Ragan’s Sixth-Place Finish Leads Ford Teams in Aaron’s 499 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Race
ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 19 Bostitch/Stanley Ford Fusion (Finished 33rd) – “I don’t know what happened. I haven’t looked at a replay yet. It’s just Talladega racing. Man, that’s ashame. The 19 team did not need this. We’ll just try to regroup and go to Richmond.” WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE RACING? “It’s definitely wild with this new spoiler. It’s definitely wild racing and bump drafting, it’s just Talladega at the end. I’m not sure what happened. I felt like I got hit in the right rear and turned up in the wall, but I don’t know what happened. I’ve got to go look at the replay. I feel sorry for all my guys with Stanley and Bostitch that came on for this weekend. We didn’t need this.” DOES IT GET KIND OF OLD BECAUSE A WRECK IS GOING TO HAPPEN? “It’s gonna happen. I don’t care what rules you bring here it’s gonna happen. It’s Talladega and you can’t change it. You just wish that one day you’d be on the good side of it instead of the bad side, so I hate that we got in the wreck. We got in one wreck and made a bunch of repairs to it and made it better. We were just trying to get in line there at the end, but I’m not sure what happened. I don’t know.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 6th) – “Our UPS Ford was fast. It was just kind of back and forth. You get that swing where you can go to the front, but then you usually get shuffled to the back. Luckily, we were on the right swing toward the last 20-30 laps. On those last two or three restarts, we were just trying to conserve as much fuel as we could. We knew we had a car that could win, it’s just a matter of who is pushing and what kind of restart you get. We got an OK restart and a top 10 is certainly a good day, but we had a car that could have won.” WHAT ABOUT THE STYLE OF RACING HERE WITH THE SPOILER? “I thought it was a lot of fun. Certainly, the cars drive really well. I think NASCAR made the right decision on allowing guys to push a little bit more and be a little more aggressive. I think it was a pretty clean race, except for maybe the last 10-15 laps and that’s just from everybody losing a little bit of patience. Overall, our UPS team did a good job and I’m glad our car is in one piece.”
KASEY KAHNE – No. 9 Budweiser Ford Fusion (Finished 21st) – “We seemed to get in everybody else’s mess today, but I was the one that missed pit road and got us back there. We were pretty quick the whole race and I just misjudged pit road. I hit the brakes and thought I could beat a bunch of guys in, but the car in front of me hit the car pretty strong and got slowed up way early, so I had to go around him and keep going.” WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE RACING TODAY? “To me, NASCAR let us do our thing. It was pretty wild and pretty crazy. There was a lot of pushing, but not too many wrecks. It was no worse than any other time and they just left it up to the drivers, so I actually thought it was pretty cool.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Finished 17th) – “We had a great car. There at the end, I don’t know what happened to Tony on that restart, but he wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened to him, but that’s what happens in restrictor plate racing. If you don’t have a guy pushing you, you’re a dead duck. He couldn’t go on the restart and I had a huge gap. I don’t know if he air-locked or what he did, but that’s the way it goes.” WE HAD A RECORD NUMBER OF LEADERS AND LEAD CHANGES. WHAT ABOUT THE RACE PACKAGE HERE? “It was a little too draggy, it seems like. You can get slowed down and speed back up a little too easy, but it was pretty fun. I can’t wait to see how it drives at Daytona and we get that chance.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Finished 11th) – “The last couple of laps didn’t go like we had planned, but it was still a solid day for us. That’s a good points day, so we’ll just take it and go on. I think everybody did a really good job today. It wasn’t as wild as some of the races I’ve seen here because everybody did a good job.” WAS YOUR PLAN TO LAY BACK AND COME ON AT THE END? “Yeah, and I don’t think that hurt us any. I think it was the right plan. We dodged some big wrecks and stayed out of trouble and were there at the end. Those last few laps can go any way and even though 11th wasn’t as good as we could have been, it sure wasn’t that bad.”
TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 34 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion (Finished 18th) – “It was OK. Right at the beginning of the race the car really got up through the pack, so I knew the car had enough speed to do its job when it needed to at the end. I just stayed out of trouble. I raced aggressively and kind of knew what I had, and for the middle part of the race I just kind of took it easy to make sure I didn’t tear anything up. That was key because we were there at the end and got a solid finish.” THREE GREEN-WHITE-CHECKERS AT THE END. WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS? “It was pretty hairy. I was right in the middle of the last two wrecks and made it through. That was a great job by my spotter and my team for giving me a good car. We kept it out of trouble and kept it clean.”
ROBERT RICHARDSON JR. – No. 37 Mahindra Tractors USA Ford Fusion (Finished 26th) – “It wasn’t really what we expected. The car wouldn’t really suck up in the draft like we needed it to, but I’m just glad to have the opportunity to race in the Sprint Cup Series. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the kind of finish we were looking for today.”
KEVIN CONWAY – No. 38 ExtenZe Ford Fusion – RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR CANDIDATE (Finished 30th) – “It was a pretty frustrating day, having the problem with the transmission. Coming into this race as a rookie, I knew it was going to be challenging already, so having a mechanical issue didn’t help. But the ExtenZe Racing team worked hard all day and we hung in there to come home 30th. We’ll do what we need to do this week and we’ll be ready for next week at Richmond.”
