Matt Kenseth finished second in Sunday's Samsung/Radio Shack 500 at Texas Motor Speedway while Mark Martin round out Ford's top 10 finishers with a ninth-place effort. GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Ford Fusion (Finished 42nd) – ARE YOU OK.  IT WAS A HARD HIT.  “Yeah, it was a hard hit.  I got a little bit of a scrape on the forearm, but other than that I think I’m alright.  It was a wild ride, that’s for sure.  I got up in front of the 2 and he had a little bit of a run down the straightaway, which you get here depending on if you come off the corner in the high line or the low line or where you’re at, but he just didn’t lift.  He just ran into the back of me and turned me into the fence.  I just watched the video and it’s exactly what I thought happened.  I left about a half-a-car width of room out there and was going straight ahead when he hit me and turned me in there.  It’s unfortunate.  It’s a little bit of a give-and-take game out there.  If you get a run on somebody down the straightaway, you can’t just run into the back of them because you’re faster than them.  I’ve had to lift on the gas all day in and around traffic, so it’s kind of tough to take us out of the race like that.  We had a good car.” 

HOW FRUSTRATING IS IT BECAUSE YOU HAD A WINNING CAR?  “It was clear that we had a winning car.  We were working our way back up through there and it’s really unfortunate.  Texas is a great place to come and race.  It’s a lot of fun.  It’s one of the very high-paying races and we wanted to be in Victory Lane with the Subway/Little League car this weekend.  That’s the way it is.  We’ll just have to come back at Phoenix.  We can’t dwell on the past and just try to make the top 10.” 

FRUSTRATING TO GET KNOCKED OUT BY KURT WHEN HE’S A LAP DOWN?  “Oh yeah, I knew he was a lap down.  They’re all racing for position too, but the thing about it is you’ve got to have a little bit of respect for the other drivers you’re racing with and Kurt hasn’t shown respect, or that surely wasn’t showing respect.  Some of the lapped cars were being tough to pass.  I put them down a lap early.  Our car was so good and our car was still really good, just trying to take my time and get back up there.  Kevin Harvick was up on me a few times when I was messing with other cars, but finally felt like I got stalled out there a little bit.  I moved up to kind of get a draft off the 21 down the backstretch and Kurt just had to come off the gas a little bit to not run into the back of the car and he decided to run into the back of the car – maybe to give me a, ‘hey, I’m here,’ or what, but he tried that at the all-star race and wrecked a lot of good cars.  He comes back and does the same thing here.  At some point common sense has to set in and say, ‘I can’t run into the back of a guy at a superspeedway, a mile and a half track going 175 miles an hour, unless we have restrictor plate bumpers or our bumpers line up.’  You just can’t do it and if you continue to do that, then stuff is gonna continue to happen.” 

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR RACING LUCK THIS YEAR?  “It hasn’t been good, certainly.  With the engine at California and then today.  It looked like another dominant car today.  That tore up my best race car that I have – my favorite one, 239.  I sat on the pole at Vegas with it and may have won here today.  I had a really good car, but it’s unfortunate.  We’ll go home and put the Fusion car back together and get ready for Phoenix.  We’ve got Talladega coming up and some good tracks for us, so we’ll see what we can do.” 

HOW FORGIVABLE OF A MISTAKE WAS THAT ON KURT’S BEHALF?  “When you’re the guy that all you have to do is lift on the gas pedal a little bit and elect not to and run into the car in front of you on the straightaway, that’s pretty unforgivable, I would have to say.  If he slid up in the corner and caught me or something on accident, or couldn’t react quick enough, that would be something.  But he had plenty of time to react.  He consciously thought about it before he turned us into the fence, so I don’t know what he was upset about.  We raced pretty good together yesterday in the Busch race, but we’ll just have race him a little different.  If he’s not clear or whatever, then maybe the shoe will be on the other foot, I don’t know.” 

KURT CAME ON HIS RADIO AND SAID HE THOUGHT YOU DROPPED A CYLINDER.  “Dropped a cylinder?  I didn’t drop a cylinder.  Penske has a lot of power.  I know the Penske engines have a lot of power.  Our Roush-Yates engines may drive like they only have seven cylinders, but I’m here to tell you that I didn’t drop a cylinder going down the backstretch.” 

HOW WILL YOU RACE HIM DIFFERENT?  “Like at the beginning of the race.  I let the 9 in line, I let the 18 in line.  It’s a long race, 330 laps.  They’re trapped on the outside, the outside is not real good at the beginning.  I’ve got three-quarters of a car length so I go ahead and let them in line.  That’s the gentleman thing to do and then five to eight laps later I was able to pass them.  I passed them all and got to the lead.  The fastest car ends up in the front.  You’ve got to give-and-take a little bit.  It’s got to go both ways.” 

