Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Save Mart 350 (Sonoma Raceway)
Friday Advance (June 22, 2012)
Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion, met with media at Sonoma after the first practice session Friday afternoon where he was the 13th fastest.
CARL EDWARDS, No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion — TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR PRACTICE OUT THERE TODAY. “We went testing a little bit and Marcos Ambrose has been helping our team, him and his crew chief Todd (Parrott) and we are working hard on trying to make sure we picked the right setup and get a good qualifying run and want to get our first road course win in the Cup series together. Bob and I, that is what we want to do this weekend. We feel like we have been fast at these road courses. We have been on the pole once at Watkins Glen and we have had some good runs but we are just trying to have a good solid weekend and practice went pretty well. We have Aflac on board and they have been a great partner and have a lot of folks out here this weekend. We have people out here visiting and enjoying the area. It is a lot of fun to come here and hopefully we have a good qualifying run.”
GUYS HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT PAYBACK AT THIS TRACK AND RAMPED UP AGGRESSION. WHAT DO YOU THINK? “There are a lot of opportunities here to not just pay somebody back but to make mistakes and bump into people and be overly aggressive. I have run into other people and run into the walls and tire barriers and axle hopped here, pretty much everything. Most of the time it is the best strategy, for me it has been best to race as hard as I can and give everyone as much respect as I can and try to get a good solid finish. Last year I think we saw one of the most aggressive races I have seen here. That could definitely be what happens again on Sunday. My plan is to be as aggressive as I can without ruining somebody’s day. That is the plan.
IS THAT FUN OR IS IT AGGRAVATING? “I like racing here a lot. I really like the green flag runs, the longer runs when you can start working a guy over and march through the field finding peoples weak spots and racing that way. The restarts here can be pretty difficult. They can be really crazy if you are in the middle of the pack and surrounded by guys that aren’t racing for the same things you are racing for. This is their event to go shine and sometimes you can get really run over by some of those guys. You have to do a really good job at this race of standing your ground and treating everybody the way you want to be treated and the key is to stay up front. Those guys up front race really hard here but it seems like the top five or six guys you have a good respectful race. Either way, we can do it either way. We can run up in the front or fight all day in the back. Whatever we end up with I can assure you we are giving our best effort at this track. This is, I think, a bottleneck for the Chase. If you come out of here with a good solid run, there can be some guys that don’t have a good run and you can shake the points up.”
WHAT IS YOUR VIEWPOINT ON THE INCIDENT LAST YEAR WITH BIFFLE AND BORIS SAID AND DO YOU THINK THINGS GET A LITTLE DANGEROUS? “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t see what happened there and can’t recall. This is racing. There are just more corners you know? It seems when you get more corners you get more opportunities for people to take advantage of people in those corners. At these road races it is hard to get away and every once in awhile you will have a situation where a couple guys beat on each other hard for a couple laps and get madder and madder. That is racing. We go out here racing and at the end of the day if people aren’t happy with each other I would hope they work it out however they have to. I don’t think there is too much emotion in our sport at all. I think our sport has a good mix of respectful competition and guys that aren’t afraid to say they don’t appreciate what happened. It seems to be entertaining because we are talking a lot about it. I think we are okay. I think it is good.”
Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, met with media members after practice Friday and before qualifying at Sonoma.
GREG BIFFLE, No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR PRACTICE AND THE RACE ON SUNDAY. “Our practice went fairly decent. When the track was green when we first went out our car was pretty good and then it got worse as it went. Maybe we have a little work to do. In qualifying trim we didn’t really pick up a whole lot. We picked up a couple tenths which isn’t much. We will keep working on it. I think my qualifying run there that I made I had to lift off the gas and got a little out of shape. As long as that doesn’t happen again in qualifying I think we will able to get in the top-10.”
HOW MUCH PRACTICE AND TESTING HAVE YOU DONE LEADING INTO THIS RACE? “We have been to VIR one time testing. We were going to go back and do some brake testing but we never did. It always takes a couple laps to get used to this place and kind of get going again and used to braking and shifting. I almost over ran turn 11 my first time around. I was a little excited about where the braking zone is and was a little deep and that is probably what got me a fast lap.”
WHY DO TEMPERS SEEM TO FLARE HERE MORE THAN AT OTHER TRACKS? “Well, because of our side by side double file restarts this race track tends to create a lot of drama because it is so difficult to get in the corner. This track certainly has room for two cars but it builds up debris and sand and dirt and grass and rubber right outside of where the guy runs. Ultimately it ends up being one lane wide. When you start side by side it makes it really tough to get down in that first corner or up at the top of the hill. If you think about it, when you are in a traffic jam or are going along and everybody slows down to make a corner and you are row 10, you are stopped a long ways from the corner waiting for those guys to take their turn to go around the corner before you get there. The thing gets fanned out and guys try to think that is an opportunity to make up three or four spots or rows and you end up with guys in the dirt, guys slamming into you, guys driving in where there is no room to drive into. You get fenders rubbing the tire and you have to pit and fix it. That is why tempers get a little bit stirred up here more than any other place because there is just not the room. There is the room but when you come to a first gear corner, everyone is flying down the front stretch then everybody has to go down to first gear and wait their turn almost.”
BORIS SAID IS HERE THIS WEEKEND. HAVE YOU GUYS PATCHED THINGS UP AT ALL? “No. We talked on the phone and it is what it is. It is different when you come out and run one or two races a season then when you are running for the points. It is different. You have different goals in mind. If I was in his shoes a 15th place finish doesn’t matter. It is not even on the radar. They are just different goals.”
YOU ARE THIRD IN THE STANDINGS. HOW DO YOU RATE YOUR ROAD COURSE SKILLS TO MAINTAIN THAT SPOT? “I think that I do pretty well or pretty decent on a road course. The whole thing we were just talking about is the restarts. How is that going to play into whether you have your fender beat in or stay on the race track as far as that goes. I think we have good cars and pretty good strategy and did a lot of brake testing and they seem to be really good. I feel like I can come out of here with a top-five fairly easily. That being said, you can get off the race track and something can happen too. As long as we don’t run out of gas and keep on the course I think we will come out of here with a decent finish.”
DID YOU FEEL ANY OF THE MOISTURE ON THE RACE TRACK? DID IT CHANGE ANYTHING? “I certainly would like to hope that is why my qualifying runs weren’t very fast. That didn’t hurt everybody else though. It looked wet to me through the windshield, the race track looked wet or kind of dark like it was damp but it seemed like it still had grip. It wasn’t really enough rain to probably put the caution out but it was hard to tell whether it truly had any moisture on it.”
