GREG BIFFLE and CARL EDWARDS press conference
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Fusion – “It was a pretty decent day for us. Obviously, starting in 26th it took us a long time to work our way to the front, about the first 100 laps or so. Through the middle part of the race, pretty uneventful, raced the 41 for the lead and got five bonus points. There at the end it was unfortunate. I lost a position to Denny because I felt like I might be able to catch the 5, I was pretty decent, but Denny got by us three-wide around a lapped car on the top and I burned my right-front up and got the brakes too hot trying to race him back, and then fell back some. That’s part of racing. This track, it’s so hard to pass. When you get two cars so equal, it makes it really difficult to pass here.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Fusion (finished 2nd) – “Oh, man, it was fun, to say the least. Who’d have thought we’d run second in a Cup race at New Hampshire? I haven’t run that well here ever, so I was really excited about it, had a good time. The whole Office Depot team did a good job. If I could’ve just got around Denny at the end, maybe could’ve got to Kyle, but we had a good race, we had a good time. He was shaking his fist at me out the window – I didn’t know he was out of gas, so I was all over the back of him. It was just a fun race.”
CREW CHIEF WALLY BROWN SAID HE SECOND-GUESSED HIMSELF ON THAT PIT STOP. HOW DID THAT PLAY INTO THINGS? WAS THERE A CONVERSATION? “I decided to just let Wally do whatever he was going to do and he said that’s what we ought to do and it worked out. I don’t know how we could’ve done it differently, exactly, but I was pretty happy with the way it ended up, though. It could’ve ended up worse.”
GREG BIFFLE, continued – AFTER BAD LUCK THIS SEASON, THINGS SEEMED TO GO YOUR WAY TODAY. PLUS, YOU MOVED INTO THE TOP 10, SO IT HAD TO BE AN ENCOURAGING DAY FOR YOU. “Yeah, it really was. You know, we’ve run extremely good here and I was super-nervous about the race car because my Busch car was terrible yesterday. I mean my Busch car was horrible and it has been for the last two weeks and not really sure why, and Carl won so it puts a big question mark on what’s wrong, why’s the set-up off or whatever. My Cup car felt way better, a tremendous amount better, but I screwed up qualifying and qualified 26th, so I was nervous about starting that far back and how hard it is to pass here. I was worried about today about getting back up to the front, but I just kept my nose clean, got one position at a time and it worked out for us. It was pretty uneventful – we didn’t get a lap down, we didn’t get a flat tire and everything was kind of normal, just a normal day.”
FOR A NON-RESTRICTOR-PLATE RACE, ISN’T IT UNUSUAL FOR THE CARS THAT WERE AROUND THE FRONT AT THE BEGINNING WEREN’T AROUND THE FRONT AT THE END? “It’s funny – I don’t know who was fast at the beginning because I was at the back. But a race track that rubbers up and the temperature today, you know, normally what will go fast at the beginning won’t go fast at the end, or it takes some amount of adjustment. But that’s almost common to see whoever’s fast at the beginning is not always the fastest right at the end.”
CARL EDWARDS, continued – FOR A NON-RESTRICTOR-PLATE RACE, ISN’T IT UNUSUAL FOR THE CARS THAT WERE AROUND THE FRONT AT THE BEGINNING WEREN’T AROUND THE FRONT AT THE END? “This is the first time I’ve run well here and I learned a lot about how to do that. We weren’t that fast at the beginning, it was just being there at the end and not putting yourself out of position. It’s easy to slip up here and lose so many spots.”
GREG BIFFLE, continued – ON THE NEXT SEVEN RACES LEADING UP TO THE CHASE. “NASCAR thought about it when they created this thing, and they probably didn’t anticipate the hype around getting in. It’s pretty widespread. It’s going to be exciting for the next five or seven races up until Richmond getting in. Every week it’s going to be exciting.”
IS IT SCARY FOR YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE ON THE BUBBLE? “Yeah, it is. There’s no margin for error there. I almost wrecked once today with the help of the 29. I got a little loose coming off the corner, and then after I got loose he got me and then turned me pretty far sideways and we lost a couple of positions, but it was just racing for position, and I got a little bit loose in front of him. Things like that can happen, or others.”
