Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
STP Gas Booster 500 (Martinsville Speedway)
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Ford Finishing Order:
6th – Brad Keselowski
8th – Marcos Ambrose
9th – Greg Biffle
15th – Carl Edwards
16th – Casey Mears
20th – Aric Almirola
23rd – Joey Logano
25th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
28th – David Gilliland
30th – David Ragan
32nd – Ken Schrader
35th – Josh Wise
41st – Scott Speed
42nd – Scott Riggs
43rd – Michael McDowell
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – THAT APPEARED TO BE A HARD-FOUGHT SIXTH-PLACE FINISH. “They’ve all been hard-fought. We seem to run sixth here every time. Sixth is good, but it’s just not great. We want to be able to win here and just haven’t been strong enough to do that. We’ve been strong enough to be proud of what we’ve done, and I’m proud of where we are right here today, but the 48 car is on another level. His car is so much better than everybody else that he just plays with everybody the whole race just to make it look good. That’s pretty obvious, but I feel like if we can get our car where he’s at, I can beat him.”
A GOOD BATTLE WITH KYLE FOR FIFTH. “Yeah, it was just a matter of how hard I wanted to work him over. There’s a proper amount to work somebody over for a win and a proper amount to work somebody over for a fifth or a sixth. I worked him enough to feel proud about it.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – “Our car was way too tight and I had to keep working on it. I made an adjustment with the track bar to try and turn better, but it didn’t work out for me. It was a pretty hard-fought day. I’m pretty happy about a top-10.”
YOUR ORGANIZATION HAS STRUGGLED AT THIS TRACK, SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GET A TOP-10 FINISH HERE? “We were gonna be better than that, but we’re just not living right. If you look at all of the restarts today, we started on the bottom only twice. That’s where all of our track position went. We drove to 10th and would start on the outside and then get back in line 16th or 17th. We did that a lot, where we had to restart on the outside and that just killed us. There was no outside groove whatsoever and that really hurt on the restarts. Everybody really wanted the bottom, but we still finished in the top-10, so I’m pretty happy about that.”
MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 9 Stanley Ford Fusion – “It was a hard day, but we’ve got to be pleased with the weekend. We qualified on the front row and finished in the top 10, so for us that’s a win. It’s something to build on and we’ll go to next week with a bit more confidence and get our team really rolling.”
YOU HAD TO BATTLE FOR THE INSIDE ALL DAY. “You had to fight like a dog to try to get to the inside. I made a couple people mad out there, but that’s just Martinsville and that’s the way it goes. If you get hung out there, there’s just nothing you can do – you’re just along for the ride. The tire here today didn’t really wear into the track much and that second groove never came in.”
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR THIS TEAM TO HAVE A FINISH LIKE THIS AFTER A BIT OF A STRUGGLE TO START THE YEAR? “It’s just something to build on. For us a top 10 is like a win. We just needed to get the monkey off our back and this will hopefully get us rolling and get some mojo back for our team. We learned a lot this weekend. We tested last week, which helped a lot as well, so it should all work out.”
CASEY MEARS – No. 13 Geico Ford Fusion – “It was a struggle of a day. We had a really good car and I felt like we could have been somewhere between 10th and 12th. It was just some of the decisions and how it turned out that put us back where we were, but we had a little bit of trouble on pit road with losing spots. A majority of the time we did well, but a couple of key ones we lost some spots. There at the end we came in and got tires versus staying out. Both of us were trying to decide what to do. We came in and got tires and we probably should have just stayed out and we would have finished a lot better, but a solid day for us. We had a terrible Friday again, but the guys rebounded well and had a pretty good car on Saturday and it showed up today.”
