· Greg Biffle posted the fourth win of his NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series career this weekend and the first for Ford in 2005.
· Biffle has won two of the last three series events dating back to his season-finale win in the Ford 400 at Homestead.
· The last time Roush Racing had three drivers finish in the top 5 was Mar. 23, 2003 at Bristol (Food City 500). Kurt Busch (1st); Matt Kenseth (2nd); and Greg Biffle (5th).
· The last time Roush Racing had at least four drivers finish in the top 10 was Aug. 22, 2004 @ Michigan in the GFS Marketplace 400. Greg Biffle (1st); Mark Martin (2nd); Kurt Busch (6th); Matt Kenseth (8th) and Carl Edwards (10th).
· Taurus has now won 85 points races and 93 overall when taking into account victories in the Budweiser Shootout and All-Star race. Ford has 555 all-time NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series triumphs.
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Post-It/National Guard Taurus – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW –
HOW MUCH LONGER COULD YOU HAVE HELD THEM OFF? “Oh man, I needed those two rounds of wedge back in it that we took out. I was just way, way too free there at the end. We had the fastest race car on the race track, but just not right there at the end. We adjusted for being back in traffic. We got the lead due to some guys pitting. I tell you what, these guys just worked really hard on this National Guard/Post-It car. Just thinking about all the soldiers that are out protecting our country right now – all the race fans here in southern California. What a great day this has been for us.”
TALK ABOUT THE DECISION TO STAY OUT? “It wasn’t a really hard decision. We had seven laps on the tires. These Goodyear tires that they brought here are a really good compound and it takes five laps for them to come in, so we only had a two-lap advantage by pitting. We knew a lot of guys were gonna two-tire, so why put ourselves in that position? We just went for it.”
YOU GOT THE LUCKY PASS AT ONE POINT. “I came from 30th twice. I had to pass every car and earned it. That’s why I freed the car up so much is because I was back in that traffic. Then when I got back out front it was so dang loose that I couldn’t drive it. But we were able to hang onto it. That’s a big credit to these guys and everybody that works on these race cars.”
IS THIS A SIGN OF THINGS TO COME? “I don’t know. I’ll let everyone else figure it out. This is the second race of the season. We had a decent run going at Daytona and the 48 car moved up on us a little bit there and I tried to avoid wrecking him. That got myself in a position where I ended up getting spun out, but I think so.”
RICKY RUDD – No. 21 Motorcraft Genuine Parts Taurus (Finished 41st) – “What a day. Finally a motor is what ended up knocking us out of the race. Something broke in the motor internally, but at the beginning of the race we were just racing. I guess maybe guilty of racing too hard in the early stages of the race. There was a hole there when I went to drift into line. I don’t know if Bill (Elliott) was watching his mirror or whatever, but he got me in the back bumper and turned me right into the wall. Our day was over then and we were just riding it out for the points, but, man, we’re just sort of snake bit in 2005. We need to get going. We’ve got us a good race car, but we just haven’t been able to show it yet.” HOW DID THE COMMUNICATION WITH FATBACK IN NORTH CAROLINA GO? “I think that was gonna work out fine. That was gonna be excellent. They made a few adjustments after the car got banged up. That bent the front suspension up pretty badly. I was surprised we could even ride around and meet the minimum NASCAR speed, but it was gonna work. That was not gonna be an issue. Some days it’s not your day and definitely today was not ours in the Motorcraft Taurus.”
