GREG BIFFLE, No. 16 National Guard/Taurus (finished 1st)
“We put a lot of wedge in the car to start the race. I had to start outside the 48 so I wanted to make sure it wasn’t too loose, and just worked on it all day long. I mean I just could not believe it. Finally I started making big swats at it to try and get it freed up enough where it would go around the race track. So, it got a little too free there, at one point almost wrecked a couple of time but was able to save and started moving forward in the race. Really good pit stops today. They did a lot of work in the pits. They worked on that car hard, and just got it to where the last 100 laps, once I got out into clean air, the thing was just smoking fast.
They told me the 5 got into second place, and I was easing up out front, he was running about a half a tenth faster than me so I put the gas down and I could run another two-tenths faster a lap. I felt pretty good about when the caution came out whether I could have him covered or not. Once I got out front running like that it was a pretty uneventful day. I was really nervous, what was gonna happen, cautions and all that stuff. The green-flag stop toward the end was no question in my mind. Doug said a lot of guys are gonna do two tires and I didn’t care at all. I said, ‘I want four tires on the car no matter what. I don’t care if we lose track position. I don’t care if we come out fifth. We’re going to put four tires on it.’ I got 25 laps to drive the car back to the front and that would be enough time.”
YOU’VE WON HERE IN A BUSCH CAR, TOO. DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’VE GOT THIS PLACE FIGURED OUT? “I don’t if I got it figured out, but I got it figured out for today, I can tell you that. I was off a little bit in my Busch car yesterday, the Duraflame car. And it helped me win the race today. I feel badly that it was at Newt’s expense and the Brewco team, they helped me get a Cup win over here. But I learned some stuff yesterday that I worked on my race car and got it better for today. I’m thinking that we got it pretty close. I think if I had another stab at yesterday I think I could do better than eighth and I’m excited to come back here in the fall.”
YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU ALMOST WRECKED. HOW CLOSE WAS “ALMOST?” “The front wheels wouldn’t turn anymore and I was completely out of the gas and I was looking at a guy right beside at my door, I was looking at his front-bumper cover, and then it started coming back so I started wheelin’ back the other way and it snapped back the other way which is what it usually does at Dover and you usually wreck that way, on the straightaway, and I got enough wheel back the other direction to keep a hold of it and and was really a miracle that I kept it underneath me today. I had some guys riding with me that probably gave me a hand. A soldier died a year ago today in Iraq and we had his picture in the car and one of his friends brought it to us and wanted to put it in the car for today and that was pretty exciting. Some soldiers here from Walter Reed Hospital. A guy that lost his leg in Iraq and it was his first race that he’s gotten to back to and it was pretty exciting for those guys that come and I got to spend some time with them and it’s pretty night that those guys dedicate and defend our country like they do and it’s exciting to have them at the race today.”
DID THAT RECOVERY ALLOW YOU TO MAKE THE BIG CHANGES? “No, that’s when I had freed it up just too much. I said, ‘Gosh, I gotta do something.’ And then I got the lead after that. I kept on traipsing toward the front and then I got the lead and then the caution came out and we were going to pit and Doug said, ‘Do you want to tighten it up some?’ and I said, ‘Nope. Just leave it just like that. That’s how I like to drive my race car,’ and I’ll just give it more respect coming off the corner than I did over there. I had the thing pinned to the floor and I was passing the 12, Ryan, on the outside, and had a huge run on him and the thing just stepped out on me, huge. I wasn’t planning on it and it taught me a lesson there and luckily enough I was able to keep it under me. I learned something by that and I respected it more the rest of the day.”
YOU TOOK THE LEAD ON THE 241ST LAP. YOUR CAR SEEMED VERY WELL ADJUSTED THEN. “I just couldn’t believe that it could take that much adjustment. So I just kept going and going and going, and kept adjusting on it. We made some big changes on it. I raised the trackbar probably an inch. We usually turn ’em one turn. We usually move it an eighth or three-sixteenths of an inch. I moved the thing an inch. We were making wholesale changes. I took all the rubbers out of the left rear. Put rubbers in the right rear. I took wedge out of it. Raised the trackbar an inch. I just kept going and going and going until finally the thing was so loose I almost crashed coming off that corner over there. Then I got it turning well. Then I started getting some track position and then once I got out front I kind of changed my driving style a little bit to accommodate the way the car was driving then. Before, I was driving it down in the corner and maybe a little harder and kind of trying to roll around the bottom and then I had the car freed up and I couldn’t do that anymore. Then I started entering the corner slower and driving around the corner faster, or more gas. I kind of adjusted to the race car and found out what it wanted and then I was better, and kept getting more and more lead.”
