BILL ELLIOTT – No. 26 Air National Guard Ford Fusion (Finished 40th) – “I checked up because I guess Ambrose got turned up ahead of us and somebody nailed me from the back. I tried to get turned off the wall, but I hit the inside of the wall. I told them in there (the care
center) they better be getting ready.”
AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 43 Valvoline Ford Fusion (Finished 32nd) – “I’m alright. It’s not the most fun run I’ve ever had, but it’s Talladega.
It’s one of those things. I hate this place. I always have and always will. I don’t know. I’m not really sure. I wish I could give you a description of what happened. I was just in the middle four-wide, I was getting shoved and I got in the right-rear of Michael, but I was on the brakes as hard as I could be getting pushed as hard as I was. It was just one of those things.” HAVE YOU EVER FLIPPED LIKE THAT BEFORE? “No, I’ve never flipped in anything like that. I guess there’s a first for everything, but that’s the first I never wanted to have.” HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR RACE BEFORE THAT?
“It wasn’t very good. I just hate this place. I’m proud of my guys.
They fought hard. We went two laps down and we’ve got something with our shocks with the compression in it. It just doesn’t allow us to change the right-front very fast, so we got a lap down and we lost the draft, and then we got bundled up and I got hit once and spin to go two down, so I’m just proud of the guys for fighting so hard. We got back on the lead lap and I thought maybe we had a chance to get something good out of it, so I’m sorry for that. Honestly, like I said, I hate this place but I’m just proud of my guys. They keep fighting in a lot of tough times right now.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Finished 19th) – YOU AND PAUL WERE RUNNING 1-2 LATE. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? “I was hoping we could stay on the top and stay lined up and hoped those guys wouldn’t be able to get such a good run on the bottom. The caution came out that’s what bunched the field back up. On the restart there, the 55 was a little slow and the 2 committed to pushing me, but then I just got stuck on the top. The 55 was slow getting into two, so I tried to go around him and we didn’t have enough momentum. There weren’t enough cars lined up behind us.” WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE DRIVING TODAY? “I was pleasantly surprised and I’m just happy I wasn’t involved in anything. We escaped that, but we wanted a better finish than where we ended up.”
PAUL MENARD – No. 98 Menards Ford Fusion (Finished 13th) – “We struggled in the pits. We struggled getting the tire off because of the rebound, so it’s something we’ve got to look at, but I think we ran something like 300 miles on the left side tires. We just kept taking two tires and gaining track position. The car sucked up really well. We struggled on restarts, but once it got wound up it was pretty quick.” BIFFLE PUSHED YOU INTO THE LEAD LATE. DID YOU FEEL YOU WERE IN POSITION TO WIN? “We were working pretty well together.
I think we were both hoping it was gonna run out to the end. We were kind of formulating a plan to do that again with a lap or two to go and then a caution came out and kind of ruined that idea. It was just wild at the end. Everybody was pushing the hell out of each other.
It was a lot of fun.” WERE YOU SURPRISED THERE WASN’T A HUGE MULTI-CAR WRECK? “Yeah. There were a couple wrecks that I thought would collect more people, but everybody did a good job. I knew with that last restart it was gonna get wild. Everybody kind of kept their heads until it was time to go, so it was good.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion (Finished 17th) – “Everything was going as planned that last lap. We needed to run that last lap because we were marching forward, but we didn’t wreck the car and that’s OK, but we just needed that last lap.” HAPPY THE RACE WAS RELATIVELY CLEAN FROM A MAJOR ACCIDENT STANDPOINT? “Yeah, it was just plain luck, but everybody did a pretty good job. It was good.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Finished 16th) – “Things just didn’t go our way there at the very end. It seemed like we could be pretty competitive in exactly the right spot, but I had a real hard time maneuvering and I’d get stalled out real bad. Paul gave me a great push on that last restart and I was really trying to stay to his bumper. I was trying to drag the brake and I looked back and somehow he got too far behind me. I was losing all my speed and all the steam was coming on the top, so I went to block the top and tried to get up there. Of course, they just hung me in the middle and I was done, so I guess I should have just stuck it out and waited for Paul to catch back up and maybe it would have been better.” AS FAR AS THE RACING OVERALL. WERE YOU HAPPY THERE WASN’T A MAJOR MULTI-CAR WRECK? “You never like to wreck, but, overall, it was the same racing I think we have about every time. It seemed about normal to me.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 21st) – “We had a fast UPS Ford today. Early on, we just were in the wrong place at the wrong time and we lost the draft and our track position. We had a fast enough car to be up inside of the top 10 when we got back up on the lead lap, but to get up to the front, you’ve got to be in the right group to get there. When that wreck happened there at the end of the race, I was right outside of Kasey Kahne and had nowhere to go and we knocked off our left-front tire. We’ve had some good luck here in the past, but with the way things went today, I’m pretty excited to go to Texas.”
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 37 Taco Bell Ford Fusion (Finished 33rd) – “That was disappointing. We had a great Taco Bell Ford Fusion all day and were looking at a good finish. My guys did great work on pit road all day and my spotter did a good job steering me through the pack. But, this is what happens at Talladega. Anything can happen to anybody and, unfortunately, it happened to us on the last lap.”
