FORD AND EDWARDS WIN SECOND STRAIGHT SPRINT CUP RACE
· Carl Edwards captured his ninth NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory and first at LVMS.
· The win was the second for Ford in 2008 and second straight for Edwards.
· Ford has now won six of the 11 NASCAR Sprint Cup races at LVMS – most among manufacturers.
· This marks the first time a Ford driver has won consecutive NSCS events since Matt Kenseth won at Michigan and Bristol in August 2006.
· This is the second time Edwards has won back-to-back Cup events, doing it before at Atlanta and Texas in the fall of 2005.
· Ford has won two of the first three NSCS races for the first time since 2004 when Kenseth won at Rockingham and Las Vegas in back-to-back weeks.
· Ford has now won 585 all-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 USG/DeWalt Ford Fusion (Finished 20th) – “They’ve kind of got a rule that they don’t really, to my knowledge, ever police of laying back more than a car length and Gordon is famous for laying back. He was laying back a lot, so I laid back so he wouldn’t pass me and then the 99 took off late because he saw everybody laying back. I got a run on the 88 and the 24 got a run on me and we kind of split him coming off two and then the 24 just wrecked me.”
YOU OBVIOUSLY HAD A CAR TO BEAT, BUT YOU WERE HOPING FOR TIRES. “We were the same as the 99, but we just got too tight at the end and I couldn’t run with him at the end when we needed to. I just got too tight.” HOW DISAPPOINTING IS THIS? “It’s disappointing, but it all started back on the restart. Jeff is kind of famous for laying back and NASCAR has a rule that you can’t lay back more than a car length or you can be black-flagged, but it’s usually not enforced, so I saw him laying back. I knew he was gonnna get a run on me, so I laid back a little bit. Carl went late and that kind of started the chain and we were three-wide going into one. We came off two and I was up as high as I thought I could get and Jeff just came across. Whether it was on purpose or not, it just kind of wiped us out.”
TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 28 Yates Racing Ford Fusion (Finished 8th) – “We had a great test here last month. We knew we were gonna be decent. Our car was awesome last week, we just didn’t get the results. We were kind of handicapped starting 29th after being the first car out to qualify. That always kind of sets you back, but we took two tires on that first stop and were a little bit conservative with our setup in the beginning of the race after some changes we made overnight. The car didn’t have the speed it had yesterday in practice, so we kind of undid those things and got four tires on it and the car took off. We were able to drive up through the pack and get back on the lead lap with the lucky dog and just tried to stay clean and work our way up through there all day. We just tried to stay solid and be smart.”
THIS MUST BE A BIG BOOST. “That top 35, I don’t feel like we’re gonna have any trouble from a performance standpoint of staying there, but you never know because stuff like last week happens. We cut a tire and then today the 24 and 17 wrecked running in the top five, so stuff like that can happen. We just need to be solid these first handful of races and get a good solid foundation for these points and then go race for wins.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 AAA Ford Fusion (Finished 7th) – “We needed to get some points back, so this is big. Certainly sixth place is kind of a bonus. I feel like we had a good car, but starting in the back and getting a lap down early, we were just fighting an uphill battle all day long. The AAA pit crew did a good job on pit road. We still have to work on our program in qualifying and restarts in a few areas, but a top 10 is great just to get those points and give us a little momentum going into the next few races.”
