IN PHOENIX NEXTEL CUP RACE
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion (Finished 42nd) – “That’s a great race car. That thing is awesome. It was something important in the engine. I don’t know what it is, but we don’t have many engine failures. It’s too bad to have one on this day, I would have welcomed one at Texas last week but to have it today – this Office Depot Fusion was so fast. I mean, I was out there just having a blast. I could go just about as fast as I wanted, so you don’t get that very often. It’s too bad it blew up.”
HOW ARE THE RACE CONDITIONS TODAY? “They’re perfect. The conditions are perfect. It’s slippery and it’s hot. It’s fun.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Dish Network Ford Fusion (Finished 2nd) – “It was an up-and-down day for this Dish Network Ford Fusion. The car ran really good. The guys did a great job in the pits. It was kind of funny with different pit cycles going on throughout the race. We were up-and-down, but we had a great car there at the end. We just kept working on it and I wish we would have had better track position where we could have got a crack at the 48 because we definitely had a faster car, but there at the end he just had too much track position on us. I thank Matt Kenseth for pulling over. He pulled over and let me have a crack at him. We just needed Jimmie to make a little mistake and we would have been on him, but those guys are pretty good at not making mistakes.”
WHAT DID YOU WORK ON TO GET THE CAR THAT GOOD? “A lot of things. I struggled all day with it not turning and then loose in. We just kept doing air pressure and wedge and all kinds of things. We got onto something at the end I wish we would have done at the beginning instead and felt we may have won this thing if we would have been on to what made the car go earlier in the race.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Finished 3rd) – “We just need to be a little faster. We kind of got pinned behind that lapped car and got my momentum slowed. Jimmie was able to use him as a pick and get by and once he got by I just couldn’t catch him. We were pretty good all day on four tires and we had to put two on there at the end for track position, which was absolutely the right call, and Jimmie’s car just had more grip than I did there and I just couldn’t quite keep up.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO FINISH AS HIGH AS YOU CAN IN THE POINTS? “It’s really important for us. This DeWalt team, I’ve been very fortunate my whole career to have a great race team and just because you’re out the championship you want to finish as high as you can. We were in the basement four weeks ago. We were 12th in the points and at the bottom of that and our goal is to climb up as high as we can. We’re getting closer, so that feels good and hopefully we can finish up strong next week.”
THE 01 WAS AN ISSUE AT THE END. IS IT A CASE OF A YOUNG DRIVER NOT KNOWING WHERE HE SHOULD BE AT THAT POINT? “I don’t know. I don’t want to sit and complain about another driver, but he was running the top in one and two and the bottom of three and four every lap. That was consistent. That lap when I finally got to him, I actually got outside of him off of two and he kind of ran me up in the wall a little bit, so I figured he was going to the bottom again and I rolled it outside and he just ran right up in front of me and stopped and Jimmie got by on the bottom. If Mark would have been in that car, it would have been a non-issue and he would have let the racers race for the win, but everybody is out there doing the best they can. The 48 was better anyway. He probably would have passed me anyway, but it would have been a lot better of a battle if it wouldn’t have been for that.”
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 M&M’s Ford Fusion (Finished 28th) – “We struggled really bad when we came and unloaded and we didn’t qualify well and we had an uphill battle. Todd and the guys made some good adjustments throughout the race and kind of got it to where it was pretty good and then kind of went too far and then brought it back there at the end and salvaged a decent finish. We’re learning and now we’ll put it all in the book and go onto next week. It was a pretty important day in the points to try and stay in that top 35, so I think overall it was a pretty good day.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion (Finished 32nd) – “I felt like we had an awesome AAA Ford Fusion today. We started in the back as the result of a poor qualifying lap, but our car was pretty decent the first 100 laps. We moved up into the top 20 and I was just kind of riding and biding our time and on one of the restarts the 10 car obviously didn’t see us down underneath him. He was doing all he could to hang on at that point in time and ran us down. I guess I should have let off and that would have helped our chances of having a little better finish, or I just need to be a little more aggressive and watch some of those other guys and just try to knock my way to the front like some of them do.”
