Biffle, Kenseth and Edwards Finish Top 10 at Bristol
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 U.S. Census Ford Fusion (Finished 4th) – “I didn’t make the call, Greg Erwin did, but I think it was the right one. Yeah, we could go back and do it over again with four and see what that does, but this U.S. Census Ford Fusion was really, really fast. I was just too loose. If I would have been like I was earlier, or if the car had been driving like it normally did, I think I could have held them off – I really do – but I was just so loose I couldn’t put the power down. The back end was sliding. I owe an apology to Mark Martin. It sounds stupid because everybody makes an excuse, but I was having trouble with my radio. That whole run I didn’t have a radio and I didn’t know he was on the outside of me and I ran him into the fence. I feel bad, but I didn’t know he was there.” WHY WERE YOU SO LOOSE? WHAT CHANGED? “I know they freed it up with air because normally two tires will tighten the car up, but they raised the air-pressure, plus they freed it up on air-pressure and it was just too much.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Finished 5th) – WAS TWO TIRES THE RIGHT CALL? “I think so. My car just would not go on restarts. I’d be really tight. I had one restart all day where the car drove the way I wanted it to, so I would have rather had the track position and take my chances. I’m really happy with how we finished. I’m kind of surprised we had that last caution. I thought that Kurt had the best car. He was gonna win the race and I feel like he probably got one taken from him, but it was a good race. It was crazy. We didn’t run very good, but we made some good adjustments and had great pit stops and came up with a good result.” WHAT DO YOU THINK OF BEING THE NEW POINTS LEADER? “I didn’t even think of that, to tell you the truth, with how bad our race was but that’s good. So far this year, we’ve been able to find ways to get good finishes even when we haven’t performed good. All of the guys did a great job for me on pit road and they really got us this finish.” TALK ABOUT YOUR RUN. “We chose to get two tires, which was definitely the right call. Todd did a great job making that call and all of these Crown Royal guys did a great job. I was kind of hoping we were gonna finish under green there because who knows what would have happened with a green-white-checkered. My car wouldn’t run very fast on restarts, so Todd did the right thing by getting us the track position and we just held on to get what we could.”
TODD PARROTT, Crew Chief – No. 17 Crown Royal Ford Fusion – WAS THAT TWO-TIRE CALL TWO-THIRDS OF THE WAY THROUGH THE RACE THE KEY FOR YOU GUYS? “It got us back up there in position to race with them there at the end. Every once in a while you have to do that. It was the right call and the right decision to make.” YOU’RE LEADING THE POINTS. IS THAT SOMETHING YOU CAN USE TO FURTHER MOTIVATE THIS TEAM? “I think so. It was a good day. We qualified seventh and finished fifth, so we’ll keep building on that.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Finished 6th) – “It was pretty cool there at the end to have the top-three guys there in Fords. I thought we were gonna be fighting for the win, but Jimmie got in there with four tires and shook it all up and ended up getting the win. That’s the best we ran all day was sixth, so that’s pretty decent.” YOU WERE GOOD ON LONG RUNS. “Yeah, we were pretty good on long runs, but we just didn’t get any because we were having the tire trouble, so right about when the car would really start going there would be a caution. I learned a lot. We weren’t very good and then we got real good at the end, so that was good.”
KASEY KAHNE – No. 9 Budweiser Ford Fusion (Finished 34th) – “I think we broke a lower A-Frame. I’m not positive, but something broke and it fell over on that side and went up the track. We were pretty much done after that, so it’s pretty disappointing.”
PAUL MENARD – No. 98 Pittsburgh Paints/Menards Ford Fusion (Finished 18th) – “As good as the car was earlier I’m kind of disappointed with that. We were in the top 10 all day, but we had two sets of tires that just weren’t wearing like the others and that kind of threw us for a loop. We kind of messed ourselves up by taking two tires there at the end because everybody behind us took four, so we were kind of a sitting duck. All I know is that today could have been a helluva lot worse, that’s for sure.”
AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 43 Best Buy Ford Fusion (Finished 17th) – “It’s one of those days, and this is what we’re trying to build on with the team, it was a bad day. We never really got it right. At times, I thought we were better than others, but we just struggled on fighting to get the car to turn. We were losing rear grip, but this is what we said was gonna make us a good team is to make our bad days 17th and that’s where we finished. We missed the wrecks and probably had about a 20th-22nd place car and salvaged 17th out of it. That’s not what we really want to be happy with, but it’s one of those days that could have been a lot worse. We gained some points because there was a lot of guys in front of us that had a bad day. I think we should be OK at Martinsville. We’ve just got to keep working on it.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 29th) – “I felt like our UPS Ford was pretty fast. After a poor qualifying effort, we spent the first couple hundred laps just trying to get good track position and we did that and got into the top 15. We were trying to fine-tune on our Ford and get up in the field and that wreck happened between turns two and three. I couldn’t quite see who was holding everybody up, but it looked like somebody got into the wall. I just couldn’t get it off of the top and didn’t have anywhere to go and we knocked the left front off of the car. It’s a disappointing finish for a good car, but we’ll have to just keep going. We can’t change the past and can only work on the future.”
DAVID STREMME – No. 26 Air National Guard Ford Fusion (Finished 24th) – “It was OK, but we just didn’t have any luck. We had a good car, but could never get track position. It’s a shame, but we’ll see what happens. We got them closer to the top 35. We ran good. We could outrun other guys in front of us, but we just never got track position. You need some luck here and we just didn’t get it.” WILL WE SEE YOU MORE IN THIS CAR? “I hope so. We’ll see what happens, but right now we’ll go back to the shop and discuss it Monday.”
TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 34 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion (Finished 25th) — "Twenty-fifth isn’t bad, but it could’ve been better. We had a tire go down and set us back, and from that point we couldn’t fight back through the field. We were hoping for at least a top-20 finish, but things didn’t quite work our way. The car was actually pretty good considering all the changes we threw at it after qualifying."
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Taco Bell Ford Fusion (Finished 23rd) — "It was a great start to the weekend for the Taco Bell Ford Fusion. We came off the truck fast and practiced and qualified well, but we had some bad luck in the race. We got hit early and got some damage to the left rear and then later we scraped the wall a little trying to avoid that big wreck up front. So we were just trying to battle for what we could and stay out of trouble. We would’ve liked a better finish, but we still showed a lot of progress this weekend. I’m proud of what this team has accomplished."