HOW MUCH DOES THIS HURT IN POINTS?  “It’s looking tough for us today.  I think we may be one of the first cars out again like California and that’s a tough points day.  We’re just gonna have to work hard.  I thought today a top-five run would be a day that we could turn this around this weekend.  I certainly don’t feel like I did anything wrong.  I knew Kurt had a little bit of a run.  Kurt’s a lapped car.  I moved up there.  He had plenty of time to think about what to do or go to the bottom if he felt like he wanted to pass me, but his car was working at the top, so it’s really tough to get taken out of a race where you had a good car.  Now if I was running at the back, it would have been a different story.” 

DID YOU FEEL THE WHEELS GET LIFTED OFF THE GROUND?  “Oh year.  The motor just zinged and at that point there isn’t a whole lot you can do.  When it starts doing that you have so little time to try and recover those things.  I did my best to try and recover from that.  I have to rate myself pretty good at saving stuff that’s out of control and there wasn’t any saving it.”  HOW BIG OF A HIT WAS IT?  “It was a pretty hard hit.  I took one in the forearm.  It was a pretty good lick.”

JAMIE MCMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Finished 37th) – “It’s been a really, really tough weekend for us.  This is a brand new car and I spoke with Jimmy before we even brought the car here and it was one of the best bodies they’ve hung at Roush Racing.  So it’s a little bit different and when we unloaded, we have struggled.  I’ve never been this bad before.  I’ve had like the mystery car that you can’t ever find what’s wrong with it, but at the start of the race it wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad.  The balance just keeps shifting so dramatically.  I thought I was gonna blow a right-front out on the run previous to this and we made a pit stop, but then it was just so loose.  I was a couple of seconds off the pace and I told them, ‘I’m gonna spin out.  We’ve got to come in and look at it.’  We came in and put another set of tires on and made just huge adjustments to try to tighten it up and it was worse.  We thought that maybe when I brushed the wall I might have done something to the rear end, but can’t find anything wrong.  We’re gonna put a gear in it and we’re gonna go back out and see if we can log some laps.”

CARL EDWARDS – No.  99 Office Depot Ford Fusion (Finished 36th) – “We had a great run going.  I was a little loose on restarts.  I got on the outside of Jeff Gordon and it got a little loose and it just sucked into his car.  I don’t know what was going on with the aero there, but I thought Tony was all packed up under my rear bumper it was so loose.  It’s too bad for our team.” 

HOW WAS THE CAR?  “It was perfect.  It was a winning car and it’s my fault for messing that up.  You’ve just got to learn.”  IT LOOKED LIKE A HARD HIT.  “No, it wasn’t that hard of a hit.  That was an easy hit, but a hard hit figuratively.”  IT’S LOOKING LIKE ONE OF THOSE SEASONS.  “I hope it isn’t, but we’re gonna have to work pretty hard to get out of this hole.” 

WHAT HAPPENED?  “We had a great car.  It was just something with the aero there.  I got in a position and all of a sudden it got a little loose and then it just turned into Jeff’s car.  I haven’t had that one happen yet, so I learned a little lesson.  I could have swore Tony was packed up under the rear bumper but he definitely wasn’t.  It was just an odd place on the track and kind of a new thing for me there.”

ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 38 M&M’s Ford Fusion (Finished 33rd) – “It looks like we just lost something in the drive train, but we’re not real sure.  They said that maybe the crank broke or something, but it’s just tough luck for everybody at M&M’s and Robert Yates Racing.  I think we had a top 10 car.  It was really, really good on long runs and it was just starting to come to me for this last run.  I would have liked to finish in the top 10, but it’s not meant to be today.  This is heartbreaking to do this at a place we love so much, but we’ll just take the week off, re-group, and try to get ‘em at Phoenix.”

MARK MARTIN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion (Finished 9th)  – “We were off.  We had a good car, we just didn’t have it set up as good as some of them, but the potential was there.  I think we know what we would do if we had to do it over again, but that setup ran second in the night race here, but it just didn’t seem to work as good in the daytime.  Everybody did what they needed to do and we put up a reasonable performance, but we should have got more out of our car than that.”  IS THIS ONE OF THOSE DAYS WERE YOU TRY NOT TO PUSH IT AND YOU TAKE WHAT THE CAR GIVES YOU?  “We pushed it to the max, but we didn’t push it over.  We pushed it right up to the edge and that’s all.”