PEOPLE ARE SAYING THIS IS THE YEAR FOR YOU TO SHOW SOME REAL PROGRESS. THIS MUST HELP. “Yeah, we need to get things going on a consistent basis. It seems like we can get things going here and there and we’ve been hot and cold, but we need to get to where we can do that every week. It’s a good day for Ford and Roush Fenway. I think our car of tomorrow program is where it needs to be. Certainly we don’t need to slack off any and get over-confident, we need to keep working because that’s what got us here. We’ve just got to continue to keep working hard, so this was a good solid top 10, but we’ve got to continue to get better and move on.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Finished 3rd) – PRESS CONFERENCE – “I’ll argue that I had the fastest race car today on the race track and the driver just screwed it up. I got caught speeding on pit road. I had just run the leaders down and had just caught Carl from a long ways back, a long ways back. I had come up and caught Carl and just slid onto pit road. That apron was dustier than I thought it was and I couldn’t get stopped and got caught for speeding there, and went back to 15th and drove all the way to the front under green. I was able to get all the way back to, I think I was passing for fourth or third and got loose off of turn two and probably should have wrecked and don’t really understand why I didn’t yet, and lost all my track position again. Then we had a botched up pit stop. We screwed up one stop in the pits and that kind of hurt us a little bit, so we just never did get the track position that I needed, but spectacular run with the car. The car was perfect all day. We made some tiny minor changes – half a round, quarter-round, half a pound of air – and had a lot of fun. This is the most fun I’ve had driving a race car in probably a year or two. A lot of times these races are real stressful and a lot of pressure and I feel really good getting out of the car right now. I just had a lot of fun today and just wish there would have been five more laps. I was outside of the 88 there down in one and two and he got pushed up the race track a little bit and came over and talked to me when he got out of the car like a real gentleman would or a race car driver who drives like a man and apologized that he slipped up a little bit. I knew he was tight with him coming up the race track. I got out of the throttle a little bit and off we went. There was a lot of dust still down the backstretch, I think – a lot of grease sweep – and I tried the top down there and I think I just had something on my tires because I didn’t have the grip I needed down in three and four, but I had a really, really fast car and I’m super-excited about that part of it.”
WHAT KIND OF DRIVER DOES THIS CAR FAVOR? “Your car’s got to be right or nobody can drive it, unless it’s right. A person that’s got a lot of car control, I think today, ended up in front. A person that, like Junior said, when he had a loose car he just took it for what he could. I know that we had a faster car than he did, and he drove a great race and ended up finishing in front of us because he used his head and he drove his car as fast as he could get his car to go and kept his track position. That’s the kind of people it takes to run well in these race cars, but you can get them off -- like the 48 today – and, man, it’s just a miserable day and it just gets worse as it goes. Robbie Reiser has really made the biggest difference probably at our company – getting us turned around and pointed in the right direction. But before he moved into this general manager or competition director, he kind of headed up the test team and got that started – before the second Loudon race is when that thing really came to life – so he’s been working in that position kind of since then and it’s a reflection of his hard work and all the engineering department and the fab shop is starting to pay off.”
HOW MUCH HAS YOUR TEAM IMPROVED AND HOW MUCH CONFIDENCE DO YOU HAVE? “I’m unhappy that I didn’t win today, but I’m super-excited about how fast the car was. The car was driveable all day from the green flag to the checkered flag. Eight percent of the laps I was as fast or faster than the leader, but I kept screwing up and never got my track position where I needed it, so that is a bunch of confidence. I’m so excited about it that I can’t wait till next week and these next couple of weeks to get to some more race tracks and give it another shot because I felt like we could have won today. I was near the front and got loose coming off of two and it took me a long time to get my track position back after I lost all that, but a lot of confidence.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE GAPS IN THE WALLS AT SOME TRACKS LIKE HERE? “There shouldn’t be any gaps anywhere. There should be safer barriers all the way around the inside and the outside of these race tracks. You’ve got to remember, if you look at the percentage of crashes that happen on the inside wall versus the outside wall, they’re pretty danged close, so why not have them on the inside? Safer barriers – it’s not that hard to do. You can’t say we don’t have the time or the money to do it because we’re coming back here next year and we’re gonna race again. So, in my opinion, they should be all the way around the tracks – inside and outside – and they’ve got to quit this stuffing the wall out. They need to run the one wall way past the other wall – parallel with about a 12-foot alley way, where you can come out of so that the walls are both flat. They always stop this wall and then make this wall come out so it has a 90-degree – you can hit the thing head on. If I’m coming at a 30-degree angle off the track, you can run into the wall head-on, and they need to fix that.”
