Ford Finishing Order:
6th – Carl Edwards
7th – Greg Biffle
9th – David Gilliland
11th – AJ Allmendinger
19th – Andy Lally
29th – Travis Kvapil
32nd – Marcos Ambrose
34th – Terry Labonte
36th – Matt Kenseth
39th – David Ragan
40th – Trevor Bayne
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 21 Good Sam Ford Fusion (Finished 40th) – “That was one of the harder hits I’ve taken, just because it was so much of a frontal impact across the track, off the apron, all the way to the wall. I don’t know who got us. I saw the 6 blowing up in front of us, so I keyed up the mike. I’m like, ‘It’s getting crazy in front of me, Greg.’ I was on Greg Biffle’s radio at the time. As soon as I said that they blew up, Greg got off of me because I yelled, “Blowing up, blowing up.’ He got off of me and at the same time the 2 car got hooked somehow. I don’t know that they triggered each other, I just saw the 2 get hooked at the same time the 6 was on fire. He goes across the track, I saw him hit the outside wall, but then I don’t know who caught us in the right-rear and sent us. But I thought we were safe. I was like, ‘Man, that was close,’ and about the time I said that I was headed toward the outside wall, so not a fun ride.”
IT LOOKED LIKE A GREAT CAR. “It really was. I was excited about it because anytime Greg and I wanted to go, we would go right to the front. We led some laps there. We hung out in the back when we wanted to. I thought we were kind of out of harm’s way there, but, obviously, we weren’t far enough back out of it.” HOW HARD IS IT TO COMMUNICATE? “It actually worked out well. Our mikes are cued to where we can override each other, so if I mike up and say, ‘Hey, they’re crashing,’ he can get off of me. Greg did a really good job of backing off, but it was just somebody else that got us.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 39th) – HOW IS THE COMMUNICATION? “It’s hard. The first caution when someone wrecked on the back straightaway, Paul Menard was spotting for me and I didn’t even really get what was going on, so it’s a little tough not to have your guy in the ear. Hopefully, NASCAR will look at it and make some decisions where we don’t have to race like this anymore, but as long as the rules are how they are, we’re gonna keep going because that’s the fast way around the race track. I just hate our UPS team got caught up in a wreck today.”
HOW INTENSE IS IT OUT THERE? “You’re absolutely on top of it 100 percent of the time, and driving 100 percent – that’s ultimately what will cause some accidents. It’s exciting. It’s different. I haven’t figured out whether I like it or not, but your heart is racing the whole time. You feel like you’re at Bristol.”
WHAT HAPPENED? “I was just down the back straightaway. Matt and I were just cruising and I smelled smoke and oil, like someone was blowing up. I looked at our gauges and I thought it was me at first, and then I realized it wasn’t and then I saw the 2 spin and someone clipped us in our right-rear quarter and I was just along for the ride.”
DO YOU THINK FANS LIKE THIS RACING? “If every fan had a scanner and could really see the big picture, it’s very intriguing and exciting. You don’t have the big packs that you used to have, but it is something that’s different and it would be very interesting to sit up there and try to watch.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Crown Royal Black Ford Fusion (Finished 36th) – YOU AVOIDED TO WRECKS, BUT WHAT HAPPENED ON THIS ONE? “I really don’t know. I was just following Kurt and we were going straight on the bottom and the next thing I knew I was head-on into the wall, so I really don’t know what happened. Obviously, somebody got into my right-rear and got us up in the wall, but I don’t know. You can’t see anything. All you can see is the spoiler in front of you and I was just trying to stay on Kurt and wait until the end. Kurt is extremely good at this and we were able to work our way up in there. I thought we were gonna have a shot there at the end, but you knew there were gonna be a bunch more of these wrecks. I mean, it was hard to balance what to do.”
YOU HAD A GOOD CAR. “I think everybody has a pretty good car depending on who you’re getting shoved by and who is shoving you, so I don’t know. I was just going straight on the bottom following Kurt and got hit in the right-rear and put me straight in the wall. I don’t really know what happened to cause that. Obviously, something happened beside me that got somebody into my right-rear. I didn’t even know it was coming, just driving straight hoping to miss the rest of the bullets and get to the end and just got in a wreck.”
WHETHER IT’S A BIG PACK OR TWO-CAR TANDEMS, THIS KIND OF STUFF HAPPENS HERE AT TALLADEGA. “I guess. This two-car thing is really hard as a driver. If you’re the tail car, you can’t see anything. All you can see is the spoiler in front of you and going that fast and not being able to see is not the most comforting feeling. You catch people real fast and you have to have a lot of faith in the guy in front of you, and you’re gonna spin people out because they make a quick move and you’re shoving them as hard as you can shove them doing 200 miles an hour, if they make a move too quick, they’re gonna crash. It’s a difficult environment to race in to say the least.”
