truck, we couldn’t even make a lap on the track. We got going there toward the end, but not like the guys that tested. That’s the whole deal. We had a decent car, but we’re not going to beat guys that came here and tested.”
WHAT ABOUT ADJUSTMENTS ON THE CAR AS THE RACE WENT ON? “We were too far off on this tire. We needed a different bump stop. We needed to start over, because what we ran here before wasn’t even close.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (finished 24th) – “The first two runs, we were just super tight and really slow. We got a lap down pretty early and lost our really good track position. We were just on every side of the adjustments today on every single stop. We did air pressure to track bar and wedge and just could never get it close. We were just really tight or really loose and we were just slow. We were just really fortunate that our UPS team had good pit stops and we weren’t involved in any wrecks. We’ve just got to keep working on our cars and get better at adjusting during the race.”
ON CHECKING UP DURING JOEY LOGANO’S CRASH. “Yeah, that was pretty close when he was coming back up the track and I had to check up. I don’t think that we had any damage, but I did have to hit the brakes pretty hard so we came in and changed the tires. But, that’s what you get when you’re running back in the mid-20s.”