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[/media-credit]FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES
Kobalt Tools 400 Qualifying
March 9, 2012
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Ford Qualifying Results:
9th – Greg Biffle
11th – Matt Kenseth
15th – Marcos Ambrose
21st – Carl Edwards
25th – Trevor Bayne
27th – Aric Almirola
32nd – Casey Mears
33rd – Josh Wise
34th – David Gilliland
35th – David Ragan
39th – Michael McDowell
41st – Ken Schrader
42nd – Timmy Hill
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – “I’m a little disappointed. Maybe I held it out a little too long getting into turn three, but it didn’t seem like it wanted to turn to the bottom. That’s where I lost my time. I curious to look at the lap tracker to see where I was at going across one and two. I think I was pretty good getting to three, but when I started down into three it started chattering and it didn’t want to get to the bottom. I had to slow down a little bit and that hurt me, but we’re still up there pretty good.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Zest Ford Fusion – “I hope it ends up in the top 10. I thought it was an improvement from practice, we’ve just been off since we got here. It was an improvement and I felt like I got everything out of it, but we’re not quite as strong as we were last time yet.”
TREVOR BAYNE – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – “It was OK. We’re in the show, I guess, which is the thing we’ve got to focus on in qualifying. It wasn’t exactly the run I wanted. I wanted to get through the bumps in one and two a little bit better and we just hit the track and it took off up through there. We picked up a little bit from practice, so we’ll see how it ends up. I think we can race because we’ll have a good car, so it’s all right. We’re in the show and we can race from there.”
JOSH WISE – No. 26 Front Row Motorsports Ford Fusion – “It means a lot because this deal is real important to me. I’m putting my all into it and want to do the best I can with it and I’ve got good cars with these guys at Front Row Motorsports. I enjoy working with everyone over there and it’s awesome. I hope we can keep doing this every week and be one of the faster go-or-go home cars like this because it’s pretty cool, but it’s a lot of stress. I think I’ve taken a couple years off my life just in the last few weeks.” HOW WAS YOUR LAP? “My lap was good. The track picked up a lot of grip in one and two with the shade. I was expecting there to be more grip, but there was even more than I expected and it worked out well. The car stuck good and even though we were pretty loose in three and four the car was fast.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford Fusion – “I wish we could have picked up some. Every time you go out to qualify you always hope you can pick up a little bit. That’s about what we ran in practice, so we probably could have made some more adjustments on our Ford. We’re locked in the show and we don’t want to do anything too crazy out there, but you always want to be better in qualifying than your last run in practice. Now we’ll just go to work tomorrow in practice and try to get it better in race trim.”
TIMMY HILL – No. 37 Poynt.com Ford Fusion – “It means so much. These guys work so hard and for it to finally come together is awesome. We missed it last week by three-hundredths of a second and you can’t even think about how small that is, but these guys worked so hard to get this car back to where it needs to be. I think it turns great. This Ford Fusion with the Poynt.com sponsorship on it is awesome. I can put the power down and it just went straight to the bottom. This is an awesome feeling. These guys are all pumped and it’s just a great moment.” DOES THE NATIONWIDE ROOKIE OF THE YEAR AWARD GIVE YOU THE CONFIDENCE YOU CAN DO THIS AT THE CUP LEVEL? “Winning the rookie of the year gave us something that we had to work for last year. You want to do well in the championship battle, but the rookie battle really gave us something to focus on as a team. We pulled together and achieved that, so over the off-season we all felt like we accomplished something. All of their hard work paid off and we’ve taken that attitude toward this Cup program and it’s really working out now.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion – “It felt pretty good, I just didn’t do a very good job of getting all I could get. It surprised me how much grip the race track had. I left a lot out there, I guess.”
