· Carl Edwards captured his sixth NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series victory and first at Bristol.
· The win was the fourth for Ford in 2007 and second for Edwards (Michigan 1).
· The victory also marked the 99th all-time Cup win for car owner Jack Roush.
· Ford has now won 580 all-time NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series races.
· The win was Fusion’s ninth all-time NNC triumph after debuting at Daytona in February of 2006. Kenseth has won five times while Greg Biffle has two wins and Carl Edwards one.
· Ford has 31 all-time NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series wins at Bristol Motor Speedway, which is the most at any current NNC track.
· Ford has won 10 of the last 16 NNC races at Bristol, including the last three Bristol night races.
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – “Man, this is the biggest win of my career. I can’t thank Bob Osborne enough and all my guys. My pit crew was awesome and I want to thank my fans for sticking behind us. It means a lot. Office Depot for sure. Dwight Laxton, Howard Hall, Mike Mittler – all those who helped me coming up. To win here at Bristol, I think, is everybody’s dream. I’m gonna be in Columbia tomorrow for Sam Russell, my good buddy who is injured. We’re gonna have a bicycle ride. I don’t know if this is gonna sink in. This is the night race at Bristol – 500 laps and we won it.” YOU’RE LOCKED IN THE CHASE? “Unbelievable. I am living the dream thanks to Jack Roush, Roush Fenway, Office Depot. Anybody out there who has a dream just follow it. I don’t know what to think. It was emotional to win this race. Like I said, I’ve watched this a lot. I think every short track racer out there dreams about this. My little brother is racing tonight and I know he’s watching. Mom, dad, Kenny, I love you guys and to win this race is cool. We’re back.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Finished 39th) – “I saw the wreck and slowed down as much as I could, but I just couldn’t get it stopped. I was kind of in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we put ourselves there. We didn’t perform good enough to run up front tonight. We’ve got to get to work on it and hopefully we can get it better.” HOW WAS THE TRACK? “The race track is great. I just wish NASCAR would give us more options to make these cars turn a little bit better. It’s pretty uneventful for a Bristol race because the cars are so easy to drive. Everybody is just out there pushing in the middle and whoever’s car turns best in the middle is the guy up front, so we’ve just got to try to get ours like that and see if we can get up there.” SO IT’S NOT THE SAME OLD BRISTOL? “There are some things that are similar, but it was different than what it was. The track is great. It was an awesome race last night. These cars are just so easy to drive and so tight. You can’t do your little tricks and, in my opinion, the driver can’t really showcase their talent if they want a really loose car or something because you can’t get them like that. That’s the frustrating part. Obviously, Carl’s car is turning better than ours because he’s leading and we were running in the back, but whoever’s car turns the best runs up front. It’s real hard to pass and when you’re kind of stuck back there it gets kind of frustrating.”
ROBBY GORDON – No. 7 Camping World Ford Fusion (Finished 20th) – “Harvick didn’t need to do that. I cleared him clean. We lost an ignition box coming off two when we were running 12th. The thing just died so I had to flick the switch and that allowed him to get next to me. We ran side-by-side for a lap and I cleared him again and he wrecked me for no reason. But a 20th-place finish is good for us at Bristol, but we were gonna finish about 12th – right about where we thought we were in practice.” WHAT ABOUT THE RACING HERE? “I think it was pretty good. It was pretty competitive. There was a lot of room to race and I thought it was good.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Dish Network Ford Fusion (Finished 10th) – “We qualified thirty-something, but I’m pretty excited about that. It could have been better and it could have been worse, but I’m pretty happy overall.” WHAT ABOUT THE TRACK? “It’s OK. It’s pretty good racing, but it’s not old Bristol.” A GOOD FINISH. “Yeah, it was a top 10 finish for the Dish Network Ford Fusion. We had a lot to work with. We qualified way in the back and had to work our way to the front. We never really had good track position all night. We had to fight for all of it. The lapped cars were the toughest because they were pretty fast too, but the groove around the race track made it difficult to pass. I wish we could have got up front. I think we could have run with the leaders, but we just needed track position.”
