Elliott Sadler became the first driver to take Fusion to Victory Lane with yesterday’s win in the first Gatorade 150 Duel race.
· The win was Sadler’s second Duel victory with his first coming in 2004.
ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 38 M&M’s Ford Fusion – “Man, this is a great feeling. Tommy and the guys have been pumped up so much coming back down here. To get a win for M&M’s is a great feeling. We were shut out last year and Tommy came on board and it gave us a new outlook on racing and new ideas about things. To get Ford Fusion’s first win in NASCAR is great and something I will always remember.”
IT LOOKED LIKE YOU HAD AN EASY VICTORY UNTIL THE CAUTION CAME OUT. “Boy, I definitely didn’t want to see the caution come out. Carl was working with me pretty good at that time, and I knew the guys were going to lay back and try to get a run. Of course, I could see the 8 car coming, so thank goodness the 99 blocked him pretty good and enabled us to get away and get the win. I’m just so happy for this race team. My guys deserve to win and they are practicing so hard on the pit stops. We beat everybody off pit road and that’s why we won the race. It’s just a great day for us. I do want to apologize to the fans. No burnouts today, but this could be the engine that I run in 500, and I didn’t want to mess it up today.”
WILL THE OUTSIDE LANE WORK ON SUNDAY? “Yeah, I think it’s going to be a hot, slick day. Right now there’s too much grip in the track. Tommy kept preaching to me to stay on the bottom and make these guys pass you on the high side. Nobody wanted to get off the bottom, and when one person went high, he’d just get left out to dry. I’m just proud of my guys. We had such a frustrating year last year and we had such hopes coming back into this season, so to come down here and get it started the right way and get some momentum on our side for a lot of great sponsors. It’s a great feeling and it’s hard to put into words right now what I’m feeling.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Fusion – “That’s the first win for Ford Fusion. That’s pretty cool. It was pretty neat to following him across the finish line. Hopefully, our Office Depot Ford is that good on Sunday because it’s a pretty good car.”
WHAT WAS THE ATMOSPHERE LIKE OUT THERE AFTER ALL OF THE TALK ABOUT BUMP DRAFTING? IT SEEMED PRETTY CALM OUT THERE. “Yeah, everybody did a good job. I think it went pretty well. I think if it goes like that for the 500 it’ll be okay. I’m telling you, no matter what anybody says or tries to say or mandates, those last laps of the Daytona 500 are going to be exciting.”
WHAT DID YOU LEARN TODAY? “I learned that there’s a fine line between too loose and too tight. Our car was too tight. I told them to free it way up, and then it was too loose. It’s still fun, though.”
KEVIN LEPAGE – No. 61 AMP Energy Drink Ford – WAS THAT A SMILE OF HAPPINESS OR RELIEF? “Both, I think. I can’t thank everybody from AMP Energy Drinks for stepping up and helping us out. Greg Conner made some great calls there, that first pit stop. I wanted to come in and put tires on and I watched everybody else come in there at the end, but he said, ‘Look, stay out there, we’ll be okay.’ I used the mirror, I used everything I could. I used everything in my book to put this AMP Energy Ford into Victory Lane – Victory Lane for us because we’re in the 500. But, to be in the transfer spot two years in a row, man, what a testimony for what kind of race team we have here.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS FOR THE TEAM, NOT ONLY FOR THIS WEEK BUT FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON? “Obviously, we talked to AMP Energy Drink about a one-race deal, which was here, and they said, ‘Hey, if you could put us in the 500 who knows what it’s going to bring us,’ so hopefully they’ll step up and give us a few more races. This gets us going. To be in the 500, the Great American Race, my hat’s off to all the guys working hard back at the shop, guys that can’t be here. And, all my fans. They’ve been rooting for us all winter long. And, trying to get sponsorship and stuff. Maybe this is the start of a good year for me.”
KEN SCHRADER – No. 21 Little Debbie/Motorcraft/USAF Fusion – “One turn killed us. That one turn killed us. It’s good, real good. And, it’s all straight for Sunday. We don’t have to thrash on it as far as to get it handled for Sunday. We don’t have to thrash on it to get it handling good.”