DID YOU SEE THE CONTACT BETWEEN JEFF AND MATT? “Yes, I think we both saw the contact. It was hard for me because I had a big run, so I had to try to slow down. I don’t know why my car got loose, but when I started to come off the gas or started closing on them, my car started getting sideways before the 24, I think, hit the 17, so I was trying not to be in that by a lot. It just got away from Jeff. These cars, like Junior said, are hard to drive and these tires are really hard, and you get in that position where it blocks the air off your race car and he got up tight to the side of the 17 and it’s gonna take the air off of your car as well being on the inside and he just lost it. It’s uncharacteristic of Jeff to overdrive or make a mistake like that, but we all do and we hate it when it happens, but we’re out there trying our hardest and you’ve got give and take still a little bit.” SOME BIG
NAMES AREN’T IN THE TOP 12 OF THE STANDINGS. ARE YOU PLEASED WHERE YOU ARE GOING INTO ATLANTA? “You’re so nervous the whole entire weekend and getting in the car and everything about finishing the race. We finished 14th at California and I was totally mad about it, but I knew that just those 14th-place runs will get us in. I’m totally thinking about it and watching it and was just frustrated at California because the night before I felt like we had a car that we could gain a lot more points and kind of gave it up, but, yeah, I’m thinking every race about it. I don’t know about Atlanta or where the thing is, but I’m with him, I’m gonna get the most points I can.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Dish Network Ford Fusion (Finished 1st) – PRESS CONFERENCE – “It was a great car. We just had a great Ford Fusion and I’m starting to agree with Jack. He told me this week he’s gonna start making Bob wear a helmet and I asked him why and he said because the stuff that’s going on between his two ears is really important and we need to protect it. Bob’s a smart guy and I’m just proud to be driving this race car, but a little bit of trouble on pit road – got a penalty – had to start at the end of the longest line, and then at the end I was extremely nervous. I thought we were gonna receive another penalty for a tire that got away and NASCAR made a judgment call in our favor after looking at the tape. I believe it was the right one and I’m just very grateful for them looking at that and giving that to us.”
BOB OSBORNE, Crew Chief – No. 99 Dish Network Ford Fusion – “It was nerve-wracking. I felt pretty good, but like Carl spoke of, we had that pit road penalty and that put us in the back and that really wasn’t in our gameplan. We were trying to stay in the top five, top 10 and ride around. We felt like we had a strong race car and didn’t want to have to abuse it too early in the race, but that changed our plan and Carl did a great job coming through traffic as he normally does and he got all those positions back for us. And then, low and behold, it looked like the same thing was gonna happen to us – another tire rolled off the pit wall, but it turned out it ran into one of the innocent bystanders that was standing next to our pit stall, so it was stressful but the results are what we were looking for and I’m happy to be here.”
JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – No. 99 Dish Network Ford Fusion – “I’m just glad that I have the opportunity to hang around with really fast people. I know Carl will give Bob a lot of credit, but Bob made a good decision today on when he could take two tires and when he had to have four and, of course the changes they made in the car were right on time. I asked Bob this morning what he thought about the cooler temperature and what he thought about the wind and he said, ‘We had a little trouble in one of the corners yesterday,’ and he said, ‘the wind is gonna help us with the corner,’ and he said he thought the cooler temperature was gonna work right into the balance he had in the car – front to rear – for traction and as it turned out he was right, but Bob has been right a lot of the time and that’s really helping Carl. They work really well together and I’m just glad to be able to run with them.”
BOB OSBORNE CONTINUED – CAN YOU GO THROUGH YOUR THOUGHTS WHEN THE SECOND TIRE ROLLED ACROSS THE PIT ROAD? “Right away I saw the tire rolling and where we were pitting on pit road it was obvious it was ours. The crew member that was supposed to catch it right away ran up to the box and said what happened, so I jumped down and spoke with the official about it. In that situation, when you think you didn’t actually break a rule, you have to try to keep a level head, so I did my best to do that. I wanted to go ballistic for sure and yell and scream and take a punch and do whatever I had to do to get my way, but I kept a level head the best I could and the officials were very good in the situation also. They did what they had to do and reviewed the film and gave us a judgment call in our favor.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – HOW DO YOU MAINTAIN FOCUS WHEN YOU’RE AN EMOTIONAL YO-YO? “For me personally there’s nothing else I can do in my life that gives me that feeling of anticipation and anxiety and excitement and I just enjoy it. That’s it. That’s what we do this for is for the challenge and, man, I really like it. It’s fun for me. It’s really cool to come off turn four and see all those fans standing up and know you’ve got the best drivers in the world behind you and that’s when it’s on the line with two laps to go – I like it.”
