GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Finished 5th) – “It was a really good night. The Scotch Blue 3M Ford Fusion ran really good. We didn’t qualify very well, so we had to work our way to the front.
Then we made a pretty big change and had to restart all the way at the back and got all the way back into the top five. I’m just real happy for Jamie McMurray. He used to drive for us and was short on wins, but he’s doing a great job.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Finished 12th) – “We were just never very fast. There was one run where we were really good, but the rest of the time we were in the same position we’ve been here for the last couple years. We just weren’t very fast. I thought Bob had a good strategy. We tried a bunch of things. He made good adjustments, but fundamentally there’s something wrong with the way we set our Fusion up for this place. It’s frustrating because I know we can run better than that. I know what I need the car to do, we just can’t get it to do it. That’s pretty frustrating.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Crown Royal Black Ford Fusion (Finished 6th) – “The highlight was where we finished the last lap because that was the best we ran all night. We started the race incredibly far off and had to make a lot of pit stops and adjustments. The guys did a really good job recovering from where we were to get a decent finish. I don’t know what they changed, but we were so loose when the race started that we couldn’t run at all. There were some other cars that were, too. The 48 obviously was when he spun out, and the 2 and some of the others were off too. It took us pretty much the whole race to get enough adjustments to get it snugged up a little bit.”
WE SAW SOME ONE-CAR SPINS. WHAT CAUSES SOMETHING LIKE THAT? “It’s a cold track and it’s getting a little older, but you’re still on a hard tire. You’ve got to be loose in order to be fast around here, but it’s a really, really fine edge – much finer than most tracks with this tire and asphalt combination. You’ve got to have enough grip to be able to stand in the gas, but you can’t be pushing either, so it’s hard to get it right.”
FOUR ROUSH FENWAY CARS IN THE TOP 12. A GOOD TEAM NIGHT. “Yeah, that’s good. We had good runs going at California, if we all wouldn’t have had problems, and the Kansas we had our problems, and Dover, but lately we’ve cars that could run in the top 10, which is encouraging, we just haven’t got the finishes and that’s disappointing. It’s nice to get the finish tonight. I wish I had the last few also, but it’s nice to get the finish and hopefully we can continue that.”
DREW BLICKENSDERFER, Crew Chief – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion – “It’s good.
The thing is that the difference between running 17th a lot of weeks or running eighth or ninth is the right decision at the end of the race or a great pit stop or something so small. It seems like it’s so small, but it’s hard to overcome. To be able to overcome starting towards the back and work our way toward the front all night long was a good run for us.”
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE IN THESE FIRST FEW WEEKS TO HELP TURN THINGS AROUND WITH THIS TEAM? “I think the most important thing is giving David some confidence. I’m not a miracle worker and I’m not doing anything that’s different than anybody else would do, I’m just a different guy and it might have lit a spark under David.
Maybe being closer in age to David, we communicate differently than the way he has in the past, but I think he’s got some confidence. We unload fast. We practice fast and I see a little pep in his step now.”
DO YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE IN THIS TEAM WITH FIVE RACES TO GO?
“Yeah, we’re getting better and that’s the main thing. You have to get better every single week. You have to be able to prove that when you run 15th, that wasn’t good enough and you can run 10th. That’s what we’ve done. We’ve had top 15 cars in all but one of the weeks I’ve been here and of those top 15 cars, we need to be able to be at the top end of that and tonight we were able to do that.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 10th) – “It was a great run. I think we may have even had a better car than 10th, but, all in all, it was a pretty good night. It seems like a lot of things we needed to do right went how they were supposed to. We’ve had some real good cars the last couple of weeks and it’s good for United Way and UPS to finish in the top 10. Hopefully, this is some good momentum we can carry with us into next week.”