DALE JARRETT – No. 88 UPS Ford Fusion – “We were way too tight at the beginning and the car just got to really pushing. When I fell back I totally lost the nose one time and almost took out a couple of times, so I had to cool that down. We made an adjustment on the pit stop and the car was a lot better. The car was still too tight, especially entering the corner. When I’d get in there trying to run hard and get a push, my car would slide up the race track a little bit. I wasn’t bad off, but we’ve got a little work to do. It’s great to see Elliott win. We know the Ford can get out front and lead some laps now, so that gives us all a little bit of encouragement.”
HOW IS THE CAR? “It doesn’t look too bad. It’s the rear bumper and probably the least critical place on the whole car, so it didn’t really look like it did that much. I’m sure they’ll get on it and fix it.”
SURPRISED? YOU. “Yeah, we were all slowing down even more because there was so much debris from the blown tire on the frontstretch and we were just trying to pick our way through there. The next thing I knew I got hit in the back. I wasn’t even looking in the back. I was looking ahead of me making sure I didn’t run over anything.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – “It’s a little frustrating for running fifth. It’s the best that we’ve ever run in the 150 Gatorade races, and we’ve got a good spot for Sunday. It’s just frustrating. We didn’t have a good stop, which is no big deal because they’re awesome all the time. Then I was just trying to figure out what the right thing was to do, and I had it wrong. I was even with the 8 and everybody just piles in that line all the time. It’s just frustrating because you don’t know where to go. You can’t do it by yourself and our car was so fast that all I needed was one or two guys. It seemed like I couldn’t get in the right place.”
IS THAT WHAT YOU WERE TALKING TO JIMMIE JOHNSON ABOUT? “No, not at all. I was just talking to him about the race and drafting together, just about different things. I’m trying to get better at it, too, and sometimes when you talk to people and see what they were thinking during the race.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Fusion – “It’s good to see Ford Fusion get to Victory Lane this early.”
ON ALL THE TALK ABOUT RULES THIS WEEK AND HOW IT AFFECTED THE RACE. “ I was trying my hardest just to follow all the rules. I feel like they made it pretty clear. It was clear to me not to go under that line. It seemed like it was pretty calm. Everybody did a good job.”
WHAT DID YOU SEE REGARDING THE DEBRIS NEAR THE START-FINISH LINE TOWARD THE END OF THE RACE? “Elliott Sadler was slowing down to go through it, so I just followed him. I didn’t really see it that well.”
YOU HAVE A GUARANTEED SPOT IN THE DAYTONA 500. IS THERE ANY LUSTER LOST ABOUT RACING TODAY TO GET INTO SUNDAY’S RACE? “Anytime you have a race track and they throw that the white flag, it’s fun to race. I was thinking about it when we were sitting on pit road, and just to be able to race for a qualifying spot, starting spot, is kind of neat. You have the ability to set up the beginning of the Daytona 500 the way you want it. To me, I thought it was a pretty useful race. It helped us. We wouldn’t have started that far upfront.”
IF THE BUMPER IS CHANGED, YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT SPOTTERS IN THOSE ZONES. “I don’t know about those zones. I wasn’t exactly sure where they were, and I slid up in front of you [Dale Earnhardt, Jr.] off of two that one time. I was like, ‘He’s coming, but I think we’re in one of those zones.’ Bam! ‘Nope, we must be out of it. Whoa!’”
ELLIOTT SADLER PRESS CONFERENCE – “Man, it’s a great victory. I sit here before you guys and I remember coming in here and interviewing and sitting in this same chair when we came here and tested and told everybody about the different atmosphere at our race shop and a different attitude. To be able to come back here and qualify fourth and then win the first race is a great feeling. We’ve got a lot of enthusiasm with our team right now. We’ve got a great leader whose got everybody fired up and to come down here and win NASCAR’s Ford Fusion’s first race in NASCAR is something that will be in the record books a long time, so it’s pretty neat to be able to come here and do that.”