ONE HIS ONE “ACCIDENT” AFTER THE RACE. “I was thinking about that when I was coming down there, but I was going pretty fast. I thought about slowing down. I was so overwhelmed by winning today. I was so inspired by that guy that lost his leg in Iraq. So inspired by those guys and I was so excited to win here. With the guy’s picture taped to the car. That’s what I was thinking about right then. I didn’t care. I was going to go fast and I was going to do some cookies on the frontstretch, and I knew it might be close. Doug’s probably mad at me. I wished I wouldn’t have done that because they’re never – I wouldn’t say never the same, but – that’s a really good race car. It’s just rear-bumper cover stuff. We’ll be able to fix it pretty easily. Certainly didn’t mean to do that, but I was so excited, I didn’t care if I put a little wrinkle in it”
JACK ROUSH, owner – MARK MARTIN SAID THIS WAS A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED RACE WITH THE DRIVERS KEEPING THE CARS ON THE TRACK. YOUR COMMENTS. “Greg was clearly one of the best drivers on the track today and in fact he had a crash too so I think it speaks volume to the fact that you really are extremely fortunate and almost beyond skill to not have contact with the wall if you spin here. Obviously that gave some of the mania that we’ve been seeing, particularly in the rookie drivers that gave him pause. The senior guys, the mature drivers, they understand the jeopardy that’s there every place, not just at Dover. Dover’s a place that if you spin, I can’t believe when I go down the backstretch, our walk across the frontstretch, how banking is there, even in the straightaways. I’m sure it gave everybody pause and it was in Greg’s fit of euphoria, it’s excusable euphoria, but it was euphoric mania that caused him to spin as fast as he did and not be able to recover. There’s several things here that I’d like to comment on real quick. We have lost the person that built this track this year. Melvin Joseph is not with us. He was a dear friend of mine and dear friend of many of the racers. His wife, Ruthie, I saw her today, and of course Mel, Jr., and Joanne and Jenny are here. Our hearts out to them and we sure miss Melvin. I’m sure he’s watching someplace. He sure liked it when a Ford won. I know that he drove Fords all his life and it was real exciting for him whenever he had a Ford in the victory circle. I’m sure he’s happy with us today. It’s wonderful to see everybody.”
GREG BIFFLE – WITH THE WAY YOU WERE RACING LAST SEASON, DID YOU SEE THIS COMING? “I don’t like to be, I don’t know what the word would be, overconfident, arrogant or any of the above, but I really felt at the end of the season last year that I think I was pretty conservative and said, made a statement, I said I feel like we’d win a race in the first 20 races of the season. I felt like we’d win a race in the first six, but I didn’t want that stat to be out there, and then somebody say, well, I thought you were going to win. I feel that our team is capable of winning five races this season. I felt that last year, at the end of the year, I though, ‘We’ll win five times,’ this year. I didn’t want to say that, but I felt confident with that. And now I feel confident that we could win possibly seven or eight races this season, with four right now, and some of our good race tracks coming up. If you would ask me if I was going to win at Dover, I would’ve said maybe, but it wouldn’t have been my choice pick. But I think we’ll run well at Chicago, Kansas, Michigan, we’ve got two Michigan races, one more California, another Texas, Homestead, Pocono next week, Indy. We were fourth and sixth there last year. Those are race tracks that we perform exceptionally well at, and we get to go back to Atlanta again which we ran really well, and Bristol. Gosh, we can win about any of those race racks so that’s exciting for a driver and show up, and know, hey, I’ve got a good-enough race car, if the set-up’s right I can work on it enough, I don’t make a mistake in the driver’s compartment, we don’t make a mistake on pit road, trap ourselves like we did last week at the 600. Hey, we got an opportunity to win almost every week. And that’s neat.”
