DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion (Qualified 45th) – “I thought we had a top 10 car or so in practice and qualifying is such a tough deal. You have to hit your marks. You’ve got two laps to do what you’ve got to do and certainly I was trying to get all I could out of it. I just got a little loose coming out of two and the right-rear corner caught the outside wall. It wasn’t a good lap for us. I feel like we’ve got a better AAA Ford than that, but we’ll have to work on it tomorrow. We’ll be coming from the back. It’s not hurt that bad, it’s just some cosmetic stuff, but you can’t let that kind of stuff happen when you’ve got a good car like that.”

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Dish Network Ford Fusion (Qualified 7th) – “We just struggled a little bit earlier. We were fairly good this morning in race trim, but we switched to qualifying and we weren’t able to pick up like we wanted to and we ended up not very happy with the car. We looked it over and made a lot of changes for this qualifying session and the Dish Network Ford Fusion ran really well on that lap. We’re real happy about that. We know it’s cooling off and there are still quite a few cars to go, so that will probably push us back to 10th or 15th, but that’s still gonna be a pretty good starting spot on the field.”

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Qualified 18th) – “That’s not gonna end up as good as we hoped for because I was just a little bit too loose. I probably didn’t do the greatest job of jumping back and forth. It was just a little bit too free, so it wasn’t quite as good as I hoped for.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion (Qualified 1st) – “The second lap has been faster for us. When they told me the first lap, we ran that well I thought it would be fun and the second lap was a lot of fun. I don’t think it’ll hold up. The track is cooling off and there are gonna be some screaming fast laps here in a minute, but hopefully that will be a top five or six. We’ve got such a great race car that it’s gonna be fun on Sunday.” HOW IS THIS TRACK AS FAR AS PASSING AND PIT SELECTION? “This place is pretty tough. It is tough to pass and it’s easy to get caught up, especially with these cars. The aero is all so close that if you get mired back in 15th or 16th, it’s really hard to pass those guys because the top 15 guys in these races on Sunday are tough, so hopefully that holds up for something. We’ll see. The biggest thing is we’ve got a great race car. It is a short race, so hopefully this will help out.” HOW GOOD WAS THAT RUN AND WILL IT HOLD UP? “That run was real good. I don’t know if it’ll hold up. We’ve got some fast cars that still have to go, but that was a good run for me. I told them, ‘That felt great.’ I think if I did it 10 more times, I couldn’t go faster. That’s all I can ask of my guys. They gave me a great race car.”

ROBBY GORDON – No. 7 Jim Beam Ford Fusion (Qualified 41st) – “That was a conservative lap because we don’t have another car out here on the west coast. To run a .70, we beat a couple of cars. I can’t believe we beat anybody, but that’s one thing about the COT is you can go from one car to the next and they’re all the same. It’ll make our job a little easier in the long run.” WHAT HAPPENED IN PRACTICE? “I just lost it. Normally I have some kind of excuse, but today I just lost it. I came off turn two. The track does flatten out there at the top where the old wall used to be and as soon as I got over there it was gone. It was a little hung out before that point and it just took off on me and I didn’t save it.”

CARL EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE

“I told them after that lap, I said, ‘That was a blast.’ The guys did a great job with the car – everybody. These cars of tomorrow have been a lot of work for everybody on our team, but they’ve stepped up and done a great job. Since we unloaded this thing has been fast, so I’m really proud of my guys.”

IS THE GOAL TO JUST GET AS MUCH AS YOU CAN IN THE POINTS FROM HERE ON OUT? “That’s exactly right. All we’re trying to do is be as late in the program on Friday night in New York as we can be. That’s what we’re trying to do. For me as a driver it would mean the world to get as great of a points finish as we can this year. I don’t think, barring Jeff and Jimmie just not showing up, we’re not exactly racing for a championship anymore, but we are racing for our own championship and the best we can do is go win a couple of races.”

WOULD YOU RACE JIMMIE OR JEFF AS HARD AS MATT RACED JIMMIE LAST WEEK? “You can bet I’ll race them just as hard as I can. Throughout the week everyone talks about points and you can talk about all this stuff, but when it comes down to five or six laps to go, I think everyone that’s driving one of those race cars out there, if you have a chance to win the race, you’ve got to go 110 percent. I don’t know of one guy out there who could live with himself if he didn’t. That was cool to see those guys. I only got to see little parts of it. I was kind of looking at the screen every once in a while. I could tell they were racing real hard, but that’s pretty cool to see. That’s what this sport is about. It’s about trying to go out and win races and we all do that.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR SILVER CROWN CAR LAST NIGHT? “Yeah, out team won the Copper World Classic last night, which is crazy. Cameron Dodson did a great job driving the car. I got to spot for him, which I don’t think I ever spotted for a car that won a race. To know that my name was on the car and I got to be a part of that was huge. I got the same feeling the last four or five laps that I get when I’m in a race car and I think we can win. It was a lot of anxiety and really, really exciting to see that, so I’m very proud of Cameron. Hopefully, next year we can make a championship run with him in the USAC Silver Crown Series. I’m pretty excited.”

DOES IT CONCERN YOU ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL DRIVERS WHO HAVE COME IN TO POTENTIALLY TAKE SPOTS AWAY FROM GUYS LIKE YOU WHO CAME UP THROUGH THE RANKS? “That’s a good question and I’ve thought about it a little bit. Dario Franchitti had a great quote about it, I can’t remember it, but he said, and I believe it, that those guys have all struggled in their own ways to make names for themselves, they’ve just done it in a different form of motorsports. I believe that it’s good for international drivers, Formula One caliber and champions in Formula One can come over here and race in NASCAR. I think that’s a good thing. I do believe and I have faith in the fact that this sport is so tough – Nextel Cup is so tough – that if they can’t hack it and if they can’t do the job, they won’t be here for very long. If there is some kid from Booneville, Missouri, who can drive a race car better than them, I think right now – just like Jeff talked about – in this sport there are a lot of opportunities in this sport for talent and I just gotta have faith in that and I think it’ll work out. I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”