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TAURUS AND FUSION? “I just think we as a team came in here this time for winter testing and Tommy is like, ‘I don’t care how fast we run. I don’t care if we set a record or not or whatever, we’re gonna get this thing where you’re comfortable and where you can drive it.’ Even if we look like we’re struggling on the sheets, if I’m happy as a driver and he’s happy with all the things he sees – with tire temperatures and buildups and things like that, then we’re gonna be happy as a team. So we came in here for three days and worked on handling, worked on not wearing the tires out, worked on getting the balance that we needed to have. The Fusion has helped us with that. I just think the way Tommy looks at a race car and the way he looks at a race is different than anything I’ve ever been used to. We just got it driving good. That’s all we worried about yesterday – not whether we were able to draft good or push good or whatever, if I could go through the corners wide open, I’ve got a great chance of running up front. I just think when we got out front today because of our pit stop that I didn’t have to lift. My car didn’t get tight and I was just able to keep enough momentum to stay in front of them. I think a lot of it has to do with the new Fusion nose. It’s got a little bit more grip in it than what the Taurus had, but a lot of it has to do with a new outlook we have as a race team.”
WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE DEBRIS AT THE END? “My spotter just told me there was debris everywhere, there was metal and rubber chunks everywhere, so I just took my time and went through there slow and tried to pick my spot. Then I looked up and everybody was wrecking. So I’m not really sure what they were doing as far as trying to catch the pace car or whatever. But me, personally as a driver, didn’t want to punch a hole – I got a flat in the Bud Shootout, I got a flat yesterday in Busch practice. I didn’t want anymore flat tires this week, so I took my time to go through and just make sure I didn’t see the metal and things like that, so I’m not really sure what happened behind us.”
THE REACTION TO THE NO ZONE? “At the driver’s meeting I’m sure everybody knows that they set down new guidelines for bump drafting and aggressive driving and stuff like that. At the start of the race we were running third, fourth and fifth and noticed a lot of guys were not slamming into each other as far as me being hit from behind and then the way Clint was pushing Dale, I was pushing Jeff. Everybody was just nudging a little bit until we got to those no zones and I don’t think anybody wanted to take a chance. But in the position I was in running second or third or leading most of the day, I didn’t see a lot of it. So I’ll look at a film of it tonight. I’m going to watch the second race now as a fan and as a student to see are the guys bump drafting? What is NASCAR letting them get away with? What are they not letting them get away with? What’s going on so on Sunday I’ll know kind of where to draw the line at. I didn’t have to do much of that today. I did learn a lot today about my race car and about the 20 car, where he’s so good at, and we still have a little bit of work to do, I think, before Sunday’s race, but as a driver and as the rules, I’m gonna go back and watch this and see kind of what NASCAR let go and what they didn’t let go.”
WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT THIS FUSION NOSE? “I just think they did a better job with it with it’s character lines and its headlights and stuff like that. I think they’ve made it more sporty, made it where it’s got a little more downforce than what we’ve had. Ford did a tremendous job of putting this car in the wind tunnel and taking it through its paces before they gave it to the teams, so when they gave it to us at Robert Yates Racing we didn’t have to do much else to it. It’s pretty much taken care of itself, so it makes it better for me to drive as a driver. We finished first and second today, so that’s a great start for the Ford Fusion. I think it’s gonna be good on regular tracks too. It’s not night and day difference, but it’s just a little bit and in NASCAR racing the competition is so close, if you can get your car a little bit better that’s the difference in winning a race and running 20th.”
HOW MUCH CONCERN WAS THERE ABOUT GUYS GANGING UP ON YOU? “I was really concerned with the 48 was behind the 2 because Jimmie has always got good pushes going on. Their cars suck up really well and when he got to pushing the 2 I was really, really concerned when those guys get lined up like that. The 20 car was very fast coming up through there at the beginning of the race. There are certain cars that you know no matter who they get behind, they’re gonna get a really good push and it seemed like all the pushes today were coming between the tri-oval and turn one, so I was trying to gear my car up and give as much momentum as I could between those two spaces so they couldn’t get but so much of a run on us and it seemed to pay off. Tommy kept saying it to me every two laps. “Stay on the bottom. No matter what, stay on the bottom.’ So I’d block as much as I could but took away the bottom as much as I could and made the guys pass us on the outside and it seemed to work out for us pretty good.”