KURT BUSCH – No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus (Finished 3rd) – YOU STAYED OUT ON THE LAST CAUTION. “It helped us finish where we did. We had a great run with our Sharpie Ford. Racing with my teammate, that’s what you dream about. That’s what you want. You want to race Greg Biffle, who is a teammate, and put it all out on the line and that’s what we did. I gave too much too early. That was the only advantage that I had on my side. Biffle got us at the end and the 48, he had four fresh tires and he was coming. It was a great balance of guys that took two tires and guys that took four, and then for Biffle and I who stayed out. It’s an awesome race track to run on and I hope everybody had a great time. We’re coming back.” BACK IN THE POINTS LEAD. “It’s way too early to even talk points, but we’re having fun. It’s a good effort that our team put together to build these cars. We tested California, at Daytona and Vegas. We hope everything goes to plan. We’ve got two more races and then an off week, so that’s the way I’m looking at it right now. We’ve got Vegas and then Atlanta and then we’ll go to Bristol and test and get ready for that.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Taurus (Finished 5th) – YOU GOT FOUR TIRES AT THE END. “Bob Osborne and the whole Office Depot team did a great job making the right adjustments. The adjustment we didn’t need was the right-front fender adjustment on Jamie McMurray’s car on pit road. That kind of tightened us up for the last two runs, but, man, to lead those laps and have that feeling like, ‘Man, we are the fastest car here.’ Even if it was only for 20 or 30 laps today, it was still a great feeling. I think it’s the sign of a lot of good things to come for this team.” WHAT KIND OF CONFIDENCE DOES IT GIVE YOU? “It gives us a lot of confidence. It gives me as a driver a lot of confidence. It is different leading these races. It’s one thing to follow these guys and change your line a little bit from theirs, but it’s another thing to be the guy out front with them chasing you. I’m learning a little bit and I’m just glad to be here. It’s cool to see this many folks in the grandstand and we had a good time.’
ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 38 Pedigree/M&M’s Taurus (Finished 8th) – “We battled all day. To get a top 10 is great. We had great pit strategy and it was a great call by the guys to get two tires that last stop. If you can’t win the race, get all the points that you can. We’ve had two great points race so far. We’re right where we want to be. We’re learning and we’ll just keep digging from here.” YOU TOOK TWO TIRES TWICE. “I think it was better on two tires than four. The two tires kind of loosened it up enough to where I could run with the guys. I’m just proud of them. That was a great call. We were kind of thinking on the same page, but didn’t really want to say it over the radio so nobody else could hear it. It’s just a good car. To take eighth today after what we went through – going to the rear of the field and starting 41st, to come up to eighth is a great, great day for everybody.”
DALE JARRETT – No. 88 UPS Taurus (Finished 11th) – “We just fought the same thing all day. We were just tight all day and it didn’t matter what we did to it, it did the same thing. It’s just something we could never adjust out. The last set of tires was the tightest I had been all day and that’s not what I needed right then.” YOU STILL HAVE TWO DECENT FINISHES. “Yeah, but if we would have been right, we could have made a lot of ground and been in really good shape. Still, it could have been a lot worse. It just felt like with as many opportunities as we had to adjust on the car today, it just didn’t respond to anything. But we’re OK. We’ve got a week off and we’ll work at trying to figure some more out.”
KURT BUSCH PRESS CONFERENCE – HOW BIG WAS THE DECISION NOT TO PIT? “This was definitely an interesting race and to have it come down to three competitors that had driven all day in different frames of mind – and what I mean by that is we all had to qualify our race setups and it came down to three guys that you could throw a blanket over. It put on a great finish. I’m happy for our team and what Greg Biffle did. I’m not happy for what Jimmie did, he beat me, but it’s a great start for us. We finished second last week and I thought we could get a win today. I was looking at two second-place finishes to start the year, but if what I have as far as total finishes add up to five, and you divide that by two, we’re doing OK. It’s just weird with an off-week coming up, but I’m looking forward to going home to Las Vegas and driving the Sharpie Ford there.”
HOW MUCH DID NOT BEING ABLE TO WORK ON THE CAR CHANGE THINGS? “We just went into race mode as soon as we unloaded. When we were here testing we played around with a qualifying setup and then tried to untape it and that didn’t work, so we knew right away we had to run the race setup and then just deal with qualifying it. We were focused right off the bat on making those changes and it put us in a box. We would have liked to have run a rubber here, but yet you can’t take it for race – you had to run that. So it just dictated what choices we made early on Friday and they all played out throughout the weekend. It’s an interesting format. I’m not sure if it’s saving any money yet for the teams, but during the long haul I’m sure that it will. We’re just trying to make sure that we make the right adjustments on our Sharpie Ford each and every week. When we go to Vegas now, it’s a regular program. But if you look at our race notes, it would be much easier to qualify and race the setup at Vegas than it would here at California. So it’s interesting. Some of the tracks that are impounding are ISC tracks, some of them are Bruton tracks, there’s no real formula. I wish they would have tried it a bit more in the Busch Series before they gave it to Cup, but here we go. We’ve got two races under our belt and the next time we come back to California it will be right there right before the chase begins.”
