Ford Racing NSCS Notes & Quotes:
Goody’s 500 Advance – Martinsville Speedway
Friday, October 24, 2014
Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 EcoBoost Ford Fusion, is one of three Ford drivers in the Eliminator Round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. He answered questions from the media after today’s practice session about the race this weekend.
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 EcoBoost Ford Fusion – HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE IN THE ELIMINATOR ROUND? “It’s a great feeling. We admittedly have not been a dominant team all year, so this Chase format gives us an opportunity to be tied for the points lead with four races left. That’s great. We’re looking forward to this race. We’re looking forward to the next two and hopefully advancing to Homestead, where we feel like we would have a really good shot at winning the championship. I’m just excited to be here and looking forward to this three-race stretch.”
ARE THINGS MORE WIDE-OPEN HERE AT MARTINSVILLE NOW? “I don’t know. I’ve only been in the Cup Series for about 10 years, but it feels like it’s more competitive than ever overall, especially when we get to the short tracks where the aero is not such a big factor. It just feels like the information everyone has is such an immense amount. Everybody has good engineers, information travels around the garage quicker, so it’s harder to have an advantage, and when you combine that with a track like this, which is really difficult to pass just because of the size of it, I think you’re gonna see guys that have a good pit strategy or they make a good move on a restart and they’re out front. You’ll probably see more leaders and that type of thing is only gonna happen more and more in this sport, especially with taking horsepower away and things like they’re talking about next year. It’s gonna get closer between the competitors. That’s what I think it is.”
DO YOU FEEL THERE’S MORE PRESSURE EACH ROUND OR IS IT THE SAME? “It’s definitely more for us. We got a win early on, which was spectacular. Up until the Chase started we were just kind of having fun and there wasn’t a lot of pressure, so, yeah, there is more pressure now. Every one knows that the goal is and everybody works all year to be the champion. That’s what we do this for. Just my guys and being here this weekend I can sense it. A couple of them have already said, ‘Man, it would be nice to win here and just advance this weekend,’ so everybody is feeling it.”
WHAT IS TOUGH ABOUT MARTINSVILLE AS IT APPLIES TO THE CHASE? “You just look at the pictures on the walls. It’s a tough place. It’s a difficult race track that requires a balance of finesse and focus and aggression that is really unlike other tracks. If you watch these restarts from an in-car camera view, you can’t see past the guy in front of you and there are guys up there bumping and banging and hitting the curbs. If you get pushed out of the groove there are all these marbles up there and you do everything you can just to merge back into traffic without getting wrecked. It’s a long race. If you watch the guys after the race when they get out of their cars, most of us will be sitting down and be breathing heavy. It’s a physical, tough race track. It’s not like Talladega, where you’re waiting around for something to happen. There’s always something happening here and you’ve got to be vigilant and focused the whole time.”
THOUGHTS ON TEXAS? “The problem with the success I’ve had at Texas is it happened a long time ago. A lot has changed and for some reason we have not been as fast at the mile-and-a-halves as we once were, so I don’t know. I think Texas is one that I’m actually a little more nervous about than this track or Phoenix. I wish it weren’t true because it’s such a fun race track to do well at, so I’m not sure what to think about Texas yet. I think it’s gonna be tough.”
WHAT’S THE BOUNDARY AS FAR AS USING YOUR CAR UP AT THIS TRACK? “There is a little bit of aero impact here, but not much. You’re right, but you do have to balance how aggressive you want to be. You don’t want to rip the fenders off and have the wheels pointing the wrong direction. I’ve tried all that stuff and it does not work. If you watch the guy that wins his car will probably be pretty much the same shape as it was when he started. He won’t have made too many people mad, because otherwise he would be wrecked. It’s just a balance. If you’ve got a fast car though, like if my car is really fast on Sunday I definitely won’t wait around and let people hold me up, but you also have to race with a certain amount of etiquette. This is one of the tougher ones to figure out. I know when I first started coming here it was just hard to understand how aggressive to be. Everybody kind of gets it figured out by about halfway through the race.”
DOES HAVING EIGHT GUYS BEING TIED IN THE POINTS FOR THIS RACE CHANGE THE DYNAMIC AT ALL? USUALLY WHEN WE’VE COME HERE THERE MIGHT BE ONLY ONE OR TWO GUYS WITHIN 20 POINTS OF EACH OTHER. “I think this will change the race, the fact that there are eight guys who, like you said, are all tied. It’s very simple to know that if I finish in front of this guy, then I have a points advantage on him. It will be interesting to see how that plays out, but I have to think that it will make people a little more aggressive and I think it will be just like the other races in this Chase. I think there will be something that happens that we don’t expect. It will definitely be entertaining and we’ll just have to see.”
WHO IS THE DRIVER TO BEAT THIS YEAR? “It’s so tough. We saw some really good drivers, obviously, with some great teams and with great successes here get eliminated this past round. I have to say though, to me, if I was really forced to bet on someone – let me put it a different way – the people I think you’re gonna have to beat to win the championship are the Penske cars. I feel like both Brad and Joey are fast every week, they’re definitely fast at tracks like Homestead, and if they make it to that final round they’re gonna be very tough. You’re gonna have to really step up your game to beat those guys to win the championship.”
DOES EVERYBODY START ON AN EVEN PLAYING FIELD NEXT YEAR WITH THE NEW RULES PACKAGE? “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it will be different next year so everyone will start a little bit fresh. That may be less of a disadvantage for me, but I am focused on winning this championship. I keep going back to what Ryan Newman said at the Hall of Fame. He said, ‘Man, I’ve never been tied for the points lead with four races to go.’ That’s an amazing opportunity, so I think looking at next year too hard for me would be foolish. I need to focus on this.”
HOW INVOLVED HAS JACK BEEN WITH YOU THE LAST FEW WEEKS KNOWING YOU COULD BE THE ONE TO DELIVER HIM ANOTHER CHAMPIONSHIP, AND WHAT HAS THE RELATIONSHIP BEEN LIKE KNOWING YOU’RE MOVING ON? “It’s been great and it’s surprised me at how much hasn’t changed since I announced that I was leaving. Robbie Reiser, Steve Newmark, Jack Roush, they’ll joke around a little bit about it, but there’s really nothing but hard work and dedication by all those guys to get this 99 team a championship. Someone asked me the other day, ‘So, have they been keeping you out of meetings or withholding anything?’ I don’t know if they have been. I asked Steve Newmark about it and he laughed and said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘We actually had a talk about that. We thought it would be pretty silly to not go 100 percent at this championship,’ so I guess to answer your question nothing has really changed. I hope it continues like that. These guys are my friends and they’re like family to me. I hope that through this whole process it stays that way.”