WILL LAST YEAR MAKE YOU REMEMBER YOU STILL HAVE WORK TO DO? “Yeah, I mean we definitely got some work left to do. We had a great test at Vegas, but we know we’ve got a little bit left as far as work to do when we go to California to be strong. We know the same cars are gonna be strong that were strong last year that beat us on the mile and a halves and things like that, but from a mental standpoint – not a nut and bolt thing with the race car, but from a mental standpoint I think this team is more focused and more ready to go week to week racing. I think we’ve got a new attitude.
We feel like we’re all going into war together. I feel like I’m the quarterback of this race team and it’s time for me to act like it. It’s not time for me to just sit back and let everything else happen. It’s time for me to step in and make sure that I’m ready to go and when I’m ready to go those guys can follow me to the race track each and every week ready to fight a war, ready to do whatever we’ve got to do. So from an attitude standpoint, I think we’re light years ahead of where we’ve ever been – me as a driver and us as a team. Nut and bolt-wise, race car-wise, we still have work to do. We know that. We understand that, but I think as far as a nucleus as a race team we’re better prepared this year than we have in a long time. I really didn’t know Tommy was that organized and that much of a motivator and things like that until he came on board, but he’s got everybody rallied around him and ready to just go to war each and every week. So that’s why I think we’re gonna be OK this year – not from the nuts and bolts side, but from a mental side.”
WAS THIS RACE MORE CONSERVATIVE BECAUSE GUYS WANTED TO SAVE THEIR CARS OR BECAUSE OF NASCAR? “I think a lot of that – 80 percent of that – is protecting your 500 car. I think it doesn’t really matter where you start at other than pit selection. If you’ve got a good top 10 run going here, you don’t want to feel like your guys have to start all over with a new 500 car with only maybe a day and a half of practice left when you’ve got three days of winter testing and a ton of wind tunnel time on your primary car. I was gonna stay out front and stay in the top two or three as best I could and be as aggressive as I could. If I would have got shuffled back, I was just gonna be, ‘OK, I’m just gonna ride around here and save my stuff for Sunday.’ So I think a lot of that is just because you’ve got a great 500 car and a lot of these guys feel that and they just kind of want to save it for Sunday when you race for the points.”
WITH 20 TO GO ON SUNDAY DO YOU THINK THAT CAUTION POLICY WILL HOLD UP? “I don’t know. We’ll see. Ask Mike Helton that. As that being a rule, I don’t want to be in their shoes. That is a very tough call where they’re sitting at way above the race track and we’re in the cars running 190. That’s just gonna be a ball-strike call like umpiring. It’s just gonna be tough. We’ve kind of put ourselves in this position with all the teams being so close, drivers getting smarter everytime we come back to a restrictor plate race about how to side draft how to bump draft and things like that. I just think it was getting out of hand. I think until we can do something to the cars, implement something on the cars with the bumpers or something to weaken the noses up a little bit, this is just what we have to live with through Daytona. It’s up to the drivers. We don’t know where the line is until somebody crosses it and that’s why I’m gonna go back and watch both races to see if somebody does bump draft too hard. Where they did it, what it looked like and NASCAR made the call, then I know what I need to do to get to that point. But until somebody gets called in for a pass through penalty or what have you, nobody really knows where the line is, but I’m sure we’re gonna push the line and push the envelope a lot come Sunday.”
