DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion (finished 39th) – “I had a decent run out of two, and then the 18 and I raced side by side into turn three. Got a little tight, and I though that I had him cleared in the middle of the corner, he got a good run coming off of four and he was there by the time I was commited to using up the whole race track. I saw that he was there and tried to get off of him as quick as I could, and then I just caused a big mess. If we could’ve cleared him, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. But, he got a good run, nothing I could do. I was out of the throttle trying to get off of him as quick as I could. Sorry I caused that big mess and messed up a lot of people’s day, including ours. We had a pretty good AAA Ford Fusion. It’s just a disappointment, but we’ll work on it and get back out and try to make a couple laps and keep digging here.”

HE SAID IT WAS EARLY IN THE RACE FOR THIS TO HAPPEN. “Oh, yeah. Extremely. And I tried to use all the precautions as I can. I knew the 16 and a few cars behind us had extremely good cars, and I let the 16 go in turns one and two. I knew he’d be hard charging. But at the same time, I was just trying to keep my cool and stay out of everybody’s way the first few laps. He was just between myself and the wall, and I thought he wasn’t there for a second. It’s a shame it happened, but we’ll rebound and keep digging.”

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (finished 2nd) – (ON PIT ROAD) ON THE LAST 10 LAPS. “We were racing as hard as we could and still be clean, and so I really thought I had him, you know, I could pull away a little bit. Jeff’s smart, he had what he needed to, just got through one and two really good. Me and Jeff, I probably could’ve pulled the bottom there that last lap. I was going to go to the bottom and make him follow me through one and two because I was okay there, but he was just under me enough where I couldn’t do that. So, I did everything I could, and I got beat.”

JAMIE McMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Fusion (finished 5th) – “We were a lap down at one spot, and we struggled. We put a rubber in and it took a while to get it in, and tried to pull it out under green-flag conditions and lost about 10 seconds to the leaders, we got a lap down. We worked our way back and then made a good decision to only take two tires with about 80 to go, got track position, and then we just adjusted our car. We weren’t very good in the beginning, and we went the wrong way and came back and then we had it really good at the end, so I’m hapopy.”

THIS IS FOUR TOP-10S IN THE LAST FIVE RACES. CAN YOU POINT TO ANY ONE THING? “I don’t know. It’s just good race cars and good guys preparingthem. I’m really, really proud of our team. When you get to this level, you have a ton of good guys surrounding you, and I have a good group of guys.”

RICKY RUDD – No. 88 Snickers Ford Fusion (finished 33rd) – “There’s not much to say. We got wrecked taking the green. The best thing is we didn’t get turned over. The shame is we had a pretty good race car. We just didn’t get a chance to find out.”

MATT KENSETH, press conference

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – “It was very strange that last run. I ran about 10 laps behind Jeff Gordon, I was able to keep up with him, and all of a sudden my car just got extremely loose and Jeff hit the wall and started backing up. And we were in the lead and I saw Burton coming, and I was just really loose on the bottom and he was catching me two- to three-tenths a lap, he was just going to blow right by me if I stayed on the bottom. So I moved up and actually found some grip, that tightened my car up a little bit – but I knew it was going to be temporary – but it tightened the car up and I was able to run two- or three-tenths faster than what I had been running, and hold him off as long as I could. Then that last lap, we both got into one, he got back to the gas quicker and I just couldn’t do it, I was going to wreck. He just got me cleared on the last lap, so that’s why I tried the high side. I had to try to look somewhere for grip, it wasn’t working where I was.”

DID YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THE RIGHT-REAR TIRE TOWARD THE END? “They said it was fine. I don’t know. I could never get a consistent run, really, all day. There were times I started loose, and then tight, and vice-versa. And the best we were was when we got up front in clean air, got two tires on it that time and we were able to run up to second or whatever. And that run, it just started really good for 10 laps and then it went to just so loose, we were just getting killed on the bottom. And I thought I had a flat right-rear, and then when I moved up to the top and Jeff caught me, because I couldn’t dare let him outside of me, then the car tightened up a little bit where I could hold on for a little while. But, no, we didn’t find anything wrong with it. It was just my imagination again.”

DO YOU ENJOY RACING AGAINST JEFF BURTON? “I like racing against him better when I beat him. He’s a lot of fun to race with. When I first went to Roush, Mark got me to Roush and Mark and me became friends and started working together over there. And through that is how I met Jeff. Jeff was the number two man at Roush, and those guys helped a lot earlier in my career, and all the way through it, but especially early when we first started. You know, we tried to use a lot of Jeff’s and Mark’s information on our Cup cars when we started in 2000. We were good teammates, just became good friends through that, also. Racing for the win with Burton is the same as racing for the win with Mark: you know the guys are going to give you room, you know they’re going to race you fair, but they’re going to drive it for everything it’s worth at the same time. Honestly, I thought he was going to pass me way before that because he was running me down like crazy, and when I moved to the top I was fortunate enough to find some grip. It reminded me of Dover last year; he was running me down and had the faster car, but I was just enough of a pain in his neck to hold him up for a while. I was hoping I could hold him up one more lap, but he was smart and hung back and did how Mark used to pass cars at Michigan all the time. He lifted for turn one about two-car lengths early and got back in the gas early. And by the time I knew he lifted I was already going by him, and he just got in the gas and got in front of me and cleared me.”

ON FRIEND AND FORMER TEAMMATE JEFF BURTON WINNING AND BECOMING THE FIRST REPEAT WINNER AT TEXAS. “It doesn’t really matter. I don’t think either of us, if we’re not the winner. You like to see a friend or a teammate or a buddy or somebody you’ve got a lot of respect for win the race, but ultimately, we’re all out for ourselves. If we can’t win, we care, but we don’t care as much as if we would’ve won. I wish I was the one to repeat.”

WHAT ABOUT AERO-PUSH? WHAT ABOUT THE COT HERE? “This track, you’ve always had aero-push if you’re going to follow someone through the corner because it’s so fast and it’s flat off the corner. If you have an aero-push at this track you can move up and find another lane and make it work. We’ve seen that. We’ve seen it yesterday, we’ve seen it at the end of this race, there were two very distinctly different lines. I wasn’t right on Jeff’s door, I was three car-lengths higher than he was and we were running about the same speed, so if you’re not behind a car, if you build race tracks like this, where you don’t have to be right behind the car in the same line, you’re not going to have an aero-push. If you’re right behind a guy going this fast, I don’t care what kind of car you have, you’re still going to have an aero-push.”