YOU WERE STRONG IN PRACTICE, BUT STRUGGLED IN QUALIFYING AND THE RACE TODAY. DO YOU FEEL LIKE IT WAS AN OPPORTUNITY LOST? “Yeah, it was a disappointing weekend obviously. We want top 10s and top 15s and everytime we feel like we have a good car, something like this happens. We’ve just got to learn from it. We can’t keep making excuses race after race. There’s only so many different situations that take place out there, but we just have to keep working hard. We’ve had great race cars. We’ve had a lot of good speed, we just need to learn to get around this lap traffic a little better and stay out of everybody else’s trouble. It seems to have found us, but we’ll go to Homestead and see if we can’t come away with a top 10 and then head for the winter.”
GREG BIFFLE-MATT KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE
MATT KENSETH – “I think overall it was a great run for us. We got a great finish out of it. Obviously, I’m disappointed. We had a big lead there and there was so much debris out there we got that caution to get all of that cleaned up. I wish we could have run to the end, but yet even with that we still got lined back up and had a good pit stop and came out ahead of all the guys that got tires and I just couldn’t get it done. I just didn’t have enough grip on two tires and that one lapped car kind of got in my way and Jimmie snuck by there and once he snuck by it was over and I just couldn’t catch him.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS WHEN GUYS ARE OFF SEQUENCE DURING THE RACE? “It’s kind of interesting when you’re the guy out there on the oldest tires and people are blowing by you, and then when you come and get new tires you catch them so fast and drive by them. It actually, in a way if it works out for you, it’s more fun because there are cars that are all kinds of different speed. These cars run so close to the same speed that when you get them on different tires, then you do a lot of passing and people are passing you a lot, so that makes it interesting. You have to pay a lot of attention, but we really got lucky the way it worked out. Robbie told me to pit, but then when everybody else was on the race track and we were on pit road he kind of wanted us to do what the leader did, so it actually worked out. We got lucky and that’s what got our track position and got us to lead all those laps and be up there, so we got fortunate. We had the track position. I thought all of the pit calls were right. We had great pit stops. We did everything right, we just got beat there at the end again.”
WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT THE COT FOR NEXT YEAR? “I don’t know that we learned anything in particular today. I think overall we’ve been getting the cars better at Roush Racing. Our engineering department has been doing a great job. Robbie and everybody has been doing a good job of getting those cars faster every week, so I think overall they’re faster, but just because you run good at one track, all of the tracks are totally different, so we’ve still got all the winter testing and figure them out at the mile-and-a-halves and two-miles and see how it goes.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT JIMMIE WINNING FOUR STRAIGHT AND THEIR DOMINANCE? “Last year and then there was that other year when they were way behind and won all those races. They can do that every week. They’re that good. They’re just unbelievably good. They’re as good as any group that I’ve seen and that includes Jeff in his heyday – not that Jeff still isn’t in it but you know what I mean, when he would win 10 races a year and win a championship by 400 points. It’s just like that. They’re so good. I don’t know how you can put yourself in position to win every week like that. It’s just amazing.”
GREG BIFFLE – “It was a really good run. I was up and down throughout the day and track position, pit sequencing, you’re in front, you’re in back. Those cars are just so hard to pass that track position is just so important. We had to race our way from around sixth or so, seventh, on that last stint on two tires to get up in there. The car starting coming alive. We found some adjustments at the end that really made the car go. It was a little bit too late on the last two pit stops of the day, but the car really started to run a lot better.”
MATT KENSETH CONTINUED – DID GETTING HUNG UP BEHIND THE 01 HURT YOU? “Well, yeah it did at the time. I don’t know if it would have changed the final outcome or not. We would have run side-by-side a lot longer and the way it looks, Greg would have probably caught us and passed us both because we would have probably used each other up pretty good. But, yeah, gosh, everybody needs to be out there racing, it doesn’t matter where you’re running. I just wish he would have been a little more consistent with his line. He was running the top of one and two and the bottom of three and four every single lap, and I rolled to the outside of him a little bit in one and two, but, like I said, he was kind of running the top so he sort of ran me in the wall, so we went down the backstretch and me and Jimmie were side by side and, for some unknown reason, he decided to go to the top on that lap and just drove right up in front of me and stopped. It would have been nice if he would have, at least you expect him to hold a consistent line – keep doing everything the same so you kind of know where to pass him. That kind of got us because Jimmie snuck by right there and he was gonna have a lot harder time getting by than that if we could have got in open air.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – IS THE TITLE CHASE OVER? “Unless the 48 blows up or has a flat tire it probably is. I don’t think you’re gonna see the 48 run worse than whatever position and Jeff win. I don’t think it’s gonna be just a normal race. Something will have to happen in order for him to win.”
