With Fifth-Place Run In Sprint Cup Series Race At Phoenix
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Finished 5th) – “We just hung out there a lot of the night and, especially at the end there, we were saving enough gas to make it and I wish that strategy would have played out. I would have liked to have seen what happened there, but the 88 spun out and brought the caution out, so we came down. Of course, I wanted two and the crew chief wanted four and that’s just part of it. It’s racing. You’ve got to make a decision one way or the other. Four is probably the right call because we ended up fifth and we could have ended up sliding way back, so I’m pretty happy with the night overall.”
IT SEEMED THERE WERE TWO GROUPS OF CARS – SOME GOOD AND SOME MEDIOCRE. “Yeah, I couldn’t get in the lead. There were about three guys tonight better than me – the 5 and the 2 were just a little bit better and I think I could run with everybody else. Those two guys were a little bit better than I was, but, other than that, we just need to work on it harder and be better for next time.”CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion (Finished 10th) – “To finish tenth and considering I didn’t think we were gonna be good at all, that’s not too bad. It was a good points day for as long of a day it was, so that’s OK. That was all we had.”JAMIE MCMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Finished 11th) – “It’s just really hard to pass here. We had a good car, but track position is just really important and we just never got it. It really was a good day. We had a pretty good day in the pits and it’s just really tough to pass here.”
THE FORDS HAVE STRUGGLED ON FLAT TRACKS LIKE MARTINSVILLE AND HERE. ANY IDEA WHY? “That’s our weakest point. I don’t know. They work really hard on the engineering and everyone at Roush works really hard on our flat track program. Greg won Loudon last year and I ran really well here last year, but it just seems like we don’t have a good package for the flatter race tracks.”DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 22nd) – “We started off average and just never could seem to make the right adjustments. I really struggled on the restarts and just couldn’t pass cars. We fought tight in the center and loose off, and we could make one better and hurt the other so we were just back and forth all night long. It was just a real struggle. At times I felt like we were just a little bit better. We were in the lucky dog spot for a few laps and things just didn’t fall our way, but we weren’t that good and you can’t expect things to help you out when you can’t make things happen on your own.”
IS IT THE SAME PROBLEM ALL THE FORDS ARE HAVING AT THESE FLAT TRACKS? “We’re just not hitting on the right setup. We’re always trying new things to make our race cars faster and we’re off just a little bit. When it comes to these flat tracks recently we just haven’t been that good. We’ve just got to keep working on it and can’t lose sight of our goals, but just try to keep making things better.”