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING WHEN THE TIRE GOT AWAY? “I try really hard to stay calm. I’m not the best at it sometimes. We all know that, but I try really hard. There’s not much you can do to fix that stuff, but I can hear the Jeopardy song just playing and just waiting for Bob to tell me everything is gonna be all right and this time it worked out.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR COT PROGRESS? “I’m sure everybody is tired of hearing me talk about testing, but we got behind on testing last year because I misjudged what NASCAR was gonna do with regard to the stated test policy. They indicated they were gonna start us off with the car of tomorrow, which, of course, is the car of today today with four or five tests and everybody was gonna have the same opportunity and it was gonna be a level playing field. Well, a number of the teams went off and got tires that were sometimes non-Goodyear tires and went to tracks that were not NASCAR tracks. When we went to Bristol, it was real clear that we were way behind, yet we had done the testing according to the plan. When I went to ask the guys, ‘How did that happen?’ They said, ‘Well, these other folks have been testing for thousands of miles and we haven’t been there yet.’ So starting right after Bristol we designated a tractor-trailer unit. We hired people. We had a test team and we went to Iowa and we went to Wisconsin. We went to Nashville and we went to Virginia and we took a fresh focus on the road races and when we got to Sears Point, we weren’t as far behind as we were at Bristol, and by the time we finished up in the chase, I felt and the guys felt that we had pretty much caught up. But the year was behind us and I had wasted it because I misjudged what I needed to do, so I listened more carefully and I watched more carefully over the winter and I think that we’re caught up. I certainly don’t feel that we have an advantage, but I think that on any given Sunday there are probably 20 cars that could win the race and four or five of them are our cars and I feel proud of that.”
COULD YOU HAVE FORESEEN THIS KIND OF SUCCESS SO EARLY? “Boy, it would be real interesting to sit down and read everything that everybody is gonna write about domination and what the state of competition is in Sprint Cup racing. I’ll do my very best not to read that. We need to just maintain focus. We aren’t as good as it would appear to be for having won the last two races and we weren’t as bad as it looked like we were when we couldn’t win a race for part of last year.”
BOB OSBORNE CONTINUED – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE FIRST TIRE INCIDENT AND WHY YOU HAD A CREW CHANGE LATE IN THE RACE? “What happened on the left-rear tire when he pulled the tire off, normally it would roll back to the wall and one of the behind-the-wall crew would grab it and pull it over. Well, this time it rolled and hit a hose and changed direction and rolled away from pit wall. So I really can’t blame. Obviously, it’s the tire changers responsibility that it goes to the wall, but it was a freak incident in that case. I don’t know if it’s public knowledge, but the 99 crew has been going through a lot of injuries here recently and our starting tire changer is our car chief. He just had knee surgery right at the beginning of the season – Jason Myers is the car chief – so he just had knee surgery and Houston Stampert is filling in for him right now. He’s an up-and-coming tire changer for us, he’s just a little light on experience, so with the 26 being in the position they were in, we swapped the two guys out. We put Houston on the 26 and brought in Kyle Lewis to change rear tires. So it was not because of the tire incident, it was because of experience levels and what we’re trying to accomplish here as a total unit here at Roush Fenway Racing.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – IS IT TRUE YOU DIDN’T BELIEVE THE COT WOULD BECOME A REALITY OR WAS IT A TESTING QUESTION? “No. The answer to your question is I believed that there was gonna be a car of tomorrow and I believed that NASCAR would have their way as they always do. I was not in favor of obsoleting. We obsoleted 20 cars per team and about 15 showcars per team. They all had to be replaced at one time. OK, so we replaced our 20 cars, four of which were beset with demons that the guys didn’t want to drive with 16 cars now that are all the same. So we didn’t have to replace one for one, we replaced 80 percent of what we obsoleted. But that’s a huge, huge cost. I’m a farm boy from southern Ohio and I just hate wasting things that have got use left in them. I straighten nails in order to be able to use them again, so that was against my upbringing and it was fundamentally against my business principals to have to do that, but I believed it would happen. And the reason we didn’t go testing wasn’t because I was reluctant, it was because NASCAR had indicated that they were gonna organize a test. You couldn’t have tires. You could not own your tires, so you couldn’t take the current tire and make plans to go test it some place. You had to have obsolete tires from the year before or tires from other manufacturers. Well, the other manufacturers – two other manufacturers made tires that were OK for testing and tracks like the track in Nashville and the track in Iowa and other tracks around the country opened up their gates and said, ‘Ya’ll come. We’ll rent you time.’ By the time we got to Bristol we were thousands of miles behind the information a number of other teams had on the car. It was my fault for not hording tires. It was my fault for not testing NASCAR. If I would have been the first team to go test and been the only team out there, I’m sure I would have been penalized for it. I expected other teams to be penalized and NASCAR didn’t do that and we got behind.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF? “Just the way we’ve been running. The hard work that Bob has put in and everything that Jack has put into it – the stuff that he was talking about there, the idea that I think we are close to the form that we were in 2005, where it just seemed like a Roush Fenway car would win every week. That’s what I’m really excited about. The belt is gonna be cool. John Cena, my buddy, is gonna be a little jealous that I’ve got that one. I might let him wear it sometime, but this one is going to Joe Karazinski. We call him Hoss. He’s a really good guy and he’s our gas man and he’s not gonna be with us for a couple weeks. He’s getting some medical stuff done and the whole team is behind him 100 percent and it was really cool. This is the last race he’s gonna be with us for awhile and while he’s resting up this will be his, so it’s cool to be able to do this today. Joe is a big enough guy that he could win one of these belts legitimately. They don’t call him Hoss for nothing.”
