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[/media-credit]Ford Finishing Order:
4th – Matt Kenseth
5th – Greg Biffle
9th – Carl Edwards
16th – Marcos Ambrose
23rd – Aric Almirola
26th – Casey Mears
27th – David Gilliland
28th – Reed Sorenson
30th – David Ragan
39th – Josh Wise
40th – Michael McDowell
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Ford EcoBoost Ford Fusion – “It was a good run for us, not great. I wish we could have got up there and mixed it up with the top two a little bit more, but overall, it was a solid day. We had good pit stops. Jimmy and the guys made great adjustments on our car to make it better from yesterday to today. We were just a little short and had that one bad restart that got us behind and we just weren’t quite strong enough to get up there again.”
CAN YOU PINPOINT WHAT YOU NEEDED TO GET UP WITH THE 56 AND 11? “That one run we could and, really, we didn’t change much but we could never get it back there. One set of tires we had on the car was just really fast and the car did everything I wanted it to do. We were faster than the leader the whole run and we just could never get it back after that. We didn’t really change anything and went right back to that, but just couldn’t get it. The track changed or something just for a little while.”
HOW WAS YOUR DAY? “I’ve got thank all the guys who worked on this car. Jimmy and the guys did a great job on this Ford EcoBoost Fusion. I was not happy with it at all this weekend and they made a lot of changes this morning and last night and it drove a lot better today. We were a little bit off. I got that one just horrendously awful restart in the middle of the race and we could just never quite get it exactly right, but it was a good day for us.”
HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE DRIVER TODAY? “I’d give him about a C. I had a pretty good car, but on that restart I gave up four or five starts. It’s really fun. It’s too bad they have to tear this up because of all the different grooves you can run. Depending on how your car is handling really makes it fun as a driver. I thought it was great racing, so I was glad to be a part of it. I wish I could have been up there with Martin and Denny and duked it out with them, but it was a good day for us.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – “It was a tough day. We were back and forth all day and were just off a little bit. When the track had a lot of grip the car was unbelievable. It fired off there and I thought, ‘This is gonna be a lot of fun,’ and then when the track started getting slick she started going away a little bit. We just kept after it and didn’t give up.”
IS IT A DISAPPOINTING DAY TO FINISH FIFTH? “It’s not a disappointing day for a fifth-place finish, it’s probably a disappointing day for how the car ran. I thought we were gonna be a little better than that and we weren’t, but we’ll keep working on it and come back better the next time.”
SOME TEAMS HAD ENGINE ISSUES BUT YOU DIDN’T. “I’m glad we didn’t have any problems with the engines and this will give the guys a chance to go home and look at all the data and maybe learn something about how we were or how much margin we had.”
YOU WERE PRETTY STRONG. “Yeah, really strong. It feels good to be disappointed with a fifth-place finish. It feels good to be in that position. We just wanted to run better. Fifth is OK, but we wanted to compete better on the race track and be a little closer.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – “That was a good effort. It wasn’t a great result, but a really good effort. I had a lot of fun racing Kyle at the end. That was really neat. I acted like we were racing for the win and I think he was doing the same thing, so at least we got to have a little fun. That was a good time. If that’s the worst Roush Fenway Ford, then we’re gonna be OK.”
WITH SUCH HIGH HOPES IS IT DISAPPOINTING NOT TO DO BETTER? “Oh yeah, I want to win here more than anything, but we get to come back and we’ll do it. Right now I’d take second, that would be great but we’ll keep digging. I cannot thank everyone enough for the support out there. It’s been unbelievable. It’s so neat for me to come here. It’s humbling and I can’t wait to come back.”
CASEY MEARS – No. 13 Geico Ford Fusion – “This is the most we’ve been off in a long time. We just really struggled the whole weekend. We threw a totally different setup at it for the race kind of hoping to learn something before the weekend was out and we did, but it was too far off in the beginning. We got it better through the middle, but we didn’t finish well at all and it didn’t go our way. For sure, this is the most we’ve been off since we started this year.”
