O’Reilly 300 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

JON WOOD – No. 47 Clorox/American Red Cross Ford Fusion (finished 38th) – IT WAS WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME, WASN’T IT? “Yes, it was. It’s very unfortunate. The Clorox Fusion was – I haven’t had a car that good at all. But I was just cruising, I just wanted to make laps. We were running in the top 10 all day, from ninth to 11th. This is just very unfortunate.” DID YOU SEE IT DEVELOPING IN FRONT OF YOU AT ALL? “Yeah. Cars facing backwards, yeah, you can see that. That was an aggravating thing to have to go through. Like I said, I had nowhere to go, and that’s the bottom line.”

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (finished 36th) – WHAT HAPPENED? “It was running really good. I feel bad for the guys, 3M and everybody here this weekend. The engine had great power, I can’t say enough about how power that engine had. But just something failed inside the engine, a part broke, and there’s nothing we could do about that. When something breaks inside, it’s unfortunate for us. I know the guys all worked really hard on it. But, they’ll take it apart and see what happened, maybe we’ll learn something from it and can apply it to our Cup engines and Busch engines in the future.”

MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 59 Kingsford/Bush’s Ford Fusion (finished 31st) – “I had a dead front shock, snapped the front shock, or something like that and that’s what kept us dropping back. We were running okay, but behind traffic there, if a car came across and got the side of you, you lost the whole nose, and that’s really what happened. I feel bad for Juan. I wasn’t trying to take him out, we were just trying to finish the race. We were out there just trying to make the end.” ANYTHING THAT YOU LEARNED THAT WILL HELP WHEN YOU RETURN HERE? “I just hate running this bad, that’s all. I just feel bad for everybody because they’re all trying so hard. I feel a bit disappointed because we had a good-handling car, but in general we’re just having a tough time.”

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 Discount Tire Ford Fusion (finished 5th) – “This is probably our best run as a team. You always want to run a little better than you did, but what a great rebound from last week. Last week we probably had the best car we’ve had all year, and this week to come back out. For everyone on the Discount Tire Ford Fusion team, they’ve worked extremely hard in getting the car prepared. It was a fun race. Matt Kenseth is an unbelievable driver. He showed us what it’s all about today. It was a good run for everyone at Roush Fenway Racing, you know, a solid points day.” IS THIS THE BEST RUN YOU’VE HAD, TO DATE? “Yeah, other than some truck races when we were real dominant. Certainly, to run in the top 10 the majority of the day. We had good pit stops. There at the end, I thought we might could’ve been a fourth- or fifth-place car, but I know there was some good cars behind us, Mark and the 5 car, they were coming. But, a solid run and we’ll build on this, but definitely we want to win some. We’re not going to always be satisfied with fifth, but today we will be.” OBVIOUSLY, EVERYONE RACES TO WIN, BUT WITH A POLE AND A TOP-FIVE, IS THIS ABOUT AS GOOD OF A WEEKEND HAS YOU COULD HOPE FOR? “Just about as good. For a rookie team this is a real strong run. We’re real happy just to pick up some points for last week, you know, we really feel like we had a top-10 last week, and it kind of got out of our grasp there about the middle part of the race. Yeah, anything a top-five in any top division in NASCAR is an awesome run.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 60 Scotts Bonus S Max Ford Fusion (finished 3rd) – “I’ve just got to thank Scotts and Bonus S Max and everybody, but that Arby’s Fusion Matt had was pretty awesome at the end. I had the best seat in the house to watch that race. If I wouldn’t have called for a couple of little adjustments, maybe we would’ve been racing with them. But it was a very exciting race to watch. YOU AND MATT HAD A PRETTY GOOD RACE GOING AT THE END. “Matt’s an unbelievable guy, and obviously a great racer. That’s just fun. He came on my radio and talked to me a little bit about it, you know. He thought I pinched him a little tight. I told him if he thought that was tight, wait until you see what’s coming. He’s a good guy, and a lot of fun. I’m glad he won the race.” DID THE WEATHER HAVE ANY EFFECT ON THIS RACE? “I thought the weather was going to have a bigger effect, but it didn’t really change much. It didn’t change a lot. I was paying attention when it started to get sunny, I didn’t feel much of a difference.”

MATT KENSETH press conference

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Arby’s Ford Fusion (finished 1st) – WERE YOU SURPRISED THAT YOUR TEAMMATE CARL EDWARDS WOULD RACE YOU THAT HARD, CONSIDERING HE’S RACING FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP? “No, I’m not ever surprised Carl races you that hard, and, no, because of the points, either. Let’s be realistic: unless something happens, he’s probably going to win the championship. I can’t really see anybody beating him, the way they’re starting off, unless he has a whole bunch of trouble. So I don’t think he’s probably too concerned about losing 40 or 50 points at this point. He probably has, I don’t know what he has over the first guy who’s running all the races, but it’s got to be 400 points already and we’ve only run seven or eight times, so I don’t really think that’s in his head. They run so good, they good enough on average to win every week, and I think that’ what he thinking about – go out and win races and racing hard. He always races hard, that’s just what he does. I’ve never seen him be too conservative.”

