Kenseth Leads Three Fords in Top-10 at Monster Mile
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Finished 3rd) – “It was a struggle out there. We had to work hard to get where we were. We made really good adjustments in the pits, really good pit calls to get the position we needed. Track position was really important today and I am glad the race finished under green. We were able to get the long runs in there and get the green flag pit stops. That was fun to race that way and have a race end that way. Overall it was a great day for us. We got the best we could out of it at the end.
LOOKED LIKE YOU CAME THROUGH THE FIELD PRETTY GOOD, WERE YOU JUST BIDING YOUR TIME OR WAS THAT JUST THE WAY THINGS SHOOK OUT? “More pit stops than strategy I would say. We made our way to about 15th and there were like 18 cars on the lead lap. We were within a couple second of getting lapped. In that pit stop we decided to take two and everybody else got four. That brought us out of the pits third and that was really the main call that got us where we were. It took us out of jeopardy of being a lap down. That call right there was the key.”
DO YOU FEEL FORD IS STARTING TO CLOSE THE GAP A LITTLE BIT ON THE COMPETITION? “That is a tough one to answer. This is historically a really good track for us even when we are running bad elsewhere. I think this is one of our best tracks. I didn’t think, no matter what we did to the car, that we had a shot to win. The 48 and the 18 were just better in front of us and the 31 if he had track position was better all day. I still feel we need something. I don’t know what that is though. It just seems like we are a little off the other three organizations. The competition is so tough that if you get a little behind it is hard to break through and get that win. I think we are maybe a half a step or step behind.”
IT HAS BEEN A FEW RACES WITH THE SPOILER; DO YOU FEEL IT HAS HELPED YOU GUYS OUT? “I don’t think it has been a huge change to be honest. I feel like we are running about the same. We started the season running really well. We ran top three in Vegas with the wing and finished second in Atlanta with it. We ran okay. I don’t know that it has affected us one way or another just yet.”
GREG BIFFLE– No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Finished 6th) – “You know after finishing 22nd three weeks in a row I feel like this was a pretty good day for us. It was a hard fought battle. We weren’t right when we started the race. We worked hard on it. We kept trying to get it better but we kept going back and forth to extremes. We ended up hitting on it toward the end, unfortunately it was just a little bit late.”
YOU MUST HAVE GOTTEN SOMETHING FIGURED OUT THOUGH TO CLIMB LIKE YOU DID? “Yeah, we did, but it still wasn’t right. Which makes a sixth place finish that much better I suppose. You know we have struggled the last couple weeks so I can’t complain about where we ended up today. I feel like if we could have gotten things figured out completely then we probably would have been able to really get up there, but I will take it.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 26th) – “We didn’t start out very good so we had to make a lot of changes on every pit stop. We made some good changes that made the car better at times, but that one pit stop where we had a left-rear issue problem, really hurt us because we got down multiple laps. It’s tough to overcome that, and Donnie (Wingo) did a good job and we got one of those laps back. All in all, our car wasn’t consistent enough over the long runs. Those last 150 laps, we were very good and we didn’t get down any more laps. When you’ve got a car that’s just mediocre, you’ve got to have some luck go your way and we just didn’t have that today.”
ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 19 Stanley Ford Fusion (Finished 28th) – “We had a good car on Friday and when we started practice on Saturday. We just slowed down a bunch and we were hitting the race track a bunch and we couldn’t figure out what the deal was with it. That was a frustrating day for sure. It is a brand new car, so maybe it just had a bug in it, I don’t know. It was definitely frustrating but we just have to pick up the pieces and move on to Charlotte.”
