Matt Kenseth was the top qualifying Ford driver for Sunday's Lenox Industrial Tools 301 with a ninth-place effort Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion (Qualified 35th) – “We’ve just struggled. I’ve been fighting the car just trying to get some good laps in and I feel like we’re just behind the 8 ball. We can certainly get it figured out before it’s all said and done, but that wasn’t a great lap at all. I got a little tight getting into three and overdrove a little bit. I really washed up the track, so it’s just disappointing to start off kind of slow like we’ve been, but we’ve just got to work hard. It’d be worried if it was Sunday morning, but we’ve still got another day-and-a-half of making changes on the car.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion (Qualified 17th) – “I don’t know if it will hold up for second. Ryan and I were just talking, if it doesn’t rain and keeps cooling off like this, I think you’re gonna see some really fast laps. I hope it’s a top 10. If we can start in the top 10 based on our qualifying speed after having only a couple of qualifying runs in practice, I’ll be happy with it.” A TOP 10 WOULD BE GOOD. “Yes, that would be great. I’m not the strongest qualifier out here, but I’m learning and I’m having fun. The track is great, so it’s gonna be a good race either way, but that’s a lot better than I thought we were gonna be.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Qualified 15th) – “I don’t know what I did. I don’t know how I qualified so well. The 3M car, we haven’t been as good as we needed to be since we got here and it’s been really tight, really tight, really tight. The last time I drove it in practice qualifying it was really tight, and there it was so loose I could hardly keep it under me. They probably made some changes to it. I don’t know exactly what they did, but we’ll see if we can figure out a plan for the race tomorrow.”
JAMIE MCMURRAY – No. 26 Irwin Ford Fusion (Qualified 13th) – “It was a good lap. We picked up quite a bit from practice and with the exception of Sonoma, we’ve made really good changes to the car for qualifying. That was another big improvement and qualifying here is important so I hope that we get this all in because track position is key here.”
WHAT ABOUT THE CLOUDS ROLLING IN. DID THAT HELP? “With the sun going down before qualifying that was great because the track just picked up grip and we made good adjustments to our car and it ran a good lap.” HOW DO YOU RUN HERE? “Either really good or really bad. It’s been a place where I’ve either had a good run or just really poor. I’ve never been in the middle and track position is always so important here, and then with the two tires or four tires during the pit stops, the crew chiefs certainly earn their money at this deal.”
HOW DO YOU APPROACH THE WEEKEND WHEN YOU KNOW RAIN IS IN THE FORECAST? “It just means a lot of internet time. You spend half of your day looking to see when it’s gonna rain or how long it’s gonna rain. It just seems like everytime we’re here we get some precipitation at some point.”
CAN YOUR CAR GET BETTER? “Yeah. We have a top five car. In practice we probably had one of the better cars in race trim of the guys that did race trim and we qualified fair out there, so we should be solid this weekend.”
TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 28 “Drive one” Ford Fusion (Qualified 21st) – “It was OK. Actually, after our mock qualifying run in practice we didn’t have a lot of speed, but the car drove really nice and had good grip. We just kind of threw some stuff at it there. We weren’t where we needed to be at the end of practice, so we made some pretty big changes with front shocks, track bar and a few other things to tune it. I think the track is in better shape than where it was and that’s probably where we got a little bit more speed, but I think we hurt the car a little bit overall with the front shocks. But it’s OK and we’ll take it. It’s faster than went in practice and you’ve got to be happy with that, but I’m really excited about tomorrow and Sunday for sure.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Qualified 9th) – DID THE RAIN AND TRACK CONDITIONS PLAY INTO YOUR HAND TODAY? “Well, in looking at the time chart I’d say it did because everybody seems to be running quicker, so we might have got a little bit of good fortune there. The car was a lot better than what it was, too, but, for sure, we probably had better conditions.”
MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 21 Little Debbie Ford Fusion (DNQ) – “It’s really disappointing. I just feel bad for the Wood Brothers. I’ve had limited experience in the COT and we just didn’t roll off the truck that great and I haven’t had enough experience to really give them direction to tune on it. I tried as hard as I could there, but it just wasn’t to be.”
THIS IS PROOF OF HOW TOUGH NASCAR IS, GOING FROM THE FRONT OF THE PACK LAST WEEK IN SONOMA TO NOT MAKING THE FIELD THIS WEEK. “Yeah, unfortunately I’ve got a hero to zero story I can tell.”