ANY TROUBLE WITH THE NEW FORMAT? “I didn’t find too much trouble with our new system. With the spoiler and the tires, it gives the car a bit more movement. The front end wanders, the rear end wanders. Our car wasn’t quite as dialed in as the 16 or the 48. We continued to work on it and it’s what I’ve been missing for about a half-a-year now with being able to crack Victory Lane. I mean, we were competitive. We were a top-five car, but we just need to work on finding a new balance for the rear end of these cars so that we can definitely put the power down coming out. I was struggling with that and I still think that was from what our setups are like, instead of the tires and the spoiler.”
DID YOU THINK YOU HAD A SHOT AT GREG AT THE END? “I knew our best chance was to break out and to build a lead as quick as we could and run the car at 99 percent and see where the lap times were gonna fall down. I knew two tires weren’t really gonna work and I was hoping those guys would hold up the guys with four tires. So Biffle and I squirted out there. I was just on the loose side and not able to put the power down right when I needed to. That’s when Biffle finally got to me – about lap 10 of that run, which was lap 20 of our tires – and then at the end I was starting to catch Biffle again. He was running at a stronger pace, but wearing his stuff out. He actually rubbed the fence off of two and you could smell it. I was like, ‘That’s Biffle.’ I was gonna run him down and then Jimmie was there, so I just ran out of tire and ran out of time. It was a great race. That’s what it’s supposed to be when guys are on different programs and it all comes together out at the end.”
IS IT TOO EARLY TO JUDGE THE RULES PACKAGE? “It’ll be interesting to see how Atlanta works. Vegas will be a normal race with qualifying on Friday and happy hour Saturday and then we race on Sunday. Atlanta, it’s a very fast race track and what I noticed, I didn’t run very much in the fall because I blew a motor, but it looked like tires was the way to go. What that’s gonna do to us in practice is you’re not gonna get a good read on your car because you’re halfway in qualifying and halfway in race and tires wear out in four laps there. Ask Jimmie. That’s how he won the race. Mark Martin stayed out on four-lap old tires and he got passed. I’m gonna lobby for an extra set of tires at Atlanta and Darlington just because this new program is a bit tight on how to get your car dialed in.”
ANY COMMENT ON THE EMPTY SEATS? “I didn’t notice. We’re busy in the race car, but they’ve got the grandstands painted red and yellow when they’re empty, so they look like they’re full. I didn’t notice. The one thing I do notice about our west coast fans is that it’s new to them. They’re not as diehard as the fans in the southeast, where those guys will pack their coolers to specifications, hopefully it’s Rubbermaid, and sit in the grandstands and don’t move. Where fans on the west coast, they come out for the feeling of NASCAR. What they get from that is the start of the race. They might go down to the midway to get a soda during a long green run or when there’s a yellow. Some of them come back to their seats. The infield was packed, so there is different strategies I think with fans on the west coast versus the east coast. It’s new to them and I think eventually over time people will be so captivated by it that they’ll learn that Jimmie is on four tires, I’m out there on old tires, some guys took two, some guys are stretching fuel, and they’ll catch the racing that’s going on within the race.”