CARL EDWARDS, continued – CONSIDERING THE CONDITIONS, HOW WERE YOU NOT RUNNING ON FUMES, CONSIDERING THE WORK YOU WERE DOING? AND, DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO BUILD MOMENTUM ON YESTERDAY’S BUSCH WIN? “Yeah, these two races are great for me. This is a track that literally I’ve struggled at. I’ve run so badly here in the Cup car, it’s embarrassing, so to run to well yesterday and to end up winning and to run second today – honestly, I’m pretty frustrated that we didn’t win. Second is so frustrating because such a small difference in track position makes such a huge difference in result. It helps me. I was worried that the weekend was going to go terribly. I ran Modified at Middletown and didn’t even make the show, and then I crashed that Modified at on Saturday morning, and I thought, ‘Man, this weekend can’t go like this,’ so ended up having a great weekend.”
IS IT TRUE THEY DIDN’T TELL YOU HOW MUCH FUEL YOU HAD LEFT? “Correct. They just told me to conserve as much as I could, and Wally [Brown, crew chief] was being real quiet, so I didn’t know how close we were.” ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 38 M&M’s Fusion (finished 25th) – “This pretty much puts in a nutshell how our season has been. We just can’t catch the right breaks or catch the right cautions. Tommy [Baldwin, Jr., crew chief] made a great call. I was trying to do my job of not racing guys and trying to save my gas, save my gas. And all they had to do was run one more lap – one more lap – and we wouldn’t have had a green-white-checkered. But, it’s just the way our season has gone. I’m proud of my guys. They executed a good plan, and we were going to get us a top-five. What do you do? We’ve tried everything you could possibly do this year to get top-10, top-five finishes and it just doesn’t work out. I’m just frustrated – not how we ran today, we ran great, I just wish we could have a few breaks go our way a few weeks in row. It’s been tough, but I’m proud my guys. They did good pit stops, great plan, just the wrong caution at the wrong time.”
BEFORE LAP 300, WAS THERE EVER ANY DOUBT THAT YOU WOULD STAY OUT UNTIL THE END? “We were going to stay out and try it. Like Tommy said, we’ve got nothing to lose. We’re trying to get a win or get top-fives and build some momentum. When I got in clean air, my car was a lot better, with all the air on the front nose working, and Tommy made some great adjustments. That was the best my car had been the whole day, there, the last 100 laps. So, there was no way we were coming back in – even when Clint Boyer pitted, we were staying out no matter what. We had it until lap 300, we just didn’t work on the extra eight laps, and then they had caution and we were going back green and they had to throw another yellow because somebody else wrecked on the backstretch. All the bad things that could happen to us happened.”
WHAT WOULD A TOP-FIVE HAVE MEANT FOR THIS TEAM RIGHT NOW? “I just think it would’ve given us some momentum and give us a good pat on the back with each other. My guys work so hard and don’t have anything to show for it. That’s sad from a driver’s standpoint. I want my guys to have something to celebrate, too, when they go home each and every Sunday night. This would’ve been a good shot in the arm for us. It just wasn’t meat to be.”
MARK MARTIN – No. 6 AAA Fusion (finished 4th) – “We had a really good-handling car, it wasn’t the fastest out there but it was good enough that we could skip tires. Sometimes you can’t have it all, but if you can just have the handling – we took gas only the last two times in, you know, so we were disadvantaged on tires, but in the end that didn’t hurt because the car would work on them, we were able to hold our track position, good strategy and good run.”
HOW WAS THE TRACK? “The track was the best it’s ever been. I’m not saying it’s great but it’s the best I’ve ever seen it.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Fusion (finished 3rd) – “I burned my right-front tire off and hurt my brake pads trying to pass Denny Hamlin. We got three-wide on the re-start, you know, lapped cars play a factor here, I got trapped, he trapped me down there and I had to go to the bottom. It’s unfortunate, I had a really good race car and I kind of burned my right front tire up messing with him, then fell back some. Anyway, we came back at the end. I just took care of the throttle and fuel mileage came around for us.”
