UAW-GM Quality 500 - Ford Post-Race Quotes

GREG BIFFLE - No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus (Finished 33rd) - "I just got wrecked from behind. I got run into in the back. It's really tough. I feel bad for the National Guard and all the soldiers. We try our hardest. These guys work really hard every week and there's nothing you can do when you get hit from behind like that. Somebody checked up in front of us. I don't know, somebody missed a gear or what, but we were a little slow to start with. I had to get into the brakes pretty good not to run into the car in front of me and I got hit from behind and that just sent me around."

CARL EDWARDS - No. 99 Canteen Taurus (Dave Blaney credited with 37th) - "I just have to thank Canteen Vending and everybody for being on the car this week. What a miserable night for us. We just couldn't get it right. Dave Blaney did a great job. He was doing really well and then I got in it and it took me a minute to get acclimated and then we just couldn't get the handling right. We were running around back there where I wish we weren't running and just got into some oil and crashed it. That's big-time auto racing, I guess." YOU MUST HAVE BEEN A LITTLE STRESSED IN THE TRUCK RACE WHEN THE RED FLAG CAME OUT KNOWING YOU HAD ANOTHER RACE TO GET TO. "I'm just glad everybody was OK, but I'm a very competitive person and these kind of days are really hard to swallow. I just have to thank everybody for putting so much effort in and letting me do this. It was a lot of fun right up until then."

MARK MARTIN - No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Finished 13th) - GIVE US YOUR PERSPECTIVE OF WHAT HAPPENED. "You saw it. It's hard for me to believe that some of these guys could pass a driver's test. I can't believe they've got a driver's license." IS THIS TEAM STILL ALIVE? "I don't know. Golly, we did everything we could do here. We gave it a great run for the whole team. I can't help it. I can't help it." IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE, BUT IT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER TOO. "Yeah. We wrecked. It was a great effort by this Viagra team. I'm really proud of them." IT HAD TO BE FRUSTRATING WAITING FOR THE CAR TO BE FIXED. "No, the damage was done. We were in damage control at that point. There wasn't any crazy frustration going on at that point. It was just how we could recover the best possible way." IT WAS A WILD RACE TONIGHT FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE. "We had a shot, but it didn't work out."

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 38 Combos/M&M's Taurus (Finished 7th) - "We had a great race car all night until the last three runs. We got the car a little bit too tight. I don't know if the track changed that much and we didn't keep up with it or maybe I gave Todd some wrong information. It was a little frustrating there at the end to have a top three or four car and finish seventh with it. But, all in all, that's not gonna kill us in the points. We didn't gain anything on the 97 or the 8, but we didn't really lose anything. There are other guys behind us, so I think we're still fourth in the points and we'll go to Martinsville."

KURT BUSCH - No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus (Finished 4th) - "It was an awesome job. I really don't know what to say except that this is our best finish ever at Charlotte. And to be able to do this with dodging so many obstacles, it was the adventure of Kurt Busch and team today. The Irwin team did a great job and it was just a matter of every pit stop trying to understand what to change and what was gonna happen next. We did a good job of just avoiding disaster as many times as it did strike today." ARE YOU THINKING THIS IS SOMETHING THAT MIGHT BE MEANT TO BE? "We still have so much work to do and the way that we were able to dodge everything and the kitchen sink today down the back straightaway, it was one of those days where anything could happen. We had to avoid this and avoid that and continue to make adjustments on our car. Once we got towards the front it handled completely different because we got that clean air on the nose and we just didn't quite get the handle late when we needed to. It was just real draggy with the damage that we had and running over parts and pieces all day and it was just a survival day." YOU'VE WON AT 3 OF THE 5 TRACKS LEFT. HOW DO YOU FEEL? "This one was a tough one for us. I had never finished in the top 10 at Charlotte, so it was a great way to do that in this Nextel chase for the cup. It was a great day for our Irwin Industrial Tools Ford just to overcome all this adversity. Now we've got those tracks coming up - Martinsville, Atlanta and we won at Homestead when it was flat, but we're going there to test in a couple weeks. Things are great." YOU'RE 24 POINTS AHEAD OF DALE, JR. YOU'RE RIGHT WHERE YOU WANT TO BE. "Definitely. I saw the 8 car in front of us. We needed to finish behind him and we were able to pass the 01 on the last couple of laps on the high side. That's what this racing is about. You can't afford to give up one position and expect to have anything happen for your team. You have to go achieve it for yourself and our Irwin Industrial Tools did a great job tonight." YOU GOT SOME GOOD BREAKS TONIGHT? "Yeah, I was just far enough behind some of those accidents to stay away - having a blown motor in front of us, to have a few wrecks and just being able to avoid the disaster. It was an adventurous night and we were able to come away with a good finish."

JOHN ANDRETTI - No. 14 VB/APlus at Sunoco Taurus (Finished 22nd) - "It's disappointing. At the start I guess the 10 car broke a transmission and I ended up in the back of Greg, which I feel bad about, but I didn't see what was going on and didn't know what was going on up front. I tried to get whoa'd but I guess my brakes were cool enough and then I got spun around and got tore up a little bit. So then we ran 333 laps basically without the car that we hoped. We kept making a lot of changes to it and we kept working on it. It's hard to overcome when you've got aero damage, so I was happy. I mean, we got our first race in and I didn't flip it upside-down, so that was a bonus." YOU HAVE A WEEK OFF AND THEN WILL COME BACK AT ATLANTA? "We're gonna go test in Atlanta this week and hopefully we'll learn some things there. We're just taking baby steps."