HOW IS IT TO RACE WITH JIMMIE? “Going back to last year with the chase, I sat on the couch and watched the end of the Atlanta race yelling at Mark Martin, ‘Take tires. Take tires. The 48 is gonna win.’ And then the 24 had problems, the 8 had problems. I hadn’t really focused on any one individual during the chase because there are 10 guys and you can’t get wrapped up in it, but Jimmie made up 162 points in one day on us – with us finishing 42nd and him winning. It was like, ‘Wow, the 48 is here now.’ He had so many problems in the beginning. You can’t write anybody off, but you just hope your list of 10 goes down to nine, to eight, to seven, and then it went up a race because Jimmie got back in the chase. It’s fun to go and race each and every week. To challenge each other at a superspeedway like this and to do the drafting at Daytona together, and even at a short track such as Bristol. He won at Martinsville in the fall after us leading the most laps. You want the competition. That’s what we all come out for on Sundays is to beat the guy that’s good and usually, as of late, it’s been one of us or Gordon, Biffle has been hot, and Joe Nemechek has really been surprising as well. So it’s a lot of fun. You can’t just pinpoint one guy. You just have to go and work on your own program and then when it gets down to the last tire run, you see who is there and you race.”
DO YOU HAVE A STEP UP ON THE OTHER CONTENDERS? “You just hope you’re in good position by race 20 so that, like he did, kind of take a break. For us, we still had to race pretty hard each of those final 20-26 races, but it’s way too early. It’s a great start for our team. He’s the big favorite. We’re the defending champion and the pressure is on us, so we’re gonna have some fun with it.”
GREG BIFFLE PRESS CONFERENCE – DID YOU MAKE A PREDICTION ABOUT WINNING TODAY? “Before I went to Daytona to run the 24-hour car, before the 24 hour race at Daytona, I had a pretty strong feeling that we would win out here – or had a chance to win. I wouldn’t say we were gonna win, but a lot of things can happen. Ninety percent of the time in our sport the fastest car doesn’t win the race. Today, I feel the fastest car won. The 48 was coming on us at the end, but I was way too loose out there running out front, but when we tested here we were two-tenths a lap faster than the next closest car and a half-second a lap faster on a 20-lap run, so the car was just unbelievably fast. It was a really, really good car. It was easy to drive. The car would cut to the bottom. I could stay way out and make a late apex into the corner and I like this race track. Let’s not forget I was leading here when the transmission broke on the restart last year and I was catching the second-place car when my right-rear tire blew out, so just because I didn’t have good finishes here in the Cup car last year doesn’t mean we didn’t have a chance to win maybe one or two of those races. At Vegas, my chances aren’t real good to win, but I think we have a chance to run up in the top 10 and that’s what we’re gonna do. When we tested there we were about 15th-fastest. Doug has worked really hard on our car and we’re going back to try and be better.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE NEW RULES? “I still feel the inch of spoiler that was taken off was a pretty significant amount. That was a lot of spoiler. They took a half-inch away last year and then to take a whole inch was a pretty bold change. It wouldn’t effect me if they put it back on or not, but what I did find kind of ironic was that my car today – I don’t know about everybody else’s car – my car was real bad behind other cars. If I’m coming up through there and I could get maybe six car lengths from McMurray, I stalled out. I couldn’t do anything and it was just one car by itself. My car would quit turning to the bottom. It’s the same problems that we always have when you’re behind another race car. I don’t think we really got a true feeling for what the new package is gonna be like. When we go to Texas or Atlanta, that’s when you’re gonna see something.”
DID IT CHANGE HOW YOU APPROACHED THE RACE? “I left a lot of that up to Doug Richert and the car chiefs Bobby and Keith. I feel they’re one of the best in the garage at preparing these race cars and they did just a great job getting it ready to go. We approached it like we felt we should have. We spent a lot of time working on race trim because we only had two hours of practice. Normally, we have that much time to work on race trim, but we had to work on that and qualifying, so we made one qualifying run at the very end. Our car was so fast that we knew you can’t change it much to qualify, so why spend a bunch of time with that, but we did. We qualified it and we were way too loose qualifying and I felt that’s where I needed the race car for today. But, it came to find out I was still too loose in the race.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE SETBACKS TODAY? “This was the toughest one of my life to earn, right here today out of any of my victories. We overcame more today than I ever have in a race car. I was pretty upset in the middle of the race. Toward the beginning the car was so loose and I didn’t understand why. We came down pit road and put a full rubber in the left-rear spring, which took a long time to do – longer than I thought it would have taken – but that’s what we needed. I went from running eighth to back in the high twenties. I clearly lost all of my track position on that one pit stop. It’s nothing against the guys. I mean, they did a great job. That’s what we had to do to be good at the end of the race. We came back from that. We got caught on pit road, a lap down. Kurt and I worked together out front and both got our laps back and had to come from the back again. After I got my lap back I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got to free the car up. I’m gonna be back here in traffic and have to start 33rd again.’ My car just won’t turn behind other cars, so I had to free it up some more. Then I got caught out front in clean air and was way, way too loose, but it worked out for me.”
