Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
2013 NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup Media Day (Chicago, IL)
NSCS Chase Media Day
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Fastenal Ford Fusion, met with media members Thursday as part of the NASCAR Chase Media Day at Navy Pier.
CARL EDWARDS, No. 99 Fastenal Ford Fusion – “Our guys have really buckled down. Robbie Reiser, all the guys building the cars, the last month or so has been very spectacular. I am excited about the Chase. I feel like we have a shot to go out here the first few races, win one or two of them and go win this thing.”
DO YOU FEEL UNDER THE RADAR A LITTLE BIT? “Yeah, I am under my own radar. We got done with the Richmond race and I told the guys on Monday that I looked up at the scoreboard and I didn’t understand what the order was. Someone told me that was the points. They said I won the points for the first 26 points. I thought that couldn’t be true, that we were weren’t that fast. It turns out we are. I would say that we are under the radar and to say that is an understatement. I think we can do it. I feel really good about it.”
QUESTION INAUDIBLE – “No, I don’t think we need to have discussions about that. I think it is pretty obvious. The biggest thing is that we need to keep doing the best we can do help one another with our setups or any driving tips or things we see on the track or feel in the race cars. That is what we do every week at Roush Fenway Racing. I believe we went through some stuff earlier in the year that made us stronger as a team. All that stuff with Greg and I at Michigan and the meeting we had at Sonoma I thought was really good. I have never seen our group work together the way they have lately. Hopefully that pays off.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT MWR DID AND ALL THE CONTROVERSY AROUND? “I don’t really have a comment on that. I think it is still kind of vague and not clear what exactly happened and what didn’t happen and the extent of everything so to me, I was glad just to win that race and in a way just not be a part of that stuff. I want to go win this championship because we have the fastest car and do it over the next 10 races. I definitely don’t want to think about that stuff.”
CAN YOU POINT TO ONE THING THIS YEAR THAT CONTRIBUTED TO YOUR SUCCESS? “No, that is the interesting thing, it hasn’t been one thing. It is pretty interesting, when things start going bad people can either split up and point fingers or rally together and work. Robbie Reiser, Jack Roush and all our guys they are not guys that are going to jump up and down when they win and throw their hats when they lose. They will just keep working. We have hard working guys and that work is paying off. It seems like it is coming at the right time. If we can keep this going it will be very good.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT CLINT HAS BEEN THROUGH AND HOW IT MIGHT AFFECT HIM GOING FORWARD? “I am still not exactly sure what he has been through. I haven’t been paying too close attention to it but Clint has always been a really good guy and good competitor. I raced him in modified cars in Missouri over 13 years ago. He is just a racer. I have a feeling he will be fine no matter what happens.”
THE LAST FEW YEARS THE WINNER AT CHICAGO HAS GONE ON TO WIN THE CHASE. HOW IMPORTANT IS A GOOD START? “Looks like it might be important. I used to just laugh at all you guys with your stats but I am starting to figure out that some of them work. If I can lean on a stat I will. Hopefully we can go to Chicago and do well. There is some basic math involved. If we start well, you don’t want to give up any points ever throughout these 10 races. If you think of it that way, the perfect 10 races would be whatever it is, 48 points a race, the closer you can be to that every event the better.”
DO THE EVENTS OF THE LAST WEEK MAKE YOU THINK TWICE ABOUT WORKING WITH GUYS? “I think that this thing, there are still a lot of things in the air and I don’t personally know where all the lines are and so I think that what we will see here is in the next few weeks we see some real clarity and direction on what is morally acceptable and right or wrong but also what NASCAR is okay with. I think that will be important. The other thing is I hope we see that this doesn’t diminish our sport. I hope it isn’t a negative. I hope it make people interested in the complexities of our sport. That there is a lot more going on here than just guys driving around in a circle. That is what I hope.”
YOU SAID YOU NEED CLARITY IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS. DON’T YOU NEED IT BEFORE SUNDAY? “This sport , I talked to Pemberton a little bit last night, I am not just siding with NASCAR here but if you look at it objectively it is difficult to call a race in real time. There are a lot of things going on. Mechanical things, technical things, procedural things and a lot of people involved. I think we will just see another evolution in the officiating of the sport. I think it will take, at the very least, a few weeks and I think it could be as late as next year before everyone really understands the implications of what we saw the other night.”
WHAT ABOUT THE RESTARTS? “Until that restart the other night, I hadn’t been in the position where I had that much more grip than the leader, so as we rolled around turn four and looked at the restart zone, I thought, ‘Boy, I have a lot better tires than Paul here. Kurt has four behind me and I have to get a good start so I hope Paul doesn’t spin the tires.’ Sure enough, Paul spun the tires, he actually ran into my door a little trying to get his car straightened out. I thought, ‘Man, what am I supposed to do here.’ I didn’t know if I was supposed to lift of how much I would have to lift. Fortunately NASCAR saw that he spun his tires and Paul said he spun the tires, but I think that is something that is very difficult. What if he had 100 laps on the tires and not grip and the whole field had four. Are we all supposed to go at his pace? I don’t know the answer to that. I think that either, not just as the second place guy, but as the leader it puts everyone in a tough position.”
