MARK MARTIN – No. 6 AAA Fusion – “I messed up right there at the end. I waited a little bit too long. I didn’t want to pull out. I had a chance to get on the outside and the 43 was up to me yet, so I was waiting for him to catch, and he caught me so quick that when I made my move to pull out in front of him, he was already there. We were looking good. We’ve got a good race car; where we start doesn’t matter, so I wanted to protect it. It was a great run. We had a shot to challenge for it. Then the caution came out and everything went different, and then we were actually looking good again. That green-white-checkered, that’s always crazy. I didn’t time it right. I messed that one up.” HOW WAS THE CAR? “Spectacular. I love my Ford Fusion. And AAA, first race for the AAA car and looking good. I didn’t need the roadside assistant, I’m glad of that.” ARE YOU SURPRISED HOW WELL THE FUSION HAS COME OUT OF THE BOX? “I’m proud of the guys that work on it, too. Don’t sell them short. I’m proud of my guys and I’m proud of my team and I’m proud of my car.”

JAMIE McMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Fusion – “Our car is not as good as what the Shootout car was, but Jimmy keeps telling me we’re going to work on it and I have a lot of faith in right now. So, we’re going to have to wait and see what we can figure out tomorrow. The car’s getting a little tight. It seems like everybody’s tight, a lot tighter than in the past. We’ll just keep working on it.”

IT SEEMS LIKE THE THREE ROUSH DRIVERS COULD DRAFT WELL TOGETHER AFTER THE PIT STOP. “The Roush-Yates engines are pretty amazing. That’s been a great surprise moving over here and when you get three teammates together they tend to work well. I pulled off, so I know the 16’s mad at me right now, but it came down to two to go and you have to do what’s best for you and try to win.”

HOW EXCITED ARE YOU ABOUT THIS TEAM AFTER THE LAST TWO RACES, KNOWING THAT SUNDAY YOU’LL HAVE A SHOT? “Well, the Shootout, I thought we had the dominant car. So, I’m a little bit disappointed right now with this one. We just have to keep working on it. It doesn’t have the speed, but it doesn’t drive as well either, so we’re just going to try and get it to drive a little bit better, and we’ll wait and see what happens on Sunday. We’ll have a good starting spot at least.”

IT WASA LITTLE CALMER TODAY. “Yeah. The last three or four laps is like the Shootout was every lap, but you expect that, I think, in the Shootout, that’s why it gets its name. It’s wild and that’s what people pay to see.”

OBVIOUSLY, MIKE HELTON CAME IN AND TOLD THE DRIVERS TO BE MORE RESPECTFUL. “I think the way he put it was, it wasn’t just the bump drafting, it was the guys running into the sides of the cars. There’s something about his voice that when he speaks just have to listen. He’s a very powerful man and I think everyone in the garage area respects him. So, you listen, and everyone did a really good job in the 150s.”

WHAT ABOUT THE FORD FUSION? ARE YOU PLEASANTLY SURPRISED WITH IT? “Yeah. The Fusion was really good off the truck. We tested Vegas, and I think it’s better on the downforce than what it is on the speedway, so there’s a lot in store for Ford this year.”

JACK ROUSH SAID A FEW WEEKS AGO THAT HE’S USUALLY NOT OPTIMISTIC ABOUT DAYTONA, BUT, THIS YEAR, WITH A FEW BREAKS... “He feels like Roush Racing is better than it’s ever been, and when you look at the history the last few years it’s hard to believe it can be any better than what it has in the past, but it’s a great time to be a part of it.”

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard Ford Fusion – “You’ve got to have partners out on the race track to get things done. Man, when you’re got new tires on a race car it’s like Superman – you can drive anywhere you want to drive and everybody wants to drive across the bottom. We could have finished 1-2-3, but I don’t know what happened. They jumped out of line and everybody just went crazy with five to go. Even there at the end I guess Mark didn’t want to get to the top and just wanted to finish behind the 5 and 24. He must have got loose or something there at the end, but shot way up the track and I had to get out of the gas to save from wrecking him. Then I tried to push him the best I could to get the best finish we could, but, man, we could have finished 1-2-3 if we would have stayed in line. We had them beat – easy. You could see the speed we had on everybody that didn’t have new tires. The guys in front of us had old tires, but it’s every man for himself out there today.”

WHAT IMPACT DID NASCAR’S RULE HAVE TODAY? “I was a little nervous about how hard I was pushing Mark. Mark wasn’t just straight out of the tri-oval and I was on his bumper and pushing him really good all the way down into one and Jeff Gordon was blocking him trying to keep the lead, but I was pretty aggressive there at the end. I wanted to push Mark Martin to the last 150 win and we were just one man short on doing that. It’s unfortunate.”