DID YOU GET CLOSE TO LOSING IT AT THE END? “Yeah, I was completely sideways over there coming off of two that one time and lost all my momentum. I looked down at the tach and the thing was down 6500 rpm and had to get going again. Kurt and all the guys closed in probably 20 car lengths probably in that one corner. The next lap I got up there and right when I got to the wall it started to get sideways on me and I eased up and I could just hear the paint touching the fence. It was close, but I was doing everything I could. I was doing what I knew best to do and that was to try not to make a mistake, which you call those making mistakes or you call it just getting every ounce that you can out of the race car. I got every ounce I could out of that race car today. Kurt was really loose too. I was better behind Kurt when he blocked some of the air off the front of my car. When I got around Kurt about three laps later I though, ‘Holy smokes. This thing is really loose out front.’ But that’s the way it goes. It worked out. I was driving my buns off. That’s all I had.”
JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – No. 16 National Guard/Post-It Taurus – COULD YOU SEE HOW LOOSE HE WAS? “No, I couldn’t see that, but it was clear there was more change in cars going from loose to tight than we had anticipated. That was something that didn’t show up in testing. We really didn’t have drafting practice and be able to see that, but we suspected something unusual would occur. I don’t know if it made for more exciting racing for the fans or not, I won’t speak to the change on the spoiler, but I think Goodyear did a really nice job on the tires. They softened the tires up and changed the construction of them so that they would be more compliant on the race track and would be more aggressive and they did that without getting us in trouble. I’m confident that we’ll have no trouble when it gets hotter as well, but it’s been really great to work with Goodyear on this new tire package. As far as the weekend is concerned, I think the fans saw a more exciting Saturday than any Saturday that we’ve been at Fontana. We had two qualifying sessions and a race for them on Saturday and if we package that right, we can save some more time away from home for the teams. The idea of getting our races compressed so we can have two-day events and we can give the fans more excitement will both be in the interest of saving the sponsors and the teams money, and making it more exciting for the fans. I think we made a real important step towards that at this race.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – ON BEING LOOSE. “It’s kind of funny, speaking of aero at Daytona. Tony Stewart smashed in the back of my Duraflame car going into turn three when I was leading. He gave me a pretty hard shot in the left-rear quarterpanel and it bent the sheetmetal out and it was like having a spoiler on the side of the car. The back end would just want to drive around in a circle, so they’re real aero sensitive and that thing being diagonal on there (pop rivet) could definitely block the air on the spoiler or something.”
WHAT ABOUT THE DECISION NOT TO PIT? “You’re always worried when you make a call and what’s even worse about it is when I have to make it myself because I hate it when I’m wrong. Everybody hates it when they’re wrong. We have to make decisions in life all the time. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t – whether you take the right exit to get to the subway or was it the next one on the freeway or the next one back. But I decided that I saw Kurt stay out and I knew it was 30 laps to go and I felt like there were gonna be more cautions. It takes a couple of laps for the tires to come in. We had run only seven laps on our tires, so what is the advantage gonna be? We’re only talking about a five-lap advantage. I felt if a couple guys stayed with us, we needed three guys to stay with us. I think Mark was the only one that stayed, but we needed about three more to stay. Then we knew guys were gonna take two tires, so all of this is going through my head in about 50-75 feet over here. Guys are gonna take two tires. We come in and take four. Some guys are gonna stay out. Where does that put us? I chose to be in front of all of that mayhem instead of back in the middle of it and it looked to be the right decision. I was faster than Kurt. I felt like I would be able to get by him and in clean air I knew my car was fast. I felt even with four new tires, they’re not gonna catch me out front in clean air because they’re gonna have to pass Kurt and they’re gonna have to pass Mark. I didn’t suspect my car was gonna be that loose. I could have been half-a-second a lap faster. I could have put a straightaway on the field if I was just a little bit tighter like I was earlier in the race, but it worked out.”
