Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion, is in ninth place in the standings heading into this weekend’s Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Superspeedway. Edwards leads the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series with three victories.

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – “Superspeedways have been kind of our weak point here, but that’s almost by design. It’s four races a year that are totally different from other things we do, so we really focused on the meat of the schedule and we’ve just kind of got what we could get at these places. It was really hard for me to accept when I first came here, but now I kind of see how that works. We could spend of time and energy on these things, but they’re still such a crapshoot that it might not really help you. But, we can get better and we probably will eventually, once we get everything else wrapped up.”

MORE ON RACING AT RESTRICTOR-PLATE TRACKS. “It would be nice to show up at Daytona every year and know that you’ve got a car that could sit on the pole. And we’re working on that. We’re working on it. As painful as Daytona is sometimes, it sure is nice like this year to go to California and Vegas and Texas and all those places and run really well.”

CAN YOU SEE THAT HAPPENING THIS WEEK, THAT IT STARTS TO TURN? “It could. The guys have been working in the engine shop. I know the guys have been working on the cars – that’s a brand-new car for us. There’s only so much time in the day, you know, and we’re doing the best we can.”

IN THE PAST, AT THIS TRACK, THE CAR YOU TAKE OFF THE TRUCK IS THE CAR YOU HAVE FOR THE WEEKEND. DOES THAT STILL HOLD TRUE WITH THE NEW CAR? “There’s really now much you can do to the cars. As a driver, handling is not an issue – at least my car right now – so you just kind of unload and make sure everything is alright. You might have a couple of little things that you might try, but, really, what you build back at the shop is going to dictate how fast you go.”

YOU WERE FOURTH-FASTEST IN THE FIRST PRACTICE. SO, DOES THAT MEAN YOU WILL HAVE A GOOD CAR THROUGH THE WEEKEND? “I think we’re okay. We’ll see in qualifying what we really have.”

YOUR THREE WINS THIS YEAR HAVE BEEN ON TRACKS THAT ARE SMALLER THAN THIS ONE. HOW DO YOU TRANSLATE THAT SUCCESS TO THIS TRACK? “There’s nothing you can really translate from those tracks to here. These supespeedways restrictor-plate racing is it’s own animal. It’s not like you can really drive it harder and go faster, you just have to be real smart, have some luck and have a great big engine, you know?”

WILL IT BOTHER YOU IF YOU NEVER WIN ON A SUPERSPEEDWAY? “It bothers me just as much. I want to win every race. But, I know what makes a fast race car here and it’s not the driver, so there’s nothing I can do about it. My car will only go so fast, that’s as fast as it will go. All I can do is drive as fast as I can with what I’ve got, and have faith that the guys are using their resources the best way for the whole season back at the shop. If I went crazy and wanted the guys to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week for this race, and sacrifice something else, that wouldn’t be wise. So, I just have faith in those guys as managers.”

ON CONTRACTS AND NEGOTIATIONS. “For me, personally, just out of respect to everyone and sponsors, and the teams and the way we do business, for me it’s always my mission to get that stuff out of the way and get it done as early as I can. That’s how I’ve always tried to do it.”

WHERE DO YOU STAND ON YOUR CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS? “I don’t want to say anything.” MORE ON CURRENT NEGOTIATIONS. “I’m working really hard to get my stuff, just because I think it’s fair to get it done early, and once I get it done I’ll let everyone know what I’ve done. But, we’re working on it.”

CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF DRIVING FOR SOMEBODY ELSE? DO YOU ENVISION WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE, WEIGHING THE PROS AND CONS? “I think everyone – you always want to weigh everything. It doesn’t cost anything to listen. I think it’s wise to always wise to listen and look at your options and things. And, that’s that.”

IS IT UNUSUAL FOR SOMEONE IN YOUR POSITION TO NOT HAVE AN AGENT? “It’s probably statistically unusual, but for me personally, dealing with Geoff Smith, in particular, I’ve always been able to walk in there, sit down and go through everything and come out feeling like – I feel perfectly comfortable with everything. So, I don’t think anybody knows what I want more than me. So, that’s kind of worked out.”

WHAT DO YOU WANT? “Lots of things. Just the structure of stuff. There are always little things that are negotiable in a contract. It’s a lot more than just drive a race car for this amount of money. There’s appearances. I think every person is different. They’re willing to maybe do more days for more money, and some guys want to spend more time at home, so they’re willing to negotiate that. Really, I’ve been fortunate. The people I’ve dealt with have always been really easy to deal with.”