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Finished 2nd) – “I’m real proud of these guys and everybody on this DeWalt race team has done a great job this year.  We’ve had great cars each and every week.  I ran into the 10 getting on pit road and kind of messed the hood up and had to start in the back, but these guys just worked really hard all day to get a good finish.”  YOU MUST BE HAPPY WITH HOW THINGS HAVE STARTED FOR YOU.  “I don’t think I could be much happier.  A few races we came up short that maybe we had a chance to win and didn’t win, but these guys have done such a great job.  We’ve been contenders every week and we’ve got a lot of momentum right now and these guys are operating at a championship level, so it’s a lot of fun to be a part of.”  TURN TWO WAS A PROBLEM FOR A LOT OF GUYS TODAY.  “At times I had trouble with all the turns, so I didn’t think two was any worse than the rest.  It was a little slick, but overall the track was really good.  I just didn’t have the car.  That was the best we could get it.”

KEVIN LEPAGE – No. 61 Road Loans Ford Fusion (Finished 32nd) – “I guess when it rains it pours.  Everytime we came in it seemed the caution came out and it was just a long day for us.  It’s the first time we had some sort of issue with the motor.  I don’t know what’s going on, but it just started laying over about halfway and I was surprised we finished.  We’ll just rebound, get a week off and get ‘em at Phoenix.”

KEN SCHRADER – No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion (Finished 16th) – “We weren’t as good as we’ve been, but we finished a lot better.  That’s why when we got back here I told them that I would give up two spots before I wrecked this car.  The difference between 18th and 20th is nothing, but we could still wreck with 20 to go and wind up 34th.”  YOU HAD SOME RADIO ISSUES.  “It was kind of lonely out there.  You can’t see who is coming or anything.  You get used to having a voice and I could just never quite make it out.” 

MATT KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE – “We started in the back and had an OK car.  I don’t think we had the car as good as his (Tony’s), but we just had great pit stops and they just adjusted on the car a lot and got it better and got us the right adjustments we needed at the end to be part way competitive.  We couldn’t run near whatever the 9 was doing there at the end, but we had it the best it was all day at the end so it was a good job by those guys.” 

HOW DID YOU GET FROM THE BACK TO THE FRONT BECAUSE IT LOOKED HARD TO PASS?  WAS IT DIFFERENT FROM YESTERDAY?  “I know with my car when you’re back in traffic, if you’re like fifth on back, I think your car handles about the same.  What I noticed today is we had our car pretty good.  We kept freeing it up all day and getting it better and better and drove up to fifth or sixth or seventh or wherever we were and had a good pit stop and came out third.  We actually got up there and led for just a couple of laps and it got so loose.  It was just an unbelievably different setup from being in the lead to being 10th, at least for my car, so that was the thing I noticed.  We had our car pretty good in traffic, but when we did get up to the front it was hard to keep it there for me.  It was just too loose and if we tightened it up I thought we were gonna be too tight if we did get back to fifth or sixth place.” 

WITH THE LAPS COUNTING DOWN WERE YOU JUST GOING FOR THE POINTS AND NOT PUSHING IT TOO HARD?  “No.  Whenever I get asked this question it’s the same.  It pays the most points to win and lead the most laps.  It could have paid a million points to win and I couldn’t have caught Kasey Kahne.  I don’t think I could have caught him with eight tires to tell you the truth, he was so fast at the end.  You’re running as hard as you can at the end.  Yeah, when you’re in a spot and you can’t catch the leader and you’re hoping the guy behind you can’t catch you, you’re counting the laps and looking forward to the end of the race so you don’t lose another spot.  But you’re always running as hard as you can to try to get up there and that’s the best we had our car all day.  There’s no way we could have run any quicker than we were.” 

DO YOU FEEL THE SEASON HAS ALL EVENED OUT FOR YOU?  “From my point I don’t think my season could be a lot better than what it’s been, really.  We’ve had cars that have been contenders basically every week, except for probably Martinsville and there we had a top 10 car before I wrecked it, so I don’t think my season could be any better.  I let a couple of them get away from me at Bristol and Vegas with under five to go.  I wish I could have them, but it’s been a great year.  We’ve had just super-competitive cars.  The group is really energized and having a lot of fun.  It’s a little different group and they’re excited to be at the race track and they’re giving me great stuff, so for my part I don’t think it could be a lot better.” 

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE CARS AND WHAT HAPPENS ON TRACKS LIKE THERE WHERE IT’S HARD TO PASS?  “They ask about passing and not being able to pass the leader and this and that.  That’s kind of the discussion every week, but if you think about it, qualifying is a lot different than racing and cars get sprinkled all over the field.  After a couple hundred miles, the good cars should be in front by then and when the good cars are in front, the cars that brought the best cars to the track or have the right setup for the day should be able to stay there unless they have a problem.  They talk about passing and those cars staying up front and not a lot more passing, but when the fast cars are up there, if the guy behind you is slower, he’s certainly not gonna be able to pass you once they get to the front.  I think we could shorten the races.  I think Pocono could be 300 miles.  But once they get up there and the fast cars are up there, you might see them mixing it up but it’s gonna be hard for a car that dropped back to get up there.”