BILL ELLIOTT – No. 21 U.S. Air Force Ford Fusion (Finished 25th) – “I’m used up. I told them on the radio that I wouldn’t do this for just anybody (laughing).” HOW WAS THE TRACK? “The track is great. I’m telling you, I was totally impressed. That was the best we’ve raced to be able to race somebody and keep off of them. My hat’s off to these guys. They did a great job.”
MORE EDWARDS IN VICTORY LANE – “My Office Depot Fusion was really good tonight. It sure made it a lot of fun. Man, those restarts were just wearing out my nerves there. That took about three or four years off of my life, I think. I’m just very excited to win this race to say the very least. I’m very, very grateful to even be here, so to win this race. I don’t know if it’s sunk in yet. I get to go home tomorrow and spend a little time at home and it’s very exciting.” HOW DID YOU OVERCOME KAHNE’S ADVANTAGE? “Bob Osborne just kept making adjustments. He’s a really smart guy and I’m very lucky to have Bob in my corner.” HOW WAS THIS CAR COMPARED TO YOUR BUSCH CAR? “This one was a lot better than my Busch car. I don’t know what happened. PK and the guys have been doing a great job. We ended up having a decent night but our Scotts Fusion was nowhere near as good as this Office Depot Fusion, so we’ll have to take some of the notes and go back if we can apply them, but I’m glad that no matter what happens this year, we won the night race at Bristol.”
CARL EDWARDS WINNER’S PRESS CONFERENCE
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – “This is the biggest win of my career. This is awesome. To win the night race at Bristol is huge and I can’t thank Bob Osborne enough for making the right calls. We were dropping back at the beginning and he used everything he knew and all the engineering and everything that he could muster to make some adjustments and the car just kept getting better and better. We had a blast. The end of the race took about five years off my life just with the cautions and knowing we were gonna have restart after restart, but to win this race is huge. Kasey did a great job. My hat’s off to him. What he did last night was spectacular. That was one of the coolest moves I’ve seen and to be able to race him for this win was really awesome.”
BOB OSBORNE, Crew Chief – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – “For the calls, with all the green flag laps we ran kind of made it an easy race to call for me. I had fewer opportunities to really mess the car up, I think. It was a strange race in that we had so few cautions and so many green flag runs and I personally like that. I like the fact that the track allows a lot cleaner race. The drivers can go out there and compete with the equipment they have and not have to force their way around other cars, which makes this upper-level good race track to now a great to spectacular race track, I think. As far as adjustments and so on, we didn’t do a whole lot to the race car. You’d be surprised at what we actually did – just a little bit of air-pressure adjustment here and there.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – WAS THIS A CASE OF YOUR CAR GETTING BETTER OR MORE OF KASEY’S LOSING A LITTLE? “I don’t know. I can’t remember the lap times. I don’t know how we stacked up to the field at the beginning of the race. I know Bob was telling me we had the fastest car at the end of the race. He said there was nobody coming, so I’d have to say it was our car maybe getting a little better, which I was nervous about. Right off the bat, when they dropped the green we got to the lead and I thought, ‘Man, everything is gonna be great,’ and then the car faded really badly. I was nervous that everybody else was gonna get way better than us the whole day and we were gonna be in big trouble. I do believe, though, that our car just got better and better and that’s a big testament to Bob and the team and how hard everyone has been working. I know when they unveiled these cars of tomorrow we were in trouble, so it’s awesome to come out to a race track and be competitive.” DO YOU FEEL THE CHASE FIELD IS SET? “If I were 158 points ahead of 13th in 12th position, I’d still be having trouble sleeping at night. It’s not done and until it’s done, it’s not done. I think the last spot is still up for grabs. I believe you can gain 140-some points on someone in one race, so two bad races for Kurt would be rough. Anything can happen and the two race tracks we’re going to – California is hard on engines and Richmond is just plain hard, so you never know.” HAVE THE CHANGES TO THE TRACK CHANGED THE BALANCE OF POWER? “Yeah, I think in the big picture this is a transition race. You’ve gone from an older style car at a track that’s been the way it’s been for however many years to a new style race track. It looks a lot the same, but it sure isn’t the same, so you’ve got a new race track and new cars. I believe it’s gonna take a while to shake out the field and see which teams excel at this specific type of track and with these cars. So it is a change. It may look the same, but it’s not. It’s a very different race track. I think the thing I’m excited about is what I heard one of the Goodyear engineers say that they may bring back a tire with a little more grip, which I think will make it an even more spectacular race.”