MORE ON CONTRACTS INVOLVING MORE THAN DRIVING, SUCH AS COMMERCIALS AND ENDORSEMENTS. “It’s a big complex thing, but it’s nothing that I don’t think I can’t work out the way I want it to be, and I’m working on it right now.”

IS THAT WHY DRIVERS MOVE FROM TEAM TO TEAM, BECAUSE OF THE DETAILS? “I don’t know. I don’t know why guys – I can only tell you my personal experiences. So far, I’ve raced for Mike Mittler and Jack Roush, and that’s it. So, I’ve been very fortunate.”

IS IT DIFFICULT OR DIFFERENT FOR YOU IF YOU’VE GOT A POTENTIAL CHANGE IN SPONSORSHIP, WHEN YOU’RE NEGOTIATING THINGS LIKE APPEARANCES? “Generally, just like anything, people are the same, no matter if it’s one sponsor or the other. I can’t think of a sponsor I have or had that’s been really difficult in any way. It’s real simple, the sponsor wants the best exposure, and they want to get their brand out. They want to win races, just like I do. And it seems like no matter what the circumstance or the sponsor, we’ve always been able to sit down, talk out whatever our plans are, and there’s some hang up we’ve been able to work it out. So, for me, personally, I know that Geoff and Jack and everyone, they’ve always included me in what’s going on with the sponsorships, so I kind of know what’s going on, and that’s always been a big help. That always gives me more comfort.”

Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M/Red Cross Ford Fusion, is in 10th place in the points standings heading into this weekend’s Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Superspeedway. Biffle has three top-fives and five top-10s through the first eight races of the season.

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M/Red Cross Ford Fusion – ON ALL THE TALK THIS WEEKEND OF TONY STEWART AND HIS CONTRACT SITUATION. “Obviously, he’s let the world know that he was unhappy about something at Gibbs. I think we’ve all been in that situation before. There’s certain ways to go about it, I guess, and he’s made it known that he wants to get out of his current contract at the end of the season, I guess, or whatever. We all go through that, we all go through contract periods and wanting to get out of contract early to go do something else is part of the sport, I guess.”

IS ANYTHING THAT HE’S DOING HAVE ANY EFFECT ON WHAT YOU’RE DOING REGARDING YOUR NEGOTIATIONS? “I don’t think so. It may open up a ride at the 20 car, I guess, at Gibbs Racing. It may be another option, but I don’t know. I don’t think it affects what I’m doing. I’m negotiating with Roush Fenway for an extension on my current contract, so I don’t think what he’s trying to do or going to do makes a difference.”

WHERE ARE YOU WITH YOUR CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS? “Sort of in a holding pattern. We’re not in a big hurry to get it done, I think. We’re in that negotiation period, and like I said, I’m pretty confident that we’re going to be able to get to common ground on what I want and what they want.”

IF SOMEBODY THREW OWNERSHIP AT YOU, EVEN A PARTIAL OWNERSHIP, WOULD THAT SUDDENLY CHANGE THE WAY YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT THINGS? “They have. I have had offers of ownership of more than one team in the garage, and it’s definitely an intriguing offer. There’s a lot of things to consider when you’re an athlete in you’re in the position that we are in. Both Tony and I are, let’s say, we’re at the 60-percent point in our career. We’re not Kyle Busch, you know, 21 or 22 years olds. So, at some point we need to start thinking about how long we want to be involved in this sport and what we want to do in the future. So, those ideas to stay involved in the sport are very intriguing to us. And I’m sure that’s part of Tony’s thinking is, when I’m done driving the 20 car, or whatever car, what am I going to do in the future? And he’s probably watching out for himself, thinking ahead, and somebody’s made an offer or whatnot, and he’s considering it.”

THEY’VE TAKEN MORE MUSCLE OUT OF THESE CARS. WHAT KIND OF RACE DO YOU EXPECT TO SEE ON SUNDAY? “Well, certainly, at these restrictor-plate tracks, these cars, the power doesn’t really make that much difference in the race, I think. It doesn’t matter if we’re going 10 miles an hour faster or 10 miles an hour slower, I think we’re going to see the same kind of race because we’re all grouped up and we all have the same power. So, I think it’s probably the right thing to do to not get the speeds too high. And then one thing you have to remember is that we’re learning about these cars and we’re getting them to go faster and faster and faster. So, by NASCAR thinking ahead and taking a small amount of restrictor plate away, they’re kind of ahead of the curve. Instead of us getting out there and halfway through the weekend going, ‘Wow, these speeds are a little faster than we want to see, let’s make a change now,’ that’s probably not the right thing to do. I think they did the right thing by taking a little speed out. And over the next two years, gives us a chance to work those speeds back to what they’re calling a limit on the top speed.”