DID MIKE HAVE A POINT EARLIER WHEN HE THOUGHT SOME OF THE YOUNG DRIVERS WERE ABUSING THE BUMP DRAFT? “I think so. I can honestly sit here and say that some of the young guys that have come in just saw it on TV last year or two years ago and thought it looked cool, so they just slam you wherever they want to, and it makes it tough. It makes it hard on us and makes it hard on them because you want to give these guys extra room anyway, so you’re giving them extra room and they’re taking it and they might not know that they’re doing anything wrong anyway with it, but I think Mike hit it right on the head. You don’t see the veterans that have won a bunch of these races and stuff slamming you that much. Three-time Daytona winner Dale Jarrett and Jeff Gordon just don’t come and slam you in the middle of the corner taking a chance on taking their car out and yours, so I think it’s a big difference between the veterans that have won this race many times and the guys that haven’t. So Mike was just making it all out to the guys, ‘Hey, we’ve seen you. You all are bumping pretty crazy. We’re watching you.’ So maybe it’ll all calm us down a little bit for Sunday. We’ll see.”
GATORADE DUEL (RACE #2)
MARK MARTIN – No. 6 AAA Fusion – “I messed up right there at the end. I waited a little bit too long. I didn’t want to pull out. I had a chance to get on the outside and the 43 was up to me yet, so I was waiting for him to catch, and he caught me so quick that when I made my move to pull out in front of him, he was already there. We were looking good. We’ve got a good race car; where we start doesn’t matter, so I wanted to protect it. It was a great run. We had a shot to challenge for it. Then the caution came out and everything went different, and then we were actually looking good again. That green-white-checkered, that’s always crazy. I didn’t time it right. I messed that one up.”
HOW WAS THE CAR? “Spectacular. I love my Ford Fusion. And AAA, first race for the AAA car and looking good. I didn’t need the roadside assistant, I’m glad of that.”
ARE YOU SURPRISED HOW WELL THE FUSION HAS COME OUT OF THE BOX? “I’m proud of the guys that work on it, too. Don’t sell them short. I’m proud of my guys and I’m proud of my team and I’m proud of my car.”
JAMIE McMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Fusion – “Our car is not as good as what the Shootout car was, but Jimmy keeps telling me we’re going to work on it and I have a lot of faith in right now. So, we’re going to have to wait and see what we can figure out tomorrow. The car’s getting a little tight. It seems like everybody’s tight, a lot tighter than in the past. We’ll just keep working on it.”
IT SEEMS LIKE THE THREE ROUSH DRIVERS COULD DRAFT WELL TOGETHER AFTER THE PIT STOP. “The Roush-Yates engines are pretty amazing. That’s been a great surprise moving over here and when you get three teammates together they tend to work well. I pulled off, so I know the 16’s mad at me right now, but it came down to two to go and you have to do what’s best for you and try to win.”
HOW EXCITED ARE YOU ABOUT THIS TEAM AFTER THE LAST TWO RACES, KNOWING THAT SUNDAY YOU’LL HAVE A SHOT? “Well, the Shootout, I thought we had the dominant car. So, I’m a little bit disappointed right now with this one. We just have to keep working on it. It doesn’t have the speed, but it doesn’t drive as well either, so we’re just going to try and get it to drive a little bit better, and we’ll wait and see what happens on Sunday. We’ll have a good starting spot at least.”
IT WASA LITTLE CALMER TODAY. “Yeah. The last three or four laps is like the Shootout was every lap, but you expect that, I think, in the Shootout, that’s why it gets its name. It’s wild and that’s what people pay to see.”
OBVIOUSLY, MIKE HELTON CAME IN AND TOLD THE DRIVERS TO BE MORE RESPECTFUL. “I think the way he put it was, it wasn’t just the bump drafting, it was the guys running into the sides of the cars. There’s something about his voice that when he speaks just have to listen. He’s a very powerful man and I think everyone in the garage area respects him. So, you listen, and everyone did a really good job in the 150s.”
WHAT ABOUT THE FORD FUSION? ARE YOU PLEASANTLY SURPRISED WITH IT? “Yeah. The Fusion was really good off the truck. We tested Vegas, and I think it’s better on the downforce than what it is on the speedway, so there’s a lot in store for Ford this year.”