DALE JARRETT - No. 88 UPS Taurus (Finished 6th) - THIS TEAM IS ROLLING NOW. "Yeah, we do and I can't tell you how proud I am of them for this. We were slow qualifying and in practice on Friday night we weren't very good. Mike and these guys put their heads together and came up with almost a miracle setup there. We think we know what direction we need to go to make it a contender maybe next time. This race track is just totally different than everything else you go to, but I'm awful proud of these guys and I really like the direction we're headed." IT SEEMED AGGRESSIVE OUT THERE TONIGHT. "That's just hard racing. It's getting toward the end of the year and people are trying to keep jobs or get a job or go up in points or win a race so you've got to be pretty aggressive. If you have a pretty good car, you've got to go."

ROBBIE REISER, Crew Chief - No. 17 DEWALT TOOLS Taurus (Kenseth finished 11th) - "All in all, you've got to look at this as a championship team and they put on a championship effort. We had an opportunity at winning this race tonight. We were up in the top three all night long and cut a tire down. That cost us big. The guys worked and worked and got the car to the point where we could even race it. We got it back on the lead lap and then worked our way back to get an 11th-place finish. That just shows to me what type of team this really is."

RICKY RUDD - No. 21 Keep it Genuine/Motorcraft Taurus (Finished 16th) - "It wasn't pretty, but I tell you what I'm happy about is right there at the end of the race. They made some adjustments and we could go then. I was real happy with that. A lot of times you struggle and struggle like we did today and that's the way you end up, but they hit on some combinations that we learned from today, so I'm real happy with that." DID THE CAUTIONS HURT YOU LATE? "Not really. We missed the handle on it and finally the stop before last they gained on it and on the last stop they really gained on it. I could have run with the 97 and the 01, but I was just trying to stay out of that pack. What put us in a hole was our poor qualifying position. We gave up at least one lap right there that we wouldn't have lost. That would have changed the whole outcome because we would have gotten that lucky dog earlier. I don't know how good we could have been at the end. Normally, you finish 16th and that might be all that you've got, but this was a day we had a lot more than a 16th-place car at the end."

KURT BUSCH PRESS CONFERENCE - TALK ABOUT BATTLING BACK. "It was a tall order of adversity to overcome. Early on we got spun and in the back of the pack the car handles completely different. Once we worked our way towards the front it began to handle differently. Then Harvick blew up in front of us - a fresh streak of oil right across the windshield. We could have gotten into that. We had a disastrous turn four episode and I don't even know who was in it. I know Mark suffered damage as well as the 12 and the 77 was spinning and I just cut through the grass because I saw that as the only opening. And the kitchen sink on the back straightaway - we avoided it too, so we had a busy day." WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO KEEP THE CAR STRAIGHT IN THE GRASS? "It's always fun to get to go through the grass when you win and you get to cut cookies and do doughnuts, but when you're racing and you see some action in front of you, you try to hit it as straight as you can and make sure that your wheel is pointed at noon and hold it straight all the way through. The only problem at Charlotte is they have the Legends track that's in the infield and I was hoping not to gain damage from the grass to the asphalt back to the grass and we were able to scoot through that with no problem. We got lucky on that side of it, as well as most of the night just being able to overcome all the hurdles and the adversity. To be able to put together a top-five finish at a track that I've never finished in the top 10, it came at a perfect time and to be able to do this a few weeks in a row, I hope I'm not wearing out my horseshoe too quick." AT SOME POINT ARE YOU THINKING THAT MAYBE IT'S DESTINY FOR YOU TO WIN THIS? "It's very difficult to gain points when everybody is running top five each week and when we look at these race tracks coming up, they all have their own different attitude and you have to put together the best package that you can - whether you're able to test there or whether your past notes will give you an advantage. For us, you're right, there have been circumstances that we've avoided by mere inches and the way we've bounced back from those and put together top-five efforts continuously, it's one effort to be lucky and it's another effort to be good. You've got to have the whole package and right now we're very blessed to be in this situation tonight. I mean, tonight was just horrible with all the circumstances that came in our direction, but to finish where we did tonight and to look at the next five tracks, we're now halfway through this. We didn't just run the first three now and start off on a hot foot. We've now run five events and almost finished in the top five every race, so we've got a short track of Martinsville and we've won there. A track of Atlanta, it's a high-speed mile and a half. Junior is gonna be tough, he won the last race there. We've won there in the past, but it's just a matter of what's gonna happen this time around." HAVE YOU EVER HAD A NIGHT LIKE THIS WHERE THINGS ALMOST HAPPENED TO YOU BUT DIDN'T? "To be able to have the type of finish that we did tonight was definitely something that I didn't think was possible with the amount of hurdles and adversity that we had to overcome. There have been other races that have been much worse. My first-ever race at Bristol I wrecked myself. I went back out and about 100 laps later I ran into the next wreck that I could find and they still wanted to give me practice at Bristol. I just didn't think that was the greatest idea that day and I ran into somebody else that night. It's just a whole different set of circumstances. I've been able to mature over the years and understand how when there's smoke you just let off and hopefully you don't get plowed in from behind." THE CHALLENGE OF MARTINSVILLE. "Martinsville is one of those short tracks that the Nextel Chase for the Cup contenders are all gonna run strong on. Junior has been strong. He's finished third there so many times. He's on the verge of winning. Jeff Gordon has had an advantage there the past few times. We've won there back in 2002. You just go down the list. Newman is gonna be strong and Mark Martin. The new surface there is gonna provide for a different type of racing. What I noticed there in testing is the marbles gathered quickly just outside of the racing groove, so it's gonna be single-file for awhile and it's just gonna be a matter of staying out of trouble. And another element that's gonna be new to Martinsville is the center of corner speed. There are gonna be guys that gain so much speed through the center of the corner on somebody that you've got to protect your radiator, so it's gonna be a battle."