JACK ROUSH – DID YOU SEE THE SUCCESS COMING? “I sure did. Mark and reg and Matt and Carl and Kurt all are guys who like to drive loose race cars. Loose is fast and the changes that NASCAR’s made with the cars has made them inherently loose. There’s a lot of speed in those cars, if you can hold it, if you can maintain the focus for a period of 500 laps or 400 miles or 400 laps or 500 kilometers or whatever it is, the term of the race. If you can hold it, there’s speed in a loose race car, and not all the drivers on the circuit, not all the rookies and not all the senior guys will drive a car as loose as they need to be right now. For Greg to see that he about lost the car and he figured out what to do to keep it under him was just change his driving style just a little bit and don’t tighten the car up, that speaks volumes. I had a business partner who said, ‘It ain’t bragging if you can do it,’ and I’m not bragging for myself, I’m bragging for Greg and for all the drivers. But these guys can do it, and it’s going to be awesome to watch them the rest of the year.”
DOUG RICHERT, crew chief – REGARDING ALL THE CHANGES, DID YOU MAKE THEM EVERY PIT STOP? “We made pretty much a change on every stop except the last two, I think it was. We changed air pressure, we changed wedge, we changed track bar and obviously kept going to the looser side where he can manage it. He’s not happy unless he’s sideways. And he was. Several times. And just managed to keep it out of the wall.”
GREG BIFFLE – “We changed a lot. Doug and I sat down last night and this morning, and changed a lot on our car. We weren’t that good in Happy Hour and we had to go searching and the Busch race yesterday I learned a little bit about the race car. We went with a shock package that our teammates were using that was quite a bit different than what we had. We used a little bit different rear-spring combination than a lot of our teammates by maybe a little bit so we wanted to make sure the car was tight enough to drive so we rubbered up the left-rear spring and started a little high in wedge. I’m starting outside front row to the 48, I don’t want to make a mistake. So we wanted to have the car underneath me for the beginning. We didn’t think it was going to be that far to get it to where we were in the ballpark adjustment-wise. We really had no idea starting the race what to expect at all. We just had to work with it from there because we were short on practice time and that’s what we had to do.”
LAST YEAR IF YOU WOULD’VE BEEN THIS FAR OFF WITH YOUR SET-UP, COULD YOU HAVE MADE THE ADJUSTMENTS? “I think so. I think we’re better-prepared today, but last year we did that here we did that. We worked on the car a bunch and got better and better and better. When a car does a certain thing, you’re pretty much bound by what springs and shocks you have on the car and all you can do is adjust track bar, wedge and tire pressure. Understanding what we needed to do to the car, we did all we could last year. We may not have had the right parts and pieces in the race car to start the race with. Now I think we’re closer on that and we can adapt quicker now. And when we’re starting the race, we’re closer probably. We just fine-tuned it. We keep fine-tuning, fine-tuning, fine-tuning and here we weren’t very fine-tuned when the race started, and we knew that. This race probably we were as far off or could’ve been as far off this race as we had been all season because we really kind of guessed at a lot of stuff that we thought was going to take to run competitive here today, so it worked for us.”
DO YOU THINK THE OFF-SEASON RULES CHANGES PLAYED INTO YOUR HANDS? “I don’t think so. I wish that we could put the spoiler back on the car, Doug’s dropping his water, and I think we can keep doing the same thing we’re doing. We were last year. I keep talking about Kansas. We cleaned their clock at Kansas. We were just murdering ’em like we did at Homestead and Texas. We had to stop with 14 to go and start 23rd because we weren’t going to make it on gas. And got all the way back to second or third, catching Nemechek and the 21 car, just catching ’em half a second a lap. We were so dang fast, you know, there, Pocono, Indy, Michigan and Homestead and I think that we would’ve just kept going and been right where we’re at today if they hadn’t cut the spoiler off, I believe. But, has it hurt us? No. Has it helped us? I don’t really think it’s magic. It’s not why we’re winning all these races, I can tell you that.”
