Dickies 500 - Ford Saturday Quotes

Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Taurus, is tied for fourth place in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup standings, 107 points behind the leader, heading into Sunday’s Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Edwards, who scored his third victory of the season last week at Atlanta, talked about the Chase and this weekend’s race prior to Saturday morning’s first practice session.

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Taurus – JEFF GORDON SAID YESTERDAY THAT RACING LUCK WOULD DETERMINE THIS CHAMPIONSHIP. DO YOU AGREE WITH THAT? “I think I do – assuming everyone runs as strong as they can or as they should. If the top-five guys in the points run in the top-five or -10 in every race, continually, the rest of the season, then, yeah, the thing that’s going to determine the champion will be some of that luck – whether it’s good or bad. Everyone knows that the way the points system is and the way the sport works is it’s not your best days that really that determine a champion, it’s the worst days, and who has the least of them, because there’s just such a huge penalty for having a bad day.”

THIS TRACK HAS A HISTORY OF TAXING ENGINES. IS THAT A CONCERN? WILL YOU BE CONSERVATIVE TOMORROW? “I’m not concerned about our engine. We’ve got a great engine program. I watched the race from the spring and there were a lot of wrecks. There were a lot of instances where cars got wrecked, so that’s what I’m really worried about. We qualified pretty poorly. We’ll be in the back so we’ll have to watch for that.”

THE POLE-SITTER WILL START FROM THE BACK, TOO. “Greg Biffle won this thing from 41st this spring, so that helps me to know that. I watched the tape and I watched how he did it and we’ll just have to do it like that.”

HOW DID HE DO IT? “He had an awesome car and he was relentless. He just drove up under everybody’s bumper until they got out of the way. That’s what he did. He got to the front.”

CAN YOU DO THAT? “I hope so. We’ll find out here in a few minutes how fast this car is. I think it’s fast enough, the car seems awesome. We just messed up in qualifying, got it way too tight.”

IN OTHER WORDS, YOU’LL BE SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH RYAN NEWMAN ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE PACK. “Yeah. Hopefully, it’ll be nose-to-tail and Ryan’s behind me.”

YOU WON LAST WEEK AT ATLANTA. HOW DOES MOMENTUM, WITH DIFFERENT CHASSIS AND RACE TRACKS EACH WEEK, PLAY INTO THIS SPORT? “The only way momentum can play – if you stumble on something that’s definitely a mechanical advantage, that’s going to play out as long as it’s specific to your car, so in that way momentum can work. The other side is just positive attitude. It’s real easy to get down and out and have a bad attitude when things aren’t going well, and that doesn’t help you. So, I think when you’re just happy-go-lucky and everything’s going your way, it’s easier to overlook the bad parts and keep working on what makes the car faster.”

AS FAR AS THIS TEAM IS CONCERNED, WHAT YOU JUST SAID SEEMS TO APPLY. “Yeah. If we go out here and run last this weekend, we’re still going to go to Phoenix and think we can win it. We don’t really have anything to lose, we’ve got everything to gain, and we just have to maintain that attitude for three more weeks and we’ll be fine.”

HAD YOU TAKEN THE TIME TO ENJOY WHAT YOU AND THIS TEAM HAVE ACCOMPLISHED THIS YEAR? “Yeah, I get a few hours every week to sit in a race car and enjoy it. That’s the part that I really like. I get to run this Busch race today and when I put on my helmet and get in the race car I don’t have to deal with anybody, I don’t have to anything other than what I really love to do, so I just get to race. That’s really the most fun part of this. I get that time every week.” WITH THREE RACES TO GO, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS? “I’m just going to enjoy these last three races. We’re going to have a fun time, go give every effort we can and see what happens.”

YOU’RE RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CHASE. SOME PEOPLE MIGHT SAY YOU HAVE NO PRESSURE BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT USED TO THIS, AND OTHERS MIGHT SAY YOU HAVE PRESSURE FOR THE SAME REASON. “I’d have to go with the ‘no pressure’ side of this. We’ve accomplished every goal we wanted to accomplish already this season, so I don’t see any reason to put extra pressure on ourselves. If we just go out, have a good time, give it 100 percent effort, try to win these races, never look back, that’s all we can do.”

WHO HAS THE EDGE RIGHT NOW? “Honestly, Tony Stewart has the edge right now because he has the lead. I’d love to have the lead, but at the same time, sometimes it’s easier to chase somebody down that it is to maintain a lead. We’re kind of in a unique position. Nobody expects us to be here, including ourselves. We don’t have pressure, really, that we can lose much, and all it takes is one or two slip-ups from the guys in front of us, and we’ll be right there. Hopefully, they’re looking back and worrying about us, I don’t know of they are, but we feel like we’ve got a shot.”

WHAT TYPE OF A CHALLENGE WILL PHOENIX PRESENT FOR YOU NEXT WEEK? Phoenix is not really a short track, but that’s one of those tracks where the engine and the body and all that stuff isn’t as important as it is at Texas or Atlanta, so we’re going to have the tire pressures right, we’re going to have the right shocks on have the springs and bars and all that correct, and at the same time, I have to drive the car, have to figure it out, a lot more sometimes you do at these big race tracks. That’ll be one of those tracks where we’ll really have to be on our game as far as the chassis.”