MATT KENSETH CONTINUED – “Yeah, the same thing I told everybody last week and the week before. On performance, it’s over. If it’s just on performance because they’re just so stout. I mean, he’s winning every week. It’s hard to run better than that, so on performance it’s been over, but the way the points structure is and with that many cars out there, obviously, if they have a mechanical failure, a flat tire, you can lose a lot of points, but just purely on performance, I think he’s had everybody covered the whole time.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED -- CARL WAS ON THE POLE AND YOU GUYS HAD GOOD DAYS. “It’s a testament to our COT program. It’s getting better and better. It’s kind of a frustrating car because you don’t have it figured out. We try to work on it at the race track and it seems like the only thing we do is make it worse. We can’t ever get it any better, so we’re doing a lot of the work at the shop and then showing up with it just like it is and then making little minor changes – a round of wedge or track bar one round one way or the other and that’s about all we’re doing. There’s a lot of confidence going into next year that we’re getting them pretty close at the shop to bring them out to the race track.”
MATT KENSETH CONTINUED – IS IT FRUSTRATING TO FINISH 2ND AND 3RD AND NOT ABLE TO WIN? “It’s both. It’s frustrating when you lead the most laps and you don’t win, and you’re kind of in position to win at the end and you get a caution and things get jumbled up and you don’t get it done. That is frustrating, but we’ve had four really great races in a row. It’s hard to run in the top 10 and it’s really hard to run in the top five and if you can keep clicking off top-five finishes, that’s really good. I said it last week and I’ll say it again even though it didn’t come true, but if you keep putting yourself in position to win you’re gonna win races. I just wish it would happen pretty soon.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED -- DID YOU THINK IT WAS POSSIBLE FOR A DRIVER TO WIN DOUBLE DIGIT RACES IN THIS DAY AND TIME? “I didn’t think so. I wouldn’t have thought it. We won six in 2005 and then Kasey Kahne won six last year and that’s a lot of races to win in a season. I thought it was probably possible after 2005 that I had enough confidence and thought that that could be done again or maybe get eight, but that’s a lot of wins. I would have never thought it.”
MATT KENSETH CONTINUED – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE LACK OF PASSING FOR THE LEAD? “The cars are all so close to the same speed. You build this rules package and you make everything the same aerodynamically and they give you so little stuff to adjust that all the cars are gonna be closer to the same speed than when you have cars you can adjust and work on more stuff. The closer they are to the same speed, the harder it’s gonna be to pass. That’s easy to figure out. If everybody is running the same speed, how are you gonna pass? It’s just little things to get your car better and to get out front.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – “And the other thing is you get within three car lengths, and you don’t really notice it, like the old car, I felt like you’d get a car length behind a guy or a couple car lengths at a track like this, but now you get three car lengths behind a guy and it just kind of loses it – you don’t really sense it, you just feel like the tire is giving up a little bit and that’s just because you’re so on the edge anyway and it’s just all you can do, and now you’re kind of stuck three cars back. And then you run up to the top and get it turned and get the gas and then all of a sudden you just run right by the guy on one straightaway if you get a run – diamond the corner and get a lot of straightaway speed or something. It’s like it’s aero-tight early because it makes a big hole in the air, so to speak, because the car is bigger, but you don’t really notice it. It just kind of gets numb and you can’t continue to drive up on a guy a lot of times.”
MATT KENSETH CONTINUED – WOULD IT BE BETTER IF THERE WAS A WIDER PARAMETER OF ADJUSTMENTS YOU COULD MAKE? “That’s what we had last week, so I don’t know. You guys can make your opinion as to what’s better and what’s worse. For the racing, that’s kind of what we had. It’s taken away a lot of the adjustments that we used to have. The fact is, we’re gonna race them all the time next year and that’s about what you’re gonna see for racing. I think the racing is still good. I think it’s really competitive, it’s just different than what we’re accustomed to driving and different than what you guys are accustomed to seeing. I don’t know if that’s necessarily better or worse, it’s just different.”