AFTER LAST WEEK’S WRECKFEST, HOW MUCH BETTER WAS IT TO RACE TODAY WITH NOT-SO-MANY CAUTIONS? “It was a lot better today. It’s a combination of racing around each other last week and the track speed had a lot to do with that, but I saw a lot of guys today giving and taking, giving each other room to race. These guys are professionals. They’re the best in the business. All these guys out here. Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, all of ’em. Jimmy. If they’re going to run here forever, and I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this, I was thinking that about three-quarters of the way through the race, that I get to do what I love to do every weekend and come out and race with these guys and enjoy all the fans and stuff. We’re racing together all the time. We got to give and take or we’re going to end up crashing all the time. So we got to give each other room and you can’t pinch a guy off. If I run a guy dirty or block him, I let those guys go at the beginning of the race. When I got my car good and I was in their rear-view mirror, they were like, I gotta give this guy racing room because he gave me racing room. That’s what everybody did today.”
MARK MARTIN Press Conference
MARK MARTIN, No. 6 Viagra Taurus (finished 3rd) – IT ALMOST LOOKED LIKE LAST YEAR FOR YOU. “Yeah, our guys did an awesome job with the car. It was off a little bit at the start and we got it really, really good through the middle of the race and I really thought that we are on track to contend to win, and then late in the race we started having a push that we couldn’t get out of the car, and it looked like Biffle and his guys hit it right on the money and they just put a whippin’ on us.”
HOW DID THE HEAT AFFECT YOU TODAY? “We used to do 500 here. So, this used to be a tough race. But I do want to say one thing: That was good, old-school racing. The best man won, and that’s the way racing should be. I really enjoyed that race today. Green-flag racing, plenty of it. The guys who had the best cars were able to go to the front and stay in the front and the guys who made the best adjustments in the last 200 laps or 150 laps really are the ones that won the race, because up until that point Biffle was behind me. So those guys hit it on the money and we didn’t.”
YOU MENTIONED THIS WAS GOOD OLD-SCHOOL RACING. HOW CAN ALL RACING BE THAT WAY? “You have to start with the race track. You can’t make it more difficult for us than normal. We had more difficult than normal circumstances last week, and we weren’t successful, we hadn’t been successful most of the year with good conditions, so certainly we were going to have a failure last week. But it really is the drivers. The problem is that, and Kyle worked awesome out there with me today, there are not very many newcomers – I’m not even going to use the age thing – I’m just saying there’s not that many newcomers that really get the hang of how to run these long races and so they fight tooth-and-nail and they won’t let people get by them. So you have to over-extend yourself to pass ’em and there’s the wreck. Wheareas just as Kyle and I raced throughout the day when he was faster than me I let him go and when I caught him and got all over him he let me go, and we didn’t jeopardize our cars or our finishes by being hard-headed. So the drivers are a lot to blame for all the cautions, but there’s pressure on these guys, enormous pressure. Why do you think this is my last year?”
ON TONY STEWART APPARENTLY SAYING THAT MARK MARTIN SHOULD START ON A SCHOOL ON HOW TO DRIVE RESEPECTFULLY. “I do make mistakes, too. But, and I’m not sure Jeff Gordon needs to attend one of my seminars, but I do think that Tony Stewart ought to hold court and teach some of these young guys how to give the older guys that have been there the respect that they have coming. You’ve got some that do and you’ve got some that don’t, and that doesn’t mix and that’s what happens on the race track. And that all gets back to when someone’s faster than someone else and it’s 100 laps in or 10 laps in or 300 laps in, you can do one of two things. Man, we used to fix these things ourselves. And we used to get fired if we wrecked ’em. You’d wreck one about four, five, six times and you’re out of a ride. That’s not like that anymore. You can wreck ’em every week and it seems like you can keep your job. So there’s a lot of reasons why we have accidents today and I can’t bash ’em all. I’m under pressure, too. I wrecked a lot of cars the year before last, too, because my car ran in the middle of the pack and it’s wild back there and you have to race really hard. If you race for 25th, I don’t care who you are, you’re going to get tore up a lot more than if you race in the top 10.”
WE HAVEN’T SEEN A LOT OF GREEN-FLAG PIT STOPS THIS SEASON, BUT THIS RACE DOWN TO THAT. “My comment is, ‘Thank God.’ That’s old-school racing. That’s what it’s all about. Then when you do that, usually the best man wins. It doesn’t always work out that way when you have 15 or 20 cautions.”