NOW IT’S OFF TO ATLANTA. WHAT ABOUT THIS CAR AT THAT TRACK? “I think Atlanta is gonna be a little bit different than California and Vegas. Obviously it’s a different race track, but the pavement is a little different. The bumps there, the things that make it so much fun making Atlanta are gonna be difficult for all of us to get a hold of. I know when we were there at the test we were not very fast last time we were there, so I’m hoping we’re a little bit faster. I’m really looking forward to Bristol. We had a great race there last time. That place is really neat now that you can run three-wide there, so that’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’m a little bit nervous about how fast we’re gonna be at Atlanta. Everyone is aware right now in this sport that anyone could go there and be dominant. There’s just no telling. I think we’ll be all right, but it’s just an unknown right now.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – WHAT DOES THIS START MEAN TO YOU? “We do this to win. That’s the thing. Winning these races is the greatest part of this whole thing for me. Winning a championship would be the ultimate, so what we’re trying to do is win the championship this year. That’s our number one goal. The greatest part about winning these races is we get the 10 points per race that will help us out, if we make the chase. So that’s really good, but, really, truly, it’s just the feeling of winning. That’s an amazing feeling.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – WHO HAS HELPED MOST WITH THIS TURNAROUND? “We’ve added in anticipation of the additional manufacturers coming into the sport and what their reputation has been – I’m not gonna name the manufacturer – but there’s an expectation they would smother us, they would drown us with engineering, they would drown us with technology, they would come and recruit our best people and they would leave us in the backwater. I was determined not to let that happen. I had contact with my friends at Ford – Edsel Ford and of course Dan Davis and Doug Hervey – about what the challenges were and Ford Motor Company has put into our program at least 30 percent more in 2007 than the did in 2006 and that allowed us to get the tire engineer that we needed, the staff behind the seven-poster – it allowed us to more effectively use our K&C machine. It allowed us to make the preparations internally and the guy who is right on top of that, of course, is Chris Andrews and Robbie Reiser on the heels of Max Jones is doing a great job in the shop organizing it. But we’ve got the resources now for the level of commitment that I’m aware of that the other manufacturers have made. We’ve got the resources to be competitive and without Ford’s support, we couldn’t have done that.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – WERE YOU WONDERING IF YOU REALLY WON TODAY WITH EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED? “Yeah. I make sure to stay out there and make sure it’s the checkered flag and I always ask, ‘Are you sure it’s over?’ I was running at Capital Speedway in Holt Summit one night and I swore the race was over and I pulled in and it was not over. That’s about the dumbest you can feel as a race car driver, so I always ask. There’s a lot of emotion going on there and you don’t want to miss something.”
DID IT FEEL LIKE A HEAVYWEIGHT FIGHT? “It didn’t feel quite like a heavyweight fight. I wouldn’t know what a heavyweight fight feels like other than a little bit of training I did with some mixed martial arts guys. I didn’t mind the wrestling part too much, but when they started hitting me in the head I was not for it. I don’t know if I could do the boxing thing. This is probably a much simpler, less painful way to win a belt.”
WHAT ABOUT THE FINAL TWO RESTARTS? “Yeah, I was real worried. If it wasn’t enough, Bob and Jason Hedlesky, my spotter, both reminded me how good he (Junior) was on restarts all day, so that didn’t help. But I felt like we got a gift there with that one restart where it looked like maybe Dale spun the tires, but I knew it was gonna be pretty tough the second one. I felt like I got a perfect restart and he got one that was just as good. I mean, he was right there. Definitel