JACK ROUSH SAID A FEW WEEKS AGO THAT HE’S USUALLY NOT OPTIMISTIC ABOUT DAYTONA, BUT, THIS YEAR, WITH A FEW BREAKS... “He feels like Roush Racing is better than it’s ever been, and when you look at the history the last few years it’s hard to believe it can be any better than what it has in the past, but it’s a great time to be a part of it.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard Ford Fusion – “You’ve got to have partners out on the race track to get things done. Man, when you’re got new tires on a race car it’s like Superman – you can drive anywhere you want to drive and everybody wants to drive across the bottom. We could have finished 1-2-3, but I don’t know what happened. They jumped out of line and everybody just went crazy with five to go. Even there at the end I guess Mark didn’t want to get to the top and just wanted to finish behind the 5 and 24. He must have got loose or something there at the end, but shot way up the track and I had to get out of the gas to save from wrecking him. Then I tried to push him the best I could to get the best finish we could, but, man, we could have finished 1-2-3 if we would have stayed in line. We had them beat – easy. You could see the speed we had on everybody that didn’t have new tires. The guys in front of us had old tires, but it’s every man for himself out there today.”
WHAT IMPACT DID NASCAR’S RULE HAVE TODAY? “I was a little nervous about how hard I was pushing Mark. Mark wasn’t just straight out of the tri-oval and I was on his bumper and pushing him really good all the way down into one and Jeff Gordon was blocking him trying to keep the lead, but I was pretty aggressive there at the end. I wanted to push Mark Martin to the last 150 win and we were just one man short on doing that. It’s unfortunate.”
WAS IT CALM? “It really was calm. It was intense for me because I was looking in my mirror and we needed the three Fords to line up and we would have blown their doors off. We all had new tires and they were sitting ducks, but not everybody could get together.”
WHAT ABOUT SUNDAY? “I expect the same thing. It’s a 500-mile race and things are gonna be pretty calm until 20 to go and then everybody is gonna be racing for that million and a half dollars. It’ll be pretty calm until the end just like it was here. It was a pretty calm race until it got shook up at the end.”
JAMIE MCMURRAY PRESS CONFERENCE – “The race track is just so much tighter than what it was in the Shootout. My Shootout car, I felt like, was the dominant car and we just haven’t been able to get this car quite as quick. It was better in testing, but we worked on it for the last couple of days and worked on it tonight and it still just doesn’t want to turn like the other car did. So we’ve got a little bit of work ahead of us, but it looked like everybody was somewhat fighting the same issues. Even the 24 leading the pack looked like he was a little bit tight, so we’ll just keep working on it. I’m pretty happy. It’s our second race together and we’ve already yelled at each other, so we’ve got that out of the way, and we’ll move on. But it was a good run for us tonight, though.”
THERE WERE THREE ROUSH DRIVERS LINED UP, BUT WAS IT STILL TOO HARD TO PASS? “Yeah. For some reason when the guy gets out front it is tough to get up beside him. I assumed that since we put two tires on – Mark, Greg and I all did – that we would be able to get on the outside, but you make the commitment before it goes green that you’re all gonna stay in line and you get down to the corner and there’s two laps to go and that’s a tough commitment to keep, so everyone kind of broke apart. When that happens it’s hard to get up beside the leader, so everybody is kind of doing what they feel like is best for them. If you probably all stayed together, you could, but I think that the caution really hurt the chances of getting by the 24. If we could have kept running and you kind of get your momentum built up. The 24 is obviously on older tires and if you can get his car to get tight on the bottom you can get a little bit of a run.”
WHAT DID YOU SEE REGARDING BUMP DRAFTING? “I was fortunate that I was in the top three for most of the night and I didn’t have to bump anyone until the end. When it comes down to a couple of laps to go it got a little bit wild, but nothing like the Shootout. But the Shootout, I don’t know the mentality when you drop the green flag on that is to try to get to the front and running two or three wide. It was a lot different race and you’re not racing that car in the Daytona 500, so you’re not quite as careful. In the 150, we use it as a testing tool and see what our chassis would be like on long runs – when you’re committed to having to stay out for 30 laps on tires. So it’s just a different type of race, but I thought it was probably better than normal today.”
COMPARE YOUR CARS LAST YEAR WITH DODGE TO THE FORD? “The Roush-Yates engines are pretty i