BOB OSBORNE CONTINUED – DID THE LONG GREENS ALLOW YOU TIME TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO TO THE CAR? “I believe it did and some of that had to do with how our car started the race. It seemed to be fairly good on a shorter run and knowing that we made a fairly long run initially, I knew pretty easy what direction I needed to go in with the car. The only major decision I had to make was the first series of cautions we had – the very first one – whether we stopped – I think it was like 87 laps to go – whether we stopped there and put tires on or not. That was the only major decision that needed to be made for the night.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – ARE YOU THINKING, “FINALLY”? “Big time. Last year went from hero to zero. What happened last year was frustrating. We were so close a few times. I felt like we had a car to beat at New Hampshire one race, we finished second. At Dover we finished second. The difference between winning and running second – Michigan, it started raining and Kasey won and we finished second – so Wally (Brown) did a great job and the team was doing a great job, but we just did not get the results. It’s easy to do. Tony and Greg and myself all missed the chase. We were top three and this sport is tough, but the greatest feeling in the world is to win these races and I tell you, it’s awesome to win at a track like this that’s a tough race track where you can have a lot of pride as a driver winning. This is a big win for me and, yet, it’s a huge contrast from last year.” MANY DRIVERS HAVE SAID THE TRACK IS BETTER AS FAR AS PASSING IN THE TURNS, BUT THE DIFFERENCE FROM LAST NIGHT TO TONIGHT THERE SEEMED TO BE MORE COMPETITION. WAS IT A RESULT OF YOUR CAR AND KASEY’S CAR BEING THAT MUCH BETTER? “I think if last night’s race would have been 500 laps rather than 250, it would have looked a little differently. Two hundred and fifty laps sounds like a lot, but here, a guy can hardly come from the back and get up to where he belongs if he’s a fast car in 250 laps. I guess what I’m saying is that the longer the race, the more likely people will be in a position where they stack up to where they should be compared to how fast their cars are, so the only thing I think that would have shook it up tonight would be if the tires had more grip and they fell off quicker because I think you would have seen more people take tires and be able to fight their way to the front. That’s why I’m so excited about the future races if they do that because it’s gonna be spectacular. If the 10th-place guy or 15th-place guy could have taken tires with 110 laps to go tonight and the tires would have been a tick better, he would have been fighting for the win.” DID YOU SEE ANY ADVANTAGE TO A CERTAIN LINE AND WILL THAT CHANGE IN YEARS TO COME? “I don’t know how concrete ages. I know asphalt, I kind of have a good feel for how it ages, but I think when they get the tires just right, that’s gonna be the biggest thing. I don’t think the concrete will change a whole lot, but I think when the tires get just right, people get to work on their cars a little more here, I know everyone was kind of – we unloaded and we could have been 40th-quick, but we were pretty fast, so everybody was kind of taking a guess at it and as it evolves a little bit, it will be different but I don’t see the track changing a lot. Maybe it’ll get some bumps in it and stuff and that will be good.” WHY IS THIS SUCH A BIG WIN FOR YOU AND WILL PEOPLE HAVE TO APPRECIATE A DIFFERENT KIND OF RACING HERE? “You don’t have to bump somebody out of the way to pass now, so it does make it drive differently because the way you pass people is different. The reason it’s such a huge win is that it’s Bristol, it’s a short track, it’s really tough, it’s 500 laps, it’s grueling. I mean, this is what I always thought of as a Nextel Cup race. This is what it’s about – a Saturday night at a really tough track that’s historic. The things that have happened here are spectacular. I guess, to me, if you win at a track like this it feels really good as a driver. It feels like winning at a big dirt race or something somewhere where you know you had a big part in the way it went.” SO FANS WILL HAVE TO GET USED TO A DIFFERENT KIND OF RACING? “Yeah, you can’t put 30 degrees of banking on a half-mile and 160,000 seats around it and not have a good race. You’re going to have a good race no matter what, but I do think it’s gonna be a little different type of racing. I sat and watched the truck race from up there in the grandstands and it was kind of weird to see guys running the high line and stuff. I think it’s just gonna be more exciting. It’s gonna race like a big track and be this tight all at the same time, that’s pretty cool.” WHERE DO YOU STACK UP AS FAR AS RACING FOR THE TITLE? “I feel pretty good about the championship. I’m glad to be a part of this team. I feel like Jack and Max Jones, the manager, and Bob and Robbie Reiser, and all the crew chiefs, I feel like we’ve got a group of racers and people who will do anything it takes to be the best we can in this sport. It’s neat, the sport has its ups-and-downs and it was very frustrating last season at times and at the beginning of this season, but I know I firmly believe that hard work can get you somewhere and I feel like everyone has been working really hard. Jack said it really well early in the season when he said, ‘Those guys are faster than us now, but if we can peak at the right time, if we can be fast at the right time, we’re gonna be great,’ and we’ve been moving in that direction and I’m really excited about it, so I guess I’d say I feel like we stack up pretty well.”
JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – “I’m just thrilled to be here with Carl and Bob. Last year I made some changes in the team and I though it would be OK and I kind of screwed them up. Anyway, we’ve got that straightened out now. We started off the year and I really thought that we were used to going to a new race track – we went to Texas and won the first time, we went to Las Vegas and ran really well or won the first time. I’ve looked forward to changes. I think that my group responds to them faster than most of their contemporaries, but we started with what we thought was a level playing field and we figured out, we went to the first Richmond and Phoenix that, man, we didn’t understand near enough about this car of tomorrow to be able to race the thing. We didn’t have the shocks right, we didn’t have the bump stops right, we didn’t understand what the attitude needed to be on the race track. We couldn’t keep the splitter off the ground, but we’ve been testing the car and the guys have worked real hard. Ford Motor Company got behind us and helped us with some of the challenges we had. We’ve got enough equipment in the shop now to do what we need and I think we do have a realistic chance of peaking. If we can win the championship, it would be wonderful, but with what’s going to happen and what we’re going to learn in the next 10 races is really going to give us a good shot at starting off next year. I was concerned tonight that Carl had taken the lead too early, that we had opened ourselves up to somebody else stopping for tires. The tires dropped off about a half-a-second in 50 laps and then the second 50 laps they would drop off another three-tenths of a second or so, so I wasn’t certain that somebody couldn’t stop with 70 laps to go. Kyle Busch really gave me heartburn as I saw him stop for tires. If he would have been as good as Carl, if Carl would have been where he was, I think Carl would have driven to the front and given whoever was up there a lot of trouble, but Carl and Bob and the team had a great car tonight. I was proud to be on their pit box and watch them celebrate the win.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – WHO HAS MOMENTUM AND IS IT A BIG DEAL? “I don’t know about the momentum thing. I don’t really believe in that. I feel like you go to every race and usually you start with a fresh car and fresh outlook. I guess I don’t believe in it when we’re running bad and when we’re running great, it’s like it’s the greatest thing in the world. You feel like you have a little momentum, but I guess I’ve been here just long enough to be able to see that momentum stop and start pretty quickly and kind of go to the wayside. I think there is a lot to say about confidence. I feel like if you’re confident and the pit crew is confident, people can relax and do their jobs the way they know how. I think there’s a lot to that.” TWO GUYS LED ALL BUT 13 LAPS AND EVERYONE WAS HAPPY WITH THE RACING. IS THIS THE RACE YOU WANTED TO WIN OR IS IT A DIFFERENT RACE? “I know what you’re saying. Before you had a track where you could have had the fastest car and be running 25th and it was hard to get to the front. Now you have a track, where if you have a really fast car, you can kind of pass people and move around and get to the front. So I think that’s why you saw guys like Kasey and our car and Dale Jr., everybody just kind of got to where they belonged by lap 250 or 300. When I say where they belonged, they stacked up relative to how fast they were. I don’t know what it looked like, but from where I was sitting there’s a lot of things going on around this race track in 16 seconds. The things that go on in the race car and the input you have to put in and the feeling you have to have and the way the car moves around, that makes it gratifying. I guess to clarify, the reason this race track I think is so special and the reason people like it is because it really does take a lot to get around here fast and to hold on for 500 laps. I think what you saw tonight is only the beginning based on what Goodyear said. I’ll reiterate that. When they bring out a more aggressive tire, you will see guys coming from the back and I think you’ll see it shook up a little bit more than you did tonight.” DO YOU THINK IF THE TIRES WERE SOFTER IT WOULD HAVE MADE THINGS EVEN BETTER? “It wouldn’t have made it better for us tonight. Like what Jack said, Kyle Busch would have been able to come up there, I think, quicker if our tires fell off a little more. That’s what I’m trying to say. I think it could have turned into a spectacular race, instead of where two guys led 490 laps. I think you would have seen more coming and going with tires.”