WOULD YOU RATHER THEY KEEP THE HORSEPOWER IN THE MOTOR AND MAYBE CHANGE THE WING ON THE BACK? “There’s certainly tons of ways to do it. I haven’t driven the car in different configurations. One think I wish they would do, we’ve asked them to do over and over and they’re not hearing us is make some kind of clear wicker on the back of the wing so that we can see inside the car. We had Nationwide practice here yesterday, a bunch of times I saw the guy’s hand up waving in the window. Guys are checking up, it’s easy getting out of the gas. These cars, you can’t see inside the cars, you can’s see the guy in front of us. And the one thing they say at the driver’s meeting every week, ‘If you’re coming to pit road, make sure you wave your hand. Wave the guy off.’ They can leave that out of the speech because we can’t see. We cannot see their hand. So, when guys get bottled up, that’s how a big wreck happens. Guys get bottled up a little bit, and then all of a sudden it’s a chain reaction. It happened to me here. I got spun out, I got shoved into the back of Carl coming off turn four. Simple little deal. Nobody got damaged, thank goodness. But, there’s a fact that I couldn’t see him slowing up, or couldn’t see him waving his hand or anything else. It’s a lot simpler than it is. They’ve made the promise to us for 12 months they were going to work on it. And I don’t see it on the car, I haven’t been to the car yet. I haven’t found out if we’ve got a clear wicker on the back of the car yet, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

BASED ON THESE CHANGES, WILL WE SEE A BETTER RACE HERE THAN WE DID LAST FALL? DO YOU GO RACE A LITTLE EARLER, A LITTLE LONGER? “I think so. The thing is, the drivers are getting smarter and smarter. We are figuring out that they only pay us for the 500th mile, or the last lap. So, there’s no more bonus money in there, other than that. Or points—basically, is what we call money. And so, there’s no need to race. There’s a need to size up the competition. So, there is a need to race for that. But when it comes down to it – we’ve joked about it amongst ourselves, a few of the drivers, that if you want to see an exciting race, make it a 200-mile race. This Talladega race is 200 miles. We’re going to race from the drop of the green flag to the checkered flag. We’re going to be five-wide. We’re going to be beating and banging. And we’re going to be going. But, a 500-mile race, there’s 300 miles that we just have to hang out. And then the last 200 miles we’re racing. The first 300 miles we’re just getting there.”

A LONGER RACE MEANS MORE TIME TO SELL CONCESSIONS. “Yes. And that’s the thing. You need time to sell beer and hot dogs and everything else. I don’t blame them. When I want to go to a baseball game, I want to watch all of the innings. I don’t want to watch three of ’em.”

THE ALL-STAR RACE WILL BE SOON. DO THE DRIVERS APPROACH THAT RACE DIFFERENTLY? “The All-Star race? Yeah, I think we do. The All-Star race is all about the money; there’s no points on the line. So, we’ll take a little more risk for reward, because we know that there’s not a lot on the line. Let’s face it, we have 26 opportunities to make the chase, and we have to take every one of those very seriously. This doesn’t count as that. This is a Saturday night race, what we’ve all done our whole career, lots of money on the line. That’s it. So, you’ll take a little more risk. You’ll drive it on the edge. Look at the length of the race. It’s not that 500-mile race. It’s that 200-mile race that we were just talking about. It’s go from the green to checkered. I think if the actual points race was that long, I think you’d see more racing. So, yeah, the All-Star race is short, no points, you’re going to see good racing.”

ONE MORE THING ON THE CONTRACT DEAL. DOES THE FACT THAT TONY STEWART IS HOLDING A LOT OF CARDS MEAN THAT EVERYBODY ELSE HAS GOT TO WAIT UNTIL HE PLAYS HIS BEFORE THEY PLAY THEIRS? DOES THIS SLOW THE TIMING DOWN ANY? “I don’t think so because I think the deals that are out there right now are pretty secure and pretty valid teams, big teams. Just another guy in the mix, I think. And, let’s face it, his contract isn’t up. So, how much we’d love to sit here and say he’s going to go somewhere else, unless Gibbs releases him he’s not going anywhere. Gibbs said they weren’t going to release him. Another way to look at this is, they might consider releasing him if they have another driver that they felt like with the quality, or experienced guy or whatever for that seat. If they said, we’ve got this guy to drive the 20, we’ll go ahead and release you. That could happen. But, that’s all speculation. What I heard I heard on the 11 o’clock news. I haven’t read the Internet or anything else, said they weren’t going to release him. Asked for a release and they weren’t going to release him. That’s all I know.”

