SELECTED EDWARDS POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE
EDWARDS: “Boy that was a real race. That was a lot of fun. At the end that was a fight for the win. That was really fun. The whole day was like that. The guys did an awesome job. It started in qualifying to get the Busch pole was a huge advantage. It helped us with pit stops the whole day. A win at Phoenix International Raceway means a whole lot. This is the very first track I kind of packed up all my stuff and headed out to. This was the first pavement race I ran in 2001 and it just means the world to win this race. That was a blast.” WHAT DID YOU LEARN TODAY THAT WILL HELP YOU IN THE CUP RACE ON SUNDAY? “I think the best thing is that I will get a good night’s sleep tonight. That was a wild race. There are a lot of things that I learned for tomorrow: the way the track changes, the way the car is going to change throughout a run, stuff that really matters. I got to run extra laps and for that opportunity I can’t thank Jack Roush, World Financial Group, Charter, and the whole crew enough. They give me this opportunity and it’s been extra work to do this for me with all the flying around and we have to sacrifice some the appearances that I would be able to make and stuff like that. I appreciate them putting a team underneath me and letting me go out there and do this.” WITH 18 LAPS TO GO AND CLINT BOWYER GOT UNDER YOU HOW HARD WAS IT HOLD ON TO THE OUTSIDE LINE? “That’s all I had, that was it. That’s as hard as I can drive. Luckily there was a little bit of grip up there on the outside. I guy could get underneath me and I could hold them off. But that was it. Clint got under there and he got into the back of me just a little. I wiggled up and tried to come back down and got him. That was pretty exciting. I don’t know what it looked like but it was exciting from where I was sitting. I tried to do everything I could.” YOU AND BOWYER ARE FROM THE HEARTLAND. IS THERE A KANSAS VERSUS MISSOURI RIVALRY? “No Missouri-Kansas rivalry [laughs}. Clint is an awesome guy. I don’t know if everyone knows his story but he is a true success story who has got to this point by shear talent and determination. He’s an unbelievable guy, a great guy to race with, and it means a lot coming from where I came from and where he came from to finish like we did today. He and I had a great race like that in Overly, Missouri one time in a pavement modified. It was the first pavement modified that I ran and I think it was his, too. It was awesome to race him like that here.”

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 20 ROCKWELL AUTOMATION CHEVROLET: “The hotter the track got the tighter we got. It just lost all grip. It wasn’t too bad of a day for the Rockwell Chevrolet. We were pretty good. We just couldn’t quite keep up with the racetrack. Once we got put back in traffic, and the race conditions getting hotter, it just didn’t play into our favor.” WHAT DID YOU LEARN TODAY THAT WILL HELP YOU IN THE CUP RACE? “It’s going to be a good race tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it. I was hoping to finish a little better for these guys in the Busch Series, but we’ll go get them again next week.”

REED SORENSON, No. 41 DISCOUNT TIRE COMPANY DODGE: THIS IS ANOTHER TOP-10 RUN FOR YOU. “It was a good run for us. We would have liked to have been a little better, but you can’t complain about a top-10. We’ll go next week and give them one more shot and try to win another one before this year is out.” WAS THE CAR LOOSE OR TIGHT? “Both. That’s not good when you’ve got both. It’s hard to fix. We just needed the car to be better. We had plenty of opportunities to pass cars and just couldn’t do it. We just needed the car to be better.”

BRENT SHERMAN, No. 10 SERTA/HICKORY FARMS FORD: “The car was just tight all day. We freed it up every single pit stop and we just could not get ahead of it. We ran as good as we could for what we had and I got some laps. We were decent there at the end but it was just too little too late. We got a couple laps down. We were gaining on it every stop we just couldn’t get far enough and finally we did toward the end and ran out of time.” DOES IT PUT YOU IN A BOX HAVING TO QUALIFY WELL AT THESE IMPOUND RACES? “Definitely. Obviously Tim [Shutt, crew chief] sets the car up for me for qualifying and we always tend to qualify decent but then we’re kind of stuck with what we’ve got for the race. That obviously makes it difficult but we work with what we’ve got. I try my hardest and my team tries their hardest and we just try to get what we can get.”

KERTUS DAVIS, No. 0 RACEGIRL CHEVROLET (Note: Davis led once for three laps, the first time he has led a lap in 39 career Busch Series starts.) “We were real worried when we first unloaded. We qualified 15th in the spring and we were terrible when we first got here. This is a totally different car than what we’ve run all year. We got it working a lot better but the chassis was still way off. I was still getting beat through the center and up off. I’ve got to thank NOZ Energy Drink and RACEGIRL. The car wasn’t that bad and this is the first time that I led laps. We stayed out and tried to get our new sponsor NOZ on TV. Hopefully we’ll have a good race at Homestead.”