WAS IT CALM? “It really was calm. It was intense for me because I was looking in my mirror and we needed the three Fords to line up and we would have blown their doors off. We all had new tires and they were sitting ducks, but not everybody could get together.”

WHAT ABOUT SUNDAY? “I expect the same thing. It’s a 500-mile race and things are gonna be pretty calm until 20 to go and then everybody is gonna be racing for that million and a half dollars. It’ll be pretty calm until the end just like it was here. It was a pretty calm race until it got shook up at the end.”

JAMIE MCMURRAY PRESS CONFERENCE
“The race track is just so much tighter than what it was in the Shootout. My Shootout car, I felt like, was the dominant car and we just haven’t been able to get this car quite as quick. It was better in testing, but we worked on it for the last couple of days and worked on it tonight and it still just doesn’t want to turn like the other car did. So we’ve got a little bit of work ahead of us, but it looked like everybody was somewhat fighting the same issues. Even the 24 leading the pack looked like he was a little bit tight, so we’ll just keep working on it. I’m pretty happy. It’s our second race together and we’ve already yelled at each other, so we’ve got that out of the way, and we’ll move on. But it was a good run for us tonight, though.”

THERE WERE THREE ROUSH DRIVERS LINED UP, BUT WAS IT STILL TOO HARD TO PASS? “Yeah. For some reason when the guy gets out front it is tough to get up beside him. I assumed that since we put two tires on – Mark, Greg and I all did – that we would be able to get on the outside, but you make the commitment before it goes green that you’re all gonna stay in line and you get down to the corner and there’s two laps to go and that’s a tough commitment to keep, so everyone kind of broke apart. When that happens it’s hard to get up beside the leader, so everybody is kind of doing what they feel like is best for them. If you probably all stayed together, you could, but I think that the caution really hurt the chances of getting by the 24. If we could have kept running and you kind of get your momentum built up. The 24 is obviously on older tires and if you can get his car to get tight on the bottom you can get a little bit of a run.”

WHAT DID YOU SEE REGARDING BUMP DRAFTING? “I was fortunate that I was in the top three for most of the night and I didn’t have to bump anyone until the end. When it comes down to a couple of laps to go it got a little bit wild, but nothing like the Shootout. But the Shootout, I don’t know the mentality when you drop the green flag on that is to try to get to the front and running two or three wide. It was a lot different race and you’re not racing that car in the Daytona 500, so you’re not quite as careful. In the 150, we use it as a testing tool and see what our chassis would be like on long runs – when you’re committed to having to stay out for 30 laps on tires. So it’s just a different type of race, but I thought it was probably better than normal today.”

COMPARE YOUR CARS LAST YEAR WITH DODGE TO THE FORD? “The Roush-Yates engines are pretty impressive and not only here at the superspeedways, but also at the Vegas test. They don’t seem to ever stop pulling. And the new Ford Fusion, they’ve obviously done a lot of homework on that car because it’s great here and I thought it was even better at the downforce track at Vegas. It’s tough to compare one team to another without putting one down, so I’ll just keep my mouth shut, but I’m happy where I am.”

WAS THE BUMP DRAFTING RULE NEEDED? “I think that it certainly was something that needed to be addressed because it seemed like every time we would come back to the speedways it would get worse. Guys would obviously start making their bumpers stronger in the front and weaker in the rear to try to get the spoiler knocked down out of the air, so it’s something that needed to be addressed. I told somebody earlier that there’s something about when Mike Helton talks everyone listens. He’s got a very powerful voice and a lot of the drivers went to him and complained and wanted everyone to understand when you need to do it and when you shouldn’t. I think everyone tries to do it in the right places, but I’ve been guilty of hitting someone in the tri-oval and it’s not necessarily because I wanted to but it’s because you have someone shoving you and there’s not a whole lot you can do. I think it was great and the orange dots that they put on the race track are very noticeable. If you’re on the inside you can see the marks they put on the track and I think it’s great what they’ve done.”

IT SEEMS THESE RESTRICTOR PLATE RACES ALWAYS END GREEN-WHITE-CHECKER. YOUR THOUGHTS. “I’m not real sure. I don’t know what happened tonight to create that, but it does seem fairly common that we’ve had a lot of green-white-checkers. Everyone certainly gets more aggressive when it comes to one or two laps to go because you’re so close. Even if you’re 15th you can see the front of the pack, so I think it’s just natural to want to shove the guy and you get a little bit anxious. Everyone is guilty of it with side drafting or running into the guy, so I assume that’s what’s causing all the green-white-checkers.”