BOB OSBORNE CONTINUED – “I think with a more aggressive tire package, depending on how aggressive they get, at 70 laps the whole field would have pitted. Maybe at 40 laps the entire field would have pitted and put tires on. You wouldn’t have had the situation where the lead let Carl stay out with 100 laps to go. That just won’t happen, so you’ll have more action on pit road, more pit stops, more opportunities for the crews to work and more competitive racing in the end because of that, I believe.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – ARE YOU HANDICAPPED GOING INTO THE CHASE? “No, I don’t think we’re handicapped. We’re gonna go testing next week. I’m sure we’ll test every week between now and at least halfway through the chase, and depending on what ideas the guys come up with, and they’re full of ideas right now for the tracks that we’re heading into, I think we’re gonna have the opportunity to look at the things that occur to us at the last possible moment. We’ve got a good baseline for the car now. I think we’re going to have a good car of today for the car of today races. It’s been no secret that we’ve struggled with the car of tomorrow on the flat tracks and we’re gonna try to work that out in the next couple of weeks. I feel that we’ve got as many strengths as anybody and I wouldn’t trade Carl’s prospects for winning a championship for anybody in the chase. I’m excited that we got 10 bonus points for the win and the prospect of having that not as a disadvantage and not having won a couple of races going in. I think it’s great.” WHAT ABOUT MATT? “I put Matt right alongside David Pearson. You don’t know what Matt’s going to do until he does it. It’s hard to tell what his car can do until he shows you in the middle of a race. Carl has matured in the last year just dramatically. He was taking the measure of the race track as seen by me tonight, and protecting himself for a late race caution. I don’t think he would have done that a year ago, but Matt is a very calculating person. He and Robbie Reiser have got a lot of experience and they’ll be real tough, but I would put Matt and Carl as bookends. Depending on what works out in their car to be the best for a given race, one will have a little better prospect than the other, but neither one of them will miss an opportunity.” DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE TWO SOLID CHANCES TO WIN THE TITLE? “That’s the thing of editorials and I’m not a writer, but I couldn’t be happier. I would be happier if we had Greg in there beside them and Jamie and, of course, David Ragan, but given the fact that we’ve got two of our five teams in, I couldn’t be happier with our prospects and I think a year from now there will be a different tire, there will be a whole number of different circumstances, but the stars are lined up for us pretty good right now. I’m happy to let the issue play out as it will.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – HOW IS YOUR HAND? “I can’t wait to get this thing off. It’s good. The hardest part about tonight was the high fives down on the front straightaway, but my hand is good. It’s really minor. Like Jack said when I first did it. I told him, ‘I think it’s gonna be alright.’ He was like, ‘Damn straight it’s gonna be alright.’ I was like, ‘OK’. He says, ‘It’ll be fine.’”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – “He told me something like, ‘I think I can do this.’ I said, ‘I know you can do this.’ Playing with pain was not my problem.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – “He said, ‘As long as it only causes pain and suffering, we’ll be fine.’ It’s good. It’s no big deal.”