YOU RAN WELL ON THE HIGHER GROOVE TODAY, EVEN WITH THAT BUMP IN ONE AND TWO. “They did a great job fixing it. I don’t know how the heck they did it, I don’t understand all that, but they did a great job fixing it – and that made a big difference for side-by-side racing. What happened last year that the top of three and four as the race went on was probably a little faster than the bottom, but in one and two the bump was fairly big on the bottom, but as you went up the race track the bump progressively got wider and deeper, and when you tried to run the second, third or fourth groove in the corner it was so huge on the outside that you’d lose quite a bit of time trying to run the top in one and two. So by fixing that, it made one and two a lot more competitive. It felt like both lanes were about the same speed down there, and depending how your car was set up, you could run the same or actually a little quicker, maybe, around the top of three and four. So I think it was a great improvement. I think it helped make more passing and more side-by-side racing, and that was really good.”

ROUSH RACING HAS DOMINATED AT TEXAS IN THE PAST. FORDS HAVE FALLEN A LITTLE BIT ON HARD TIMES IN RECENT YEARS, BUT NOW YOU GUYS HAVE NINE VICTORIES – FIVE CUP, THREE BUSCH, ONE TRUCK. DOES THREE FINISHERS IN THE TOP FIVE GIVE YOU MOMENTUM FOR TOMORROW’S CUP RACE? “I don’t know how much today’s stuff affects tomorrow. I really don’t know. But, practice, qualifying and the race today, all the Roush cars were pretty fast as soon as they came here and unloaded off the truck. I think we were the lowest or almost the lowest qualifying car and we were 10th, maybe Greg with 13th, and all five were in the top 13 qualifying, so you knew that the cars had a lot of speed in them, and it’s just up to us to try to do the right things with it today and get a little bit better, so they made great adjustments and it handled good and did the right things. When I left practice on Thursday I wasn’t very happy. I looked at Drew and Drew called me a bad name, I won’t tell you what he called me, but I looked at him and I told him what the car was doing, and I said, ‘Well, alright, just fix it. I’ll be back in a couple of hours to qualify.’ He did make some changes that he came up with and he’s been doing a great job on adjustments and it was a lot better today.”

YOU OBVIOUSLY GOT A GOOD RUN ON THE HIGH LINE. BUT WAS IT A BIT SCARY TO LEAVE THE BOTTOM LINE OPEN FOR DENNY HAMLIN ON THAT LAST LAP? “Well, the last corner – I’d really go through one and two and to get off of two really well and I put a little distance on him, and I wasn’t worried about him passing me on the top of one and two, but three and four, if you hit it just right, it was faster on the top, and I was pretty loose off of four and if you didn’t hit the line quite right out there today you could really mess it up and I messed up with about three or four to go off of turn four. I for sure didn’t want to leave the top – if he would’ve snuck outside of me he would’ve beat me to the line, that’s how I got beat at Vegas last year from Jimmy – so I wasn’t going to commit to the total top, but I wanted to commit high enough where I knew I was going to get a good run off the corner even if he tried to look under me getting in. And I just knew I had to, I was pretty loose off of two and I was loose off of four and I figured if he got close enough to me, he could potentially get me a lot looser where I had to get out of the gas and get by, where if I got on the top I figured I could have a good run off the corner.”

ON THE RESURFACING, AND WHAT HE EXPECTS TOMORROW. “As the asphalt ages I think the racing’s gotten better and better. The weather’s supposed to be good and I think all the rubber is going to stay in the track. I think you’ll probably see more people run on the top than you did today. The Cup cars don’t handle quite as well in the corner, they don’t have quite as much downforce, they have more power, so you’re going faster on the straightaway and actually going slower in the corner, they don’t handle quite as well, and with that happening I think you’ll see more people run higher and higher. Some guys will be able to run the bottom when their cars are handling real good, but typically in the Cup race at tracks like this – Atlanta, Rockingham, Michigan – usually the Cup cars run high a lot more than the Busch cars. So I think you’ll see the groove even widen out more and you’ll see a lot of people up there tomorrow.”

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE PASS FOR THE LEAD? AND WHAT DID YOU SEE HAPPEN TO DENNY’S CAR, AND COULD YOU HAVE PASSED HIM IF THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN? “Well, I guess we’ll never know for sure. I felt like I was running him down a little bit, and he was on the bottom and I was committed to the top. We were actually running pretty fast on the top for running it both ends, but I think I would’ve caught him. Who knows whether I would’ve passed him or not. I don’t know what he was going to do when I got there. I don’t know if he would’ve moved up on top or what. I guess we’ll never know, but he got down there in one and two and his car got real loose, it looked like he got loose and bottomed out and just lost all his momentum, and I was able to go under him down the backstretch.”