DOES IT FEEL LIKE VINDICATION BECAUSE OF WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU THE LAST TIME YOU WERE IN THAT POSITION? “No, I look at those events as two completely separate things. The restart previously at Richmond was a misunderstanding where we understood that I was the leader of the race and we understood it so late that I couldn’t get the optimal line. I couldn’t switch back to the inside line. I took a gamble and went earlier than I should have to try to regain my advantage. I thought everyone understood that but it turned out that wasn’t the case and I wasn’t the leader. That is a totally separate incident. I think at the end of the day the double-file restart provides excitement and it makes it really neat for everyone but the leader has to still have an advantage. I think that we have that by making sure the leader goes first. But then, 100 or 120 yards later to say the leader has to start the start-finish line first I think we saw Saturday night that can be problematic because without tires it is impossible to ask the whole field to stay behind a guy spinning his tires.”
DOES NASCAR NEED TO MAKE A CHANGE ON THE RESTART RULE? “You never know. Here is the thing, in this sport not matter what, you set up all these guidelines and the rulebook is pretty thick. There is always an unintended consequence to anything and if you give us enough time we will create scenarios that nobody has thought of. The competition is becoming tougher and there are extremely smart people with one mission, to win. So when you put hundreds of guys with one mission like that together it becomes cat and mouse all the time.”
“It just becomes very difficult. I truly – as Paul took off and I took off and he started spinning his tires, I didn’t know what to do. I was pretty sure it would be seen he was spinning his tires and was pretty sure that was okay and in the end NASCAR did say that was okay but it is a tough spot.”
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE YOUR MIND UP? “About a tenth of a second. It is tough and it all depends on how it looks too. No one is in that car with me and at least Paul and I agreed on what happened. I thought that was very respectful of him. He texted me after hoping that I didn’t catch too much grief because of him spinning his tires. That meant a lot. A lot of guys take advantage of a situation like that and fight you in the media over it and stuff like that. I thought that was pretty cool of Paul. It is tough man. This thing, NASCAR has to make a lot of judgment calls and I don’t envy that position.”
WHAT IS THE KEY TO WINNING THE CHAMPIONSHIP? “At the end of the day you just score more points. It might take wins, it might not but the sure fire way is to go win races. That is what we would like to do.”
IS THERE A TRACK YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT? “Yeah, there are two. The biggest one and the smallest one. Talladega and Martinsville. Both are really tough. They keep drivers awake at night because anything can happen on them.”
QUESTION INAUDIBLE – “I think you have to go back to how this evolved and where it came from. Before, with the leader being in front of the second place car, he had an obvious advantage. Now that you are side-by-side it makes it tough. There are a lot of games that get played. If you make a penalty for something and everyone is aware of the penalty, there are guys that will purposely let the second place car beat them to make you suffer a penalty. All of that is a consequence of doing the very best they can to make it an entertaining, fair start. I truly hadn’t thought about that until Saturday night, about that specific instance happening because I had never been in it. We could see something at Chicago that nobody would guess. What happens if the leader breaks an axle or something? I just don’t know. It ends up being tough to make a call right at the time to black flag a guy or not.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT STARTING THE CHASE IN CHICAGO? “I think starting in Chicago is good and I think that for a couple of reasons. It is a mile-and-a-half race track which there are a lot of. You get a real measure of how the field will stack up. It is a track where you can do well on your own merit and you can pass here. You aren’t going to get mired back because of a bad pit stop like you might at other places. It is a fast race track and it showcases what we do. We go fast and it is two or three-wide racing. It is a good venue for us.”
TALK ABOUT WHERE YOU CAME FROM EARLIER IN THE YEAR WHEN YOU WERE RUNNING WELL BUT NOT FAST ENOUGH TO WIN. “The performance was bad and that was tough. That was not really a fun time because it is actually hard to complain about your performance when you are second in points but we knew we were not fast. There were guys way faster than us and we’ve turned that corner. It is better now. It is kind of hard to explain to people when they say, ‘Hey great you are second in points.’ And you are like, ‘Yeah, but if the Chase started today we would be 10th.’ We aren’t in that position now, so that is good.”
QUESTION INAUDIBLE – “So what happens is if you are the second place guy on the outside his exhaust is right next to you. You can hear his engine right off the bat. Generally the tires don’t spin instantly. The car will move and go forward and as the engine builds torque power it will spin the tires almost always a little later, like a second or so after the car starts moving. They will take off, then the tires will spin, so it doesn’t happen instantly. The consequences of going are black flag possible. The consequence of not going is the whole field behind you with two laps or three laps to go, those can be big too. Hell, it is a two-wide formation restart with a bunch of guys that want to win a race and it is chaos.”
