Telcel Motorola 200 pres. by Banamex - Ford Post-Race Quotes

CARL EDWARDS—60—Charter Communications Ford Taurus (Finished 3rd) – “Martin did a great job, and all of the drivers did wonderfully today. I’m really proud of my Charter team. To unload a backup car and to run third, that’s a good championship effort and it doesn’t get any better than that.” DID YOU AND HARVICK MAKE CONTACT IN THE CLOSING LAPS? “No, I don’t think we had much contact. I knew he was a lot faster. He was half second faster and I thought, ‘Man, Kevin has always raced me real well,’ so I kind of gave him an easy one. I thought he would go run down Martin, but he didn’t do it. I’ve got to apologize to Michel Jourdain. I drove it in too deep and spun him out here. I know this race meant a lot to him, but I apologize for that. And, I ran into the 14. We didn’t any friends, but we had a good points day.”

KENNY WALLACE—22—Stacker 2 Ford Taurus (Finished 8th) – “We had an issue with the car pushing real bad for three laps on restarts, and then it came in good. I’ve got to be satisfied with eighth because we blew a tire at Daytona and it put us so far back in the points. Thirteenth last week, eighth this week, and we’ve got a good team. I think eighth is OK. We’ll stay miserable and try to do better.” WAS THIS A SUCCESSFUL FIRST RACE IN MEXICO? “I can’t see anything that was wrong. Everything was so perfect. It’s just such a delicate race track. There were a couple of passing points, turn one, which was locking everybody out because it was such a high-speed entry, and that was were most of the chaos was at.”

MICHEL JOURDAIN, JR.—10—Telcel Ford Taurus (Finished 37th) – “We were running pretty good there in the beginning. There were times when everybody was in front of me and I hit them and bent a little bit on the front end and it started overheating. We came out and we were running in a good place to finish OK, and suddenly Carl Edwards, I don’t know what he was thinking, he just drove into me like, I don’t know. He came and apologized and said it was his fault, but it doesn’t do any good.” WAS THIS A SUCCESSFUL WEEKEND FOR NASCAR IN MEXICO? “I think it was a very good event. It’s sad that no Mexican did any better, especially for me. I feel bad because we unloaded so fast. We were so fast Friday morning and I really felt that we had something very good for this race, but I guess that’s racing and we’ll go to Vegas, and we’ll be back here next year.”

JASON KELLER—35—McDonald’s Ford Taurus (Finished 13th) – “I got more comfortable during the race, which was good. Still, I’ve got a little ways to go. The car drove good and I passed some cars, so just to survive was the main thing. I got a decent finish out of it.” WAS THERE A GOOD AMOUNT OF GIVE AND TAKE OUT THERE TODAY? “There really was. It really surprised me. I figured we were going to have big wrecks and big collision, so I guess we were worried for nothing because everybody was giving and taking and nobody tried to go two wide. Not a whole lot of cars tried to go two wide through the chicane, and I think that was a trouble spot. Even back through the essess, when we would go up under cars or around cars, there was a lot of give and take. It was a lot better than I thought it was going to be.” DO YOU SEE THIS BEING A LONG-TERM EVENT ON THE SCHEDULE? “With as many fans that were here, I’m sure NASCAR sees it that way.”

JORGE GOETERS—66—Canel’s/Scotia Bank Ford Taurus (Finished 38th) – “I’m very happy to be a first part of the NASCAR family. I think we tried to make no mistakes with the rules, and I took care of everything. I enjoyed it a lot and had a lot of fun over there. Maybe I can be here or in the States in other races.” DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE HAVING A PROBLEM DEVELOP? “No because I don’t have very good communication in the back of the track. I said, ‘Hey, what do I do?’ They tried to explain what to do, but I don’t understand. I feel like my engine was blowing and I had to break off of the track.” WAS THIS A SUCCESSFUL WEEKEND FOR NASCAR IN MEXICO? “Yes, of course, with all of the Mexican fans, and I think it’s going to grow a lot.”

NEWT MOORE, Crew Chief—66—Canel’s/Scotia Bank Ford Taurus – DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE WAS A PROBLEM WITH THE MOTOR? “Yeah. About five laps before that under caution it was smoking when he let off the gas and we started to lose a valve. We tried to explain to him to try to take it easy and see what he had there, but he said it wasn’t missing and the oil pressure was good, but he must have on a shift got a valve, and there she went down the bottom.”

ASHTON LEWIS, JR.—25—Marines Ford Taurus (Finished 9th) – “Honestly, were disappointed with that. I have a fair amount of road racing background in Formula cars, and we really felt like coming into it that we had a shot at winning this thing. We had a really good test at VIR and came here and it was totally opposite. I don’t know if it’s just the race track, or what it was. They got a good handle on it in qualifying and the race went fairly well. I couldn’t be quite as aggressive as I wanted to in the braking zones, which hurt us in passing. I tried real hard to put the pressure on people in front of me and let them make their mistakes.” THE CHICANE WASN’T AS MUCH OF AS A HAZARD AS MOST ANTICIPATED? “To be honest with you, I had more incidents on restarts. I don’t know if somebody up front would check up more. It wasn’t that bad overall, and I think guys did a really good job of being smart. I knocked my left-front suspension off early on and it closed off the exhaust pipe and that didn’t help us. It was actually pretty fun.” DO YOU SEE THIS BEING A LONG-TERM EVENT ON THE SCHEDULE? “I like it. I enjoyed coming here. All in all, I just like road racing, and I think it’s a fun change. To see how big it was and how they responded to it, if we can keep that going then I think so.”

CARL EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE

“Our race went very well considering we had a backup race car. We had a very fast race car on Friday and crashed and then blew up an engine and still qualified ninth and finished third, so I’m really proud of my team. I had a really good time racing here. The race was a lot of fun. I didn’t make a lot of friends out there today, but we had a good race and that was a good points day for us.”

“I thought it was really exciting. The pre-race festivities and the way the crowd reacted to the end of the race, it was especially neat to see everybody cheering for Martin. I enjoyed it.”

“That would be a question for Joe Balash or Robin Pemberton to answer precisely, but the way I understand it, if you have to go to a backup car before qualifying you can still use that backup car to qualify and start the race in the position you qualified. It’s a standard rule and we used it to the best that we could. We were still at the disadvantage of having a backup car. It’s not something we planned or anything like that. We got a little bit of grace, a little bit of a silver lining into that cloud of wrecking our primary car.”

“That’s a good question. I don’t know exactly what happened. When I came onto the scene Robby was roughing my crew chief up just a little it, so I just stopped Robby from doing that. I really didn’t know what the situation was. That’s all there was, and I was just trying to stop that from happening. I don’t think that’s the right thing to be doing at any time. I don’t understand exactly what happened to be honest with you.”