DO YOU FEEL ALL FIVE ROUSH CARS ARE UP TO THE SAME SPEED? “I really think it kind of speaks for itself today. I think almost all of our cars led a lap. It just says how strong our organization is and how well we share our information and how good our wind tunnel people are. I think it says a lot for our engine program. We saw a lot of engine failures today from different teams and our engines ran really good. This place is hard on engines – a lot of throttle-on time here, and I think it speaks for what is to come this season with our cars. I think Kurt is gonna be really tough. I think Kurt’s looking good and he’s concentrated on repeating his championship.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – “First of all, Mark Martin’s fingerprints are all over the 17 and the 99. Greg pretty much had his own aero package last year and has accentuated that going forward, but we have two kind of little bit different looks at our cars, but we had enough success with both ways of running the cars last year that we knew what we wanted to accentuate and what we wanted to minimize going forward. The cars that we took in testing to Las Vegas and the cars we tested here, both give us encouragement. The other thing that’s really good about our program right now is that the drivers all seemingly approve of one another and they respect one another. When drivers don’t want to work together, it doesn’t matter how close the hardware is, it just works out bad. Anyway, the guys pull for one another, they support one another and give one another racing room. That probably is the most significant thing that we’ve got going – the fact that there is such camaraderie and such approval among the guys. The crew chiefs get along, but especially the drivers get along. So they’re trying to help one another with their cars. Last year was our first year with the Taurus as it’s now configured. We hadn’t had a change in it since ’97, so we didn’t figure out last year until the end of the year what really was the best way to go on a number of things. We understood it by the end of the year and we incorporated it over the winter and I think we’re good to go.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT CARL EDWARDS TODAY? “Carl is a quick study of quick studies. Kurt Busch was a quick study and Greg Biffle has been a quick-study, but Carl has done a really nice job. For somebody with his limited experience and being the young guy in, he’s probably the guy that had the toughest job in terms of earning the respect of the other guys and he’s done that. As far as I know, there’s no resistance of Carl being a rookie. When he’s got the best car, the guys give him racing room and don’t begrudge him racing room.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR AS FAR AS CONFIDENCE? “It means a lot to me. We’re gonna have to be tough. I think our team is capable of making the chase. I’m gonna have to dig deep at Loudon and Martinsville and all the other places that we race that are in the chase. That’s what’s gonna determine my future is how hard we work and how focused I can stay on those race tracks and perform well. I don’t know what to say. I know Jimmie and Kurt are gonna be very tough. There are gonna be some other guys that are gonna be tough – the 24 – all of our teammates, Mark and Matt and Carl. Shoot, he’s got a limited amount of experience but he’s shown a lot of promise. All of us have equal equipment, it’s just about track position, who had a good pit stop, who didn’t, whose engine didn’t have any problems, got enough fuel mileage, can stay out. All of those things play a factor when you’ve got equal equipment. It’s anybody’s game.”
