IN SECOND
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 M&M’s Ford Fusion (Finished 42nd) – “I’m all right. I’m just disappointed for all our guys. Our M&M’s Ford Fusion was really strong all weekend. I had a great run going, but I just ran out of room out there. I was passing a lapped car and ran out of room and got loose. I’m real disappointed. We were obviously looking to bring home a better finish. We felt like we had the car to do it and we just came up a little bit short. We’ve got a great car we’re taking to Texas next week, but I’m real proud of all the guys. I feel like everybody has really stepped up the last two-thirds of the season and, hopefully, we can end these last couple of races with a good finish.”
IS THIS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW GOOD THE SAFETY EQUIPMENT INSIDE THE CAR IS BECAUSE YOU TOOK A BIG HIT? “Yeah. I was looking at the inside of the car at all the stuff that gets moved around when you get hit like that and it’s a testament to how good everything works. I’m 100 percent fine. I didn’t see it, but it felt like a hard hit.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Finished 4th) – THE LAST 10 LAPS WERE CRAZY. “Yeah, they had that restart and you can’t come out of the pits that far back with two laps to go. That was the biggest thing, so it just didn’t work out. But we had a good car all day. We had probably a top seven or eight car and then at the end they made the right adjustments and we actually had a car that could win, but it just didn’t work out with the cautions.” IT WAS A CASE WHERE YOU THOUGHT FOUR TIRES WAS THE RIGHT CALL UNTIL THE WAY IT PLAYED OUT. “I didn’t really think of it until we came off pit road and realized we only were gonna have five laps left. Or course with five laps left and that many cars in front of you, four tires wasn’t the right thing. But if everybody would have got four tires, it would have been the right thing.” YOU HAD A GOOD CAR AT THE END EVEN THOUGH YOU COULDN’T HAVE MADE IT ON FUEL. “Yeah, I guess we were a little short, but we were both slowing down a lot so I don’t know if we would have made it or not. It would have been kind of fun to find out. If we made it, it would have been fun to find out. If we didn’t, it wouldn’t have been, but we had a pretty good car. The guys did a great job on pit road. They were kind of off and on, but they were on when we needed to be at the end and they made the perfect adjustments at the end. I thought we had the car on that last long green flag run, but the cautions just didn’t fly quite right for us and we just couldn’t quite get it done. A caution 20 laps from the end, I think, would have been good. Everybody would have got four and we would have been up there and had a shot, but just the way it worked out with all that craziness, we didn’t really have a chance to do anything.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion (Finished 2nd) – “I would have loved to have had a shot (at Jimmie Johnson). I hate to see a race end like that. I think it would have been a great race. The 8 car and the 48 were both really fast and we were gonna be pretty good on two tires and Matt had four tires, so it was gonna be one heck of a finish. We just had a good day all around. We finished way better than we ran and I appreciate the fans coming out here. It’s a great place to race and a really exciting place to be.”
ROBBY GORDON – No. 7 Jim Beam Ford Fusion (Finished 21st) – “Once we got our lap back I’m gonna say we were a 15th-place car, and a 15th-place car could have finished eighth or ninth with all the wrecks that happened right there at the end. It was a good run for us. We’ve got a good race car. The plan was hopefully we’d get through here, so we can take this car to Texas. For having to start last, it was still a decent result.”
CARL EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE – TELL US ABOUT YOUR RUN. “Our Office Depot Fusion was not as good as it has been here at Atlanta, but we did the best we could all day. I love this race track. I had a blast. I had a lot of my friends here and I’m just excited that we ended up second. I wish it would have gone a couple of laps. I think we would have had an awesome race with Dale and Jimmie. That was gonna be a lot of fun and Matt had four tires and he was right there, so it would have been a heck of a race.”
HAS IT OCCURRED TO YOU THAT YOU GOT A BREAK TODAY? “Oh yeah, we were very lucky. I’m real grateful for how today ended up. Overall, it was just a good day of for us, but, yeah I am grateful. In a lot of ways we didn’t deserve to run second today with the way we performed, so it was a great day for us.”
WHAT DID YOU SEE ON THAT ONE RESTART WHEN YOU PASSED DENNY HAMLIN? “I thought, ‘Man, Denny is waiting an awful long time to get going here,’ and then everybody started checking up. I’m so trained, just like everybody, I’ve trained myself not to turn under people on those restarts. It’s so hard to not turn under him, but finally I was like, ‘I’m gonna run into Reed or somebody,’ and I just turned left and then I realized they hadn’t thrown the yellow yet, so I just stood on the gas. I didn’t know what was going on.”
HOW UNCANNY IS IT THE HENDRICK GUYS ALWAYS SEEM TO GET A HIGH FINISH EVEN WHEN THEY’RE NOT AS STRONG AS USUAL? “Yeah, walking in here I asked one of Jeff’s guys where they finished and he said, ‘Seventh,’ and I couldn’t believe it. He was running around in 18th the last time I saw him, so it’s just amazing. All of those guys – Jeff and Jimmie and all of those guys over there – they’re just doing a great job. They’re on top of their game and it’s something that from the competition side we have to step up and be able to catch them.”
