Kroger 200 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – (finished 2nd, qualified 10th) – “It was a really good night. The car was really, really tough to drive. Probably the toughest car that I’ve ever driven at this race track, I don’t know why. To be honest with you, I don’t know why we did so well. Track position was a lot of it. I ran the thing in the fence three or four times on my own. Carl (Edwards) and I were racing really hard together and I kind of got in the fence a couple of times on the back stretch, which probably wasn’t good. It was a good night and I had a lot of fun.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 60 Dish Network/Weather Channel Ford Fusion – (finished 4th, qualified 8th) – “I’ve just got to thank everybody at the Weather Channel and my guys, but Travis Kvapil, for sure. That was a fun race track. I wish we ran 500 laps around this place twice a month. This is about as good as it gets. Congratulations to Jason Leffler. We were just too loose. I had an awesome race thanks to Travis, but I got too re-starts and ended up fourth.”

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 Discount Tire Ford Fusion – (finished 16th, qualified 2nd) – “Certainly, we felt like we had the car to win. Erik Darnell did a great job in practice and qualifying. When you start from the back, if you don’t have perfect night and it just makes it hard. Carl Edwards and the 99 (David Reutimann) they had the perfect night. After the 22 spun us out, we were in the back with poor track position all night. We had to stop a couple of extra times because our Discount Tire Ford Fusion wouldn’t take gas because the trunk deck was beat-up. We lost a lot of track position every pit stop. If we could have started up front, we had the car that could have won. It’s just one of those nights. We salvaged something; we didn’t lose any ground. We certainly had this night that we could content for the win and we failed to do so.”

STEPHEN LEICHT – No. 90 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion – (finished 24th, qualified 7th) – “Some other racers were not paying attention and stopped for no reason on a re-start. They were all checking-up. It was a chain reaction on the re-start for no reason. I don’t know why they did, but it happened. We had nowhere to go except into the guy in front of me. What was weird is that I spun the guy out in front of me and when we checked-up and they didn’t throw the caution and kept going. I don’t know; it was one of those racing deals. But before that happened we had a decent car; we would have been in the top-15. But, I guess that’s the way it goes.”

MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 59 Kingsford/Aussie Vineyards Ford Fusion – (finished 32nd, qualified 24th) – “We were running good, probably the best we’ve run in short track for a while and broke a rear end gear. I guess we’ll take our lumps and move on. Breaking the rear end gear is something that shouldn’t happen and it hardly ever happens, too. I’m not blaming anyone. I guess it’s just one of those deals. It’s a tough part and it didn’t do justice for us.”

KELLY BIRES – No. 47 Clorox/American Red Cross Ford Fusion – (finished 38th, qualified 4th) – “We had a top-five car and broke two values and the motor. We started losing power about 10 laps into the race and we just kept going and going. We put on new tires and the motor started tightening up and slowing down. During the pit stop, I knew we were in trouble. We had a good car and could have had a top finish, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.”

BOBBY EAST – No. 37 Cub Cadet/Kleenex Ford Fusion – (finished 39th, qualified 20th) – “We were under caution, coming down for the re-start and we were all sure we were nose-to-tail and something happened in front of us that we couldn’t see and we checked-up. We were under caution, so we weren’t going that fast. We all checked-up, and I gave the guy in front of me a little nudge and the guy behind me, shoved me into the car in front of me. We came out with the worst part of the whole thing. Whoever was behind me just kept driving me into the car in front of me, it was like an accordion. It’s nobody’s fault, but this is terrible and maybe these guys needed a little more heads-up in the caution.”