FORDS WERE BETTER TODAY. “One thing you’ve got to look at when you compare that is you’ve gotta compare how many Fords there are in percentage and how many teams are there? There are only two teams – it’s Yates and us. If neither one of us hit on it, there aren’t gonna be any Fords in the front, and restrictor plate racing is a funny thing. It’s very tough to get your car to handle and to get your car to be fast – to have the right amount of downforce – to have friends on the race track. I was trying to win the Bud Shootout and I’ve got the 24 behind me and the 48 in front of me. I was dead in the water, but my car was OK at Daytona. There were some cars that were faster, but I don’t know. We like to focus on this stuff more than Daytona and Talladega because there are 32 of them and only four of those. Whether you’re gonna get caught up in a wreck or not is like rolling the dice as well at those places. Here, you stand a better chance of your own destiny by staying out of an accident or something. So that’s the way it goes.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – “I was trying to think if it was three or four that got significant damage during the race, so that basically took them out. At Daytona, I don’t know what it’s gonna be like at Talladega, but at Daytona if you had two cars on the inside to pass two cars on the outside you have to have three cars that were willing to work together and would stay together and wouldn’t try to jink one another and juggle around. You can’t expect the Chevrolets to work with the Fords or the Dodges to work with the Fords. The drivers on a one-on basis make deals with other drivers that will work with them for awhile, but the relationship with the manufacturers comes to bear. All the guys are lined up with one manufacturer or the other. Chrysler makes their deals and Chevrolet does and Ford and the guys respect that. So we didn’t really have enough cars left that were in any shape to go help Kurt for instance. It was amazing he was able to finish where he did, but if Greg had been there and if Matt had been there or Carl or Mark with a good sound car that wasn’t damaged, I think we could have looked much better. People look at the qualifying for these races and DEI has been really dominant in the restrictor plate racing and NASCAR has tightened up some things with what they do with the springs and their inspection process. Some of the advantage that they seemed to have had for qualifying doesn’t appear to be there, but they still race really good. I think Hendrick has caught up. I think that we’ve done a pretty good job. Robert and his bunch have done a pretty good job. It all comes down that all the teams are well supported by engineering, they’ve got enough money to buy the tires and go do the testing and have competitive wages for their people. There isn’t a lack of adequate money to do the deal. There isn’t a lack of technology. It comes down to who runs over a piece of trash on the race track or who is close to somebody else when they make a mistake of judgment and collect them. The thing Greg referred to in terms of the broken parts, who is in the top 10 will be determined more by the parts that break and the mindless things that happen on the race track than they will who has blinding speed. There’s gonna be plenty of speed out there.”
ON THE RACE TRACKS. “These are racers race tracks. The Daytona and Talladega tracks are momentum tracks. You go out there and you just hang out. It’s easy for me to say because I’m not in the car, but you basically hang out and see what’s gonna happen. But the racers come to the front at these mile and a half and two-mile race tracks. I mean, we’re gonna get it on here in the next four or five races.”
GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – “Speaking of restrictor plate racing just for a second. The driver cannot make that race car go an ounce faster, ever. We can’t do a dang thing to make that car go any faster. All we can do is position ourselves in a line or another and work on the chassis a little bit. That’s all we can do. Last week at the 500 the 48 car moved up and wanted that center lane because Junior and I were going to the front and there wasn’t room for him. He was gonna get turned into the fence in the wrong direction, like the 3 car did, and I got out of his way. I moved up the race track to avoid that accident, to avoid wrecking the 48 car, and got myself in a predicament because I was sideways trying to avoid turning him into the fence the wrong direction. Not everybody saw exactly what happened there, but then as I was trying to gather it back up, the 10 came down and hit me. But that’s just the way it goes. We do all we can to watch out for one another on those race tracks like that and there just wasn’t enough room for him right there.”
ANY SYMBOLISM WITH 3 NATIVE SONS BATTLING IT OUT AT THE END ON THE WEST COAST? “Yeah, that’s kind of neat. I never paid attention to that, but it was kind of fun. I really wish a caution would have come out so all of us could have come in and got four tires and worked on our chassis a little bit. Then we could have had a little shootout because I had a pretty sporty race car and was real too loose there at the end there. I wanted a chance to race with those guys some more, but I was excited to see the checkered flag when it was. They were coming at me because I was a little handicapped there, but it’s kind of neat that we were out there. It’s too bad Kasey Kahne had trouble. He’s got a lot of talent, but things aren’t going his way, yet.”