IS IT BETTER THAN IT HAS BEEN HERE FROM THE OLD STYLE? “Ever since I’ve been coming to Talladega or watching Talladega, everytime you interview somebody that has crashed they’re like, ‘Oh, this racing is terrible. Somebody is gonna get hurt.’ I mean, it’s been the same thing, but it’s different. Before, at least you can kind of control your own destiny and you can draft a little bit. Here, if you don’t have a car locked on you and shoving you, or vice versa, you’re gonna get lapped in 15-20 laps and it’s really hard.”
HOW WAS THE RADIO COMMUNICATION? “It actually helped. When David was helping me so much in the beginning and we were having so much success, we were both on my channel and it really helped because he was behind me and I could tell him the moves I was gonna make before I made them, but I still think at the end of the day it would probably be better for everybody to have their own radio and everybody be able to see where they’re going. That would probably be a good way to do it.”
DAVID SAID HE DIDN’T TALK TO HIS SPOTTER THE FIRST PART OF THE RACE. “We’re locked together and he’s using my spotter, so instead of having a 15-foot car, you’ve got a 30-foot car you’re spotting for, so it’s really not much difference, but it’s kind of like trailer racing, where the guy behind you can’t see anything. He’s just staying on your bumper and controlling his water temp.”
HOW WOULD YOU ALLEVIATE THE VISION PROBLEM AS THE PUSHER? “It makes it a worse problem because you’re pushing somebody as hard as you can and you can’t see what’s in front of him, so you don’t know it he’s catching somebody 30 miles an hour or five miles an hour. You don’t know what’s going on. If he makes a quick move, if you’re not ready for it, that’s how people get spun out because their car is moving one way and you don’t know where they’re going. I think as long as we race at these kind of tracks we’re gonna have wrecks, that’s part of it, but this way is hard. It’s easier in a way because you don’t have a huge pack, but it’s also hard because you can’t really see anything that’s going on and you’re going extremely fast. There could be somebody dead stopped on the track and you’re gonna push the guy in front of you head-on into him because you can’t see anything. So that makes it difficult.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Finished 6th) – “If that doesn’t sell some tickets, I don’t know what will. I don’t know what it looked like from the outside, but from inside it looked like about eight drivers doing some seriously precision driving. That was pretty wild. I have to see the replay, but I squeezed between Harvick and Bowyer at the finish line with Greg pushing me. You talk about some commitment. At that point, you just have to trust everybody’s instincts. Kevin and Clint, I don’t think they knew I was there, but they had the instincts to give me enough room in case somebody went there, and I had everything but an inch. We squeezed the car together and everybody kept it going straight. That’s spectacular.”
HOW WAS THE RADIO CONVERSATION TODAY? “That’s all there is. You’ve got to have that guy on your radio. Greg Biffle is the man. He is a smart racer. I’m lucky to have him as a teammate. That was good. He’s really good at understanding the draft and what’s gonna happen to each car, and that’s what I needed. Marcos Ambrose and I worked really well together at the beginning, too. I hated to see him go away, but Greg had the plan. It was wait until the time we waited to go and it worked out perfectly.”
IT SEEMED THE GUYS THAT ENDED UP FRONT WERE HANGING AT THE BACK MOST OF THE DAY. “The only teams that ended up at the front at the end of it is where they were running. If the car is all torn up, you can’t be there. It could go either way. I’ve been torn up in the back, too, so you take a risk when you run back there just the same.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Finished 7th) – “We knew that we just needed to wait until it got strung out there at the end and it got strung out. I’ve got to see this finish on camera because I was scraping against the wall and had it to the floor and said, ‘I don’t care what happens.’ Man, I don’t know what it looked like on TV, but it was pretty exciting from my point of view. It was great to work with Carl. I feel bad we didn’t get a chance to work with Matt today. Matt was the guy we worked with in practice, but signing 3M for three more years after this one is something I’m really excited about. I had a good time today.”
ANYTHING YOU COULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENT? “I think we had it, other than we got pulled apart a little bit. We needed to go to the bottom. I was trying to say, ‘Bottom, bottom,’ when the 33 got his run on his. That might have made the difference and maybe got us a little closer, but I’ve got to see a TV to see how it looked.”
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 34 Taco Bell Ford Fusion (Finished 9th) – WOULD YOU LIKE TO RUN RESTRICTOR PLATE RACES EVERY WEEK? “Yeah, I wish. We’ve just really got to work hard on our program to be able to run like this every week. We’re getting closer. We’ve had some bad luck lately and we needed a good run to pump our team back up. I’m really proud of the guys. They had great pit stops. We had to replace a fan during the race and it just worked out well at the end.”
WHO DID YOU WORK WITH MOST OF THE DAY? “Tony Stewart and I stuck together all day. He picked me over his teammate, so I’m really thankful for his help.”
DO YOU LIKE THIS TWO-CAR DRAFT SCENARIO? “Yeah, I like it. It’s different, but I feel like we’ve got a pretty good handle on it and what we need to do, and then our cars drive well here. That’s the most important thing is getting stuff where it drives good. That’s the biggest thing. If we come to the race track with competitive cars, we’re gonna run competitively.”
