Ford Notes and Quotes From Texas

CARL EDWARDS - No. 99 Scotts Ford Fusion (Finished 33rd) - "Tony was on two tires. Jeff was on four and Jeff kind of got Tony up in the third lane and I was gonna follow Jeff down through the middle. There just wasn't enough time. Tony started down just a little right there and that's all it took. It's just really hard racing. It's too bad that many cars got torn up, but our Scotts Fusion was pretty good today. I just hate to end it like that. Fortunately, we've got the Nationwide race to run next, but, it's not the way we wanted to end this one here." HOW DID YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENED? JEFF TOOK BLAME FOR IT. "That was 50-50 between him and I. I thought he was gonna stay up there in the third lane, so I was gonna follow Jeff through the middle. He started down a little bit, but there really wasn't enough time probably for his spotter - he probably had no clue I was sticking my nose in there. It was just too much. I thought he was gonna save it and it's just too bad that we tore up all those race cars, but it's hard racing. It's a double-file restart and there are guys with four tires and guys with two tires and every once in a while you'll have a wreck like that. That's definitely not what we needed there."

KASEY KAHNE - No. 9 Budweiser Ford Fusion (Finished 5th) - HOW DID YOU FINISH FIFTH? "About six of them disappeared in front of me and we were left. We had a decent car. It was real loose. The front was pretty good, but the back was really loose the whole race in our Budweiser Ford so it was just kind of a struggle. Once you get back there you're pretty equal with a lot of cars, so we needed some cars to disappear." HOW WAS YOUR DAY? "We had a good run. We started fifth, so it was a pretty decent day. We fell back at one point. The car was pretty loose the whole race, so we just fell back trying to work on it and make the right adjustments. It was a fine line, so we never really got it, but we had a good finish. The team did a good job and it was nice this weekend to get a top five, so it was good for our Budweiser Ford." A NICE WAY TO END THE WEEK? "Yeah, it was a nice ending. I would have loved to win, like everybody here, but it was a good ending. We've had a great week and the team did an awesome job today. They stepped up and we got a top five. We probably weren't the fifth-fastest car, but that's where we ended up. We needed that, so it was good for us."

ELLIOTT SADLER - No. 19 Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford Fusion (Finished
18th) - "We started off pretty good, but we still have to work on our communication a little bit. We're still a young team and Wally is crew chiefing a lot of times for the first time at these tracks, so he and I still have to work on our communication. We just couldn't get the car better. We started off decent at the beginning and felt like we had something to work with, but we just never could get it better and get it in the race track like we needed to. We salvaged the best possible finish we could get, but you always want a little bit more.
We'll regroup again and go to Talladega and see if we can get them there."

AJ ALLMENDINGER - No. 43 Insignia/Best Buy Ford Fusion (Finished 13th) - "I'm proud of the whole Insignia/Best Buy Ford team. Everybody on the 43 did a great job. The car was really fast. We were a little bit tight to begin with and just kept fine-tuning and making the car better. There was so much grass on the race track. At one point we got grass in the grille and basically had to fight 150 laps to get our lap back, but the car was so fast. At the end, the car was the best it had been on the outside for that restart, but we had nowhere to go.
It could have been a lot better, but it could have been a lot worse.
We'll take it." YOU GOT LUCKY IN THAT MULTI-CAR WRECK. "We got the right side damaged a little bit. The toe is pretty knocked out, so that last restart we were behind all the lapped cars. The toe was knocked out and at that point you just want to survive. Like I said, it would have been a lot better. We outran the 9 and those guys all day and they finished fifth, so I think we could have had a lot better, but we also could have been in that mess." WHAT ABOUT THE SPOILER COMPARED TO THE WING IN RACE CONDITIONS? "It's still tight.
I was really tight behind other cars, but once I got on my own I was really fast. I think it's just us as a race team to keep working on making the front of the car better because it's gonna be tight. If somebody got to the outside of you, it made it loose like the old car used to, but it was a good start."

DAVID RAGAN - No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 15th) - YOU HAD SOME DAMAGE ON THE FRONT OF THE NOSE AND YOU HAD TO MAKE AN EXTRA STOP DOWN PIT ROAD FOR REPAIRS. "That damage did kind of hurt us, and that was just from bumper tag from coming down pit road. Our car wasn't that good all day, but we kept making adjustments. When we lost that little bit of track position we did have from having to fix the damage on the nose, it just killed us. I think we started that run from when we had to come back from pit road, in the mid 20s. We just couldn't catch a break. When you're borderline working on the chassis all day, you need to have a couple breaks, and our UPS team didn't have that today. A 15th-place finish is better than what we've been the last few races, but it's definitely not what we're looking for."

GREG BIFFLE - No. 16 Post-It/3M Ford Fusion (Finished 10th) - "It wasn't a bad day. It's too bad we had a flat tire right there at the end of the race. We made a mistake and put two lefts on, and probably should have done four, but it's so easy to be a Monday morning quarterback after the fact. The car was super-tight with two tires, but we ended up 10th. We had a car that we could have won with if we were up front and had track position, but it hurts when you've got a better car than that and that's where you finish. That flat tire killed us." WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE SPOILER? "I like the spoiler better because it drives a lot better. I like the feel of the car. The car turns a little bit better on corner exit and gets a little looser racing around guys, so you've got to drive her a little harder and pay attention."

DAVID GILLILAND - No. 37 Taco Bell Ford Fusion (Finished 29th) - "It was a super-long day. We ended up breaking a rear swaybar mount out of the chassis on lap two, so that made our day obviously very, very long. The car was super-tight and we just fought it and tried to survive. We've got some work to do on our chassis. We've got to beef up a couple areas and make them a little bit stronger, but we'll work on it. We got all three cars in the top 35 for Front Row Motorsports, so, overall, it was a good day."

PAUL MENARD - No. 98 Quaker State/Menards Ford Fusion (Finished 35th) - "We had a fast Ford for sure, but it just took us a long time to get going on restarts. We were hitting the splitter a little bit too hard. When we had those two or three long green-flag runs, that was when our car was the best. We could make up a lot of ground, but it was one of those deals at the end where you kind of knew it was going to happen." WHAT DID YOU SEE DEVELOPING THAT LED TO THE MULTI-CAR WRECK? "It was so hard to pass all race long we knew that if we were going to have a caution with 20 lap to go that people were gonna try to make moves. Once it gets strung out, it's real hard to pass and that's what happened." WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE SPOILER? "The car drove a little bit different. You turned off the wall a little bit tighter and it rotated really good off the gas, but the car seemed to get a little bit tighter than with the wing. I don't know if it was just this track or if it's our setup, but we'll know more in the weeks ahead."