Food City 250 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

MIKE MCLAUGHLIN-25-Team Marines Ford Taurus (Finished 12th) - WAS THIS A TOUGH RACE TO MAKE YOUR SEASON DEBUT? "Yeah, I got into the 20 there and that kind of messed our whole night up. We just kept digging." ARE YOU SURPRISED THERE WASN'T MORE GIVE AND TAKE TONIGHT? "Yeah, it was tough. I messed up a few times and got into a few people. It's just tight racing. You're on the edge and if somebody checks up in front of you the least bit, you've got them. This is the fastest short track and stuff is going to happen real quick, and that's the bottom line."

JASON KELLER-22-Airplus Insoles Ford Taurus (Finished 8th) - "We battled a little bit of tight and a little bit of loose. We probably had a 14th-place car, but the guys busted a stop out on pit road. I drove my hardest and they helped me out on pit road, so that helped a little bit." WITH THE NUMBER OF CAUTION FLAGS, HOW DIFFICULT WAS IT TO FIND A RHYTHM? "It was real hard. It was a funny race. We battled them one by one, and I'm pretty happy with a top 10."

ROBERT PRESSLEY-47-Clorox/Wisk Ford Taurus (Finished 9th) - "Whenever you're at Bristol and finish in the top 10, lucky is a lot of it. Man, we came over here and tested and all of these guys did good. We had a fast little hot rod all night long, but we had something happen to the brakes there and they got too hot and we lost them, so we had to run around there half throttle with the brake on. We couldn't race the way we wanted to, but whenever we had the brakes there after they cooled off we could go when we wanted to." THE NUMBER OF CAUTION LAPS PLAYED INTO YOUR FLAVOR TONIGHT. "They saved us because we wouldn't have had enough brakes."

MIKE WALLACE-4-GEICO Ford Taurus (Finished 13th) - "We had quite a few cautions, but there's always quite a few at Bristol no matter what. We would have liked to finish a little better than we did, but the GEICO Ford finished 13th, so all in all that's pretty decent. We'll carry that on to California and try to do better." WERE YOU SURPRISED BY THE NUMBER OF CAUTION LAPS? "I don't know why we ran so many laps; I'm confused on that. There was no reason for all those laps under caution. I even asked the guys why we ran so many laps under caution. I don't think we had that many cautions, but it just took a long time to clean them all up. Our car ran better on the real long runs and we could never get that long run."

MATT KENSETH-17-Alka-Seltzer Morning Relief Ford Taurus (Finished 2nd) - "I'm not a big fan of green-white-checkered, but the Alka-Seltzer Ford ran great tonight. If I wouldn't have spun the tires, I think I would have had a shot at Junior, but it seems like everybody is happier with this outcome tonight. I just spun the tires. We didn't have a car that could have beat him unless we had a green-white-checkered. I was just real fast on the restart and spun the tires." MORE KENSETH "I'm not a big fan of them, but we were in the right place for it tonight. We had a car that was good for two or three laps and then wasn't terrific. But, it was terrific for two or three laps. We needed a short run, and I was thinking right after we passed the 21, 'Man, if we had a yellow flag and a green-white-checkered we'd have a shot at 81.' We did have a shot and I spun the tires on restart. If I wouldn't have done that we could have at least got side by side and would have been a heck of a cool finish, but it was a great race nonetheless."

STACY COMPTON-59-Kingsford/Bush's Beans Ford Taurus (Finished 11th) - "The guys made some great calls tonight. We were wicked loose to begin with and they kept adjusting on it to where we were finally pretty good. We were as good as the leader on long runs. On that one long green-flag run we picked off eight or nine cars, and then we had cautions again. If we could have went green I think we certainly would have had a better finish. It's not bad. We're pretty pleased with it. We survived and we have something to build on. We had both cars running in the top 10 most of the night and that's a pretty good night here at Bristol when you start as far back as we did." DID THE NUMBER OF CAUTIONS TAKE AWAY FROM SOME OF THE STRATEGY THAT WE'VE SEEN HERE IN THE PAST? "Not too bad. The guys made great pit stops and we made good calls. If it would have been a little bit more green, I think you would have seen some more two-tire stops, but you don't have a choice. You have to play the hand dealt to you. It looked like Matt made a good call there stopping early. We didn't want to give up that much track position, and we felt like we could make the car better. I think it did throw a little monkey wrench in the strategy, but not bad."

MATT KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE

"We had decent car all night. We didn't qualify very well. We got a flat tire real early, lap 20 or 30, so we had to burn up a set of tires early, so we had to stay out when the leaders pitted and got us good track position. I think I only fell back to second on our old tires. I got even with the leaders and ran OK. We weren't as great on out last set of tires; we were just a little too tight. We were real strong on short runs, but we weren't very good for the super-long runs. On real old tires we seemed to be better than anybody, but for the first 80 or 90 laps we couldn't quite run with them. We just don't get enough green-flag racing here to matter that you're good on long runs. Our car was good late on tires and we were able to make a little charge there at the end and at least put a little pressure on him."

"I don't know if we could have beat him or not anyway, but we made up a lot of ground on that last lap because going into one I was probably five or six carlengths behind or more and almost got under him off of four. For some odd reason our car was really strong on restarts and I knew if I didn't spin the tires that we were at least going to put some pressure on him and get our nose in there anyway and make a race out of it. I did exactly what I needed not to do and spun the tires and couldn't get rolling. On the restart before that he spun the tires and got a real bad restart, and on this one he saw me starting to roll a little bit and he slowed up a little bit to break my momentum, and when I had to get back on the gas to go I just spun my tires."

"Probably a combination of both. It seemed like earlier tonight, even when we stayed out on them old tires and when we ran longer, it seemed like our car wouldn't fall off as much as everybody else's. It didn't seem to start off as fast, people could be all over me, but at the end of a run it seemed like our car wouldn't drop off quite as bad. In the middle of the run there, the 81 took off, and the 21, I couldn't keep up and the 5 passed me, and then later after everybody's tires got more wore out and older I was able to get the 5 back and the 21 back on that restart and get closed up on the 81 a little bit. Overall, on average, he had a better car than we did all night. But, it seemed like on the end of the run that their car would get worse than ours."