Some of the nation’s best young automotive technicians, as identified during the 59th annual Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills competition, will spend a week with Roush Fenway Racing, learning about the team at the shop and at the track. David Ragan, driver of the No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion, and Jack Roush, Roush Fenway Racing team owner, were among those participating in a press conference about the program at Talladega Superspeedway on Friday. The competition is the largest competition for high school automotive technology students in the country. The 2008 National Finals will be held at Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., on June 24.

JACK ROUSH – team owner, Roush Fenway Racing Ford Fusions – “The reason Roush Fenway is represented with me being present is to help bring attention to the wonderful program that AAA and Ford have partnered to further the interests that a lot of high school students have in the automotive technology industry, service industry, which, of course, includes NASCAR racing and the service of the race cars that we’re involved with here at the Talladega race track. We, in our business and of course, our race team, value the skills that are represented by the interest that the students have. In Michigan, we’ve got a 3,000-employee staff that services the automobile industry. So, in addition to the race-team activities that we’ve got in Charlotte, we’ve also got great interest in what goes on in Michigan. I’ve been involved in some of the programs that these kids are destined for. We’ve got several mechanics, technically minded folks that are involved with our racing program in Charlotte. George Stone is a mechanic in our truck shop that was one of the youngsters that participated in the Auto Skills contest as a teenager. Wade Moore competed in the Alabama region for the Auto Skills competition and works in our fab shop. And, Sean Ballantine participates as a parts manager today, and he also was one of the graduates in one of the competitions. They have all acquired and developed the skills, the experience, that let them be successful today in our workforce, through this program. AAA and Ford are in a great project together. The grand prize is going to be to a two-person team. The prize will include an opportunity to job shadow David Ragan’s pit crew in Concord, North Carolina, and then to fly with the team to the Joliet Sprint Cup race on the weekend on July 12th. That will just be icing on the cake for them, however; the main thing is that they’re going to get scholarships to go to a college of their choice to study automotive technology in its purest form. I worked as an engineer for Ford for a while, and then in 1972 I started my own business in automotive technology and then, of course, running race teams simultaneously. And I taught junior college for three years at Monroe Community College, where I had an opportunity to work with youngsters in that context that had the interest in being technicians in the automobile industry – as well as going looking for their fame and fortune in the racing business. In the three years that I was there I had an opportunity to see a lot of youngsters with the same motivations that the folks have that participate in the program. Truth of fact, what winds up happening is these competitions are organized regionally where the teams will be faced with car systems that have known problems and they have to troubleshoot the cars and find the problem and return it to a serviceable condition in a competitive time or hopefully in the best time in comparison to the people in the contest with them. It’s great thing competitively, it’s a great thing for a career point of view. One of the things that I see as I watch the generations come behind me is that are a seemingly decreasing number of young kinds that are willing to go fix something, they’re willing to take a mechanical or electrical problem in a complex system, like in an automobile, and the encouragement that AAA and Ford are giving them, this generation of youngsters coming through high school, is just amazing. I can’t tell you how much respect I’ve got for what they’re doing, what an important part I think it is in our national working society to be able to have people with those motivations to have a chance to really get ahead and further their education with some level of recognition and support from Ford and AAA.”

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion – “When I was young, I ended up working in my father’s automotive repair shop, and then when I was in high school, I was a part of the Auto Skills, not the competition that we’re talking about today, but on a more local level, and I think that’s a great opportunity for young kids to gain real-life experience in the workforce that they’re looking forward to being in possibly one day. So, this is a great opportunity to go out have these guys here today. And I think it’s great that AAA puts forth a lot of effort – and eight million bucks in scholarship money is a lot of money that means a lot to a lot of families around the country. So, I think that’s a great, great program. Whether AAA is working on teen driving safety or putting their efforts into further the education of young students across America, they’re always doing something to help our youth here in the U.S. So, I think that’s a great program. I’m excited to be a part of it, and I’m glad to be here today on their behalf talking about the upcoming national event in Dearborn in June. I’m going to be there. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun that day. And the winners, certainly it’s going to be a lot of fun having those guys come and join our AAA race team in Concord at our facilities there and join us in Chicago at the Sprint Cup race that weekend. It’s a lot of good things that are happening because of Ford and AAA putting forth a lot of effort into the program. It’s going to help some young kids across America better educate themselves and hopefully have a better job that they can rely on for the future.”