CAN YOU COMMENT ON THE SEASON THAT GREG BIFFLE AND HIS TEAM ARE HAVING? “Well, they’re just spectacular. The guys have just really, really hit on something about half or two-thirds of the way through the season last year. It’s just the little things. Like I say, I thought at lap 225 today or maybe 250, I thought, certainly at 225, I didn’t think I would have to beat him to win the race, but those guys got it back together and got it wired in. They’re on a roll right now. They’re making the cars go fast, and he always drove the fool out of ’em, but now the cars are working for him and they’re pitting it well and doing everything right.”
CAN YOU COMMENT ON GREG’S FOUR WINS THIS YEAR, AND HAS THAT SUCCESS COME OUT OF NOWHERE? “Greg’s four wins this season have not come out of nowhere, they dominated the end of the season last year with speed, maybe not with wins, but definitely with speed. They’ve been gaining momentum since mid-season last year. They’re on it, man. That’s how it goes in this business.”
MATT KENSETH, No. 17 DeWalt Power Tools Taurus (finished 7th) – “It’s okay. It’s better than things have been going, for sure. We ran close to the top-five and then the second-to-last run we just got so loose and lost all our ground. Seventh is alright, but I still think we can do a lot better than that, so I’m still disappointed. Greg won the race, Mark run third, we couldn’t run with those guys, so we’re going to keep working on it.
YOU DON’T SEEM TO HAVE BEEN BOTHERED BY THE HOT WEATHER. HOW WAS IT OUT THERE? “Well, it’s the first hot day we’ve had in a long time and it was definitely real hard inside the car. It’s been cool all weekend, you come up here wearing sweatshirts, 60 degrees, and it just shows up and it’s 85 all of a sudden on race day, usually everybody’s not ready for it, so the first couple of warm races are usually tougher than the rest.”
ELLIOTT SADLER, No. 38 M&M’s Taurus (finished 10th) – “My guys gave me a race car. For the first 250 laps of the race, we were the car to beat. Just the driver didn’t keep up with the changes enough. I had no idea the track would get that tight in the last 150 laps, and I didn’t give them the right feedback. But they gave me a great car. I think our intermediate program is coming around. Today was a big statement, I think, on where we’re going. The driver’s just got to get a little bit better at some of these places about where the track’s going, and I kept up with it for 250 laps but I lost it there that last run, and of course that was the longest run of the day. And even lost power steering the last 30, 40 laps, and that just wore me out. Dover’s a tough place anyway, and you lose power steering, it was a tough day.”
IT APPEARED THAT THERE WAS SMOKE COMING OUT OF THE BACK OF YOUR CAR TOWARD THE END OF THE RACE. “Yeah, the power steering fluid was leaking. That finally leaked all the way out and made it tough to drive. But we got a top-10. it could’ve been a lot worse. The main thing is we run good, and we made a statement, I think, on these intermediate tracks. We struggled at Atlanta, we struggled at Texas, we went to Charlotte All-Star race and run really good, we had an awesome car in the 600 and then came here and run good, a place we don’t have a good history, so this team is doing a great, great job.”
YOU’VE MENTIONED BEFORE THAT THIS YEAR EVEN WHEN YOU DON’T GET THE FINISH YOU WANT, IT’S STILL NOT A BAD DAY. DOES THIS FINISH FALL INTO THAT CATEGORY? “Yeah. I wanted a top-five bad or just run for the win, but like I said before, it’s a great finish for the problems we had at the end of the race. I just got to work a little harder as a driver about the way the track’s going. I’m still a student of the game at that, and keep working at it.”
RICKY RUDD, No. 21 Motorcraft Genuine Parts Taurus (finished 40th) – ARE YOU OKAY? “Yeah.”
WAS THERE ANY ROOM THERE AT ALL? “I don’t know. I got on the brakes. I don’t know who it was drilled me, nailed me in back end and sent me into it. It wasn’t a big deal. I don’t know what they were doing behind me. I don’t know why they didn’t slow up. Everybody else slowed up and stopped, and somebody didn’t stop and run over the back of me.”
YOU’VE LOOKED AT THE DAMAGE. CAN THE TEAM GET THIS CAR BACK IN THE RACE? “No, I don’t think so. Not as hard as I hit. Usually that’s a good indicator. I don’t think it’ll be back. We’ll see.”
