Catchfence

CARL EDWARDS, No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Finished 5th) “I was going to go all the way to the top of the grandstands today. I just appreciate all the fans coming out here. This is a great race track and track position is so important. Sadly, down force is such a big factor in these cars and I am really hoping that NASCAR will take the opportunity in 2013 to take down force away so the fans can see the guys race race cars and not race down force. That would be cool.”

WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE IN LAYMAN’S TERMS? “All the cars are very close. So let’s say all of the cars are a tenth apart and you are behind two or three cars, your car is two-tenths of a second slow. You can’t make up. I am not whining. Denny earned this win and those are the rules we are under. Track position was huge and I just wish it wasn’t like that.”

MATT KENSETH, No. 17 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Finished 2nd) “I just couldn’t quite get Denny. After restarts we were kind of slow and tight in the middle which isn’t a good thing to be in a short shootout. We had a great car in the long run though. I tried what I could to get around him but I slipped on the restart. I just needed more laps to get it going.”

LOOKED LIKE YOU GUYS HAD THE RIGHT SETUP ALL DAY, HOW DID THE TRACK CHANGE TODAY? “We had a great race car. The Crown Royal Ford was really fast. We got behind a couple of times and when we were going to be short on fuel I had to slow way down to save fuel. When you have to do that it is hard to figure out the balance of your car because you change your driving style so much and what the car feels like. I didn’t know what to do for adjustments at the end. So we just left it, threw a couple tires on it and tried it.”

GREG BIFFLE, No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Finished 15th) “The car drove great. The pit stops were great. Everybody did a great job. Everything is perfect.”

AJ ALLMENDINGER, No. 43 Best Buy Ford Fusion (Finished 13th) “That run was a credit to the Ford team in general. We struggled really bad. We were okay Friday and started struggling at the end of the day and we were really bad in qualifying. We looked at some notes and went off the other Ford cars, a different direction than we had been before and the car was great all day. I am going to blame Dale Inman, I think he did something in his past life to give us all this bad luck on this team (laughter).”

DOES LOSING A CHANCE TO GAIN POINTS THIS WEEK MAKE NEXT WEEK MORE CRITICAL FOR YOU? “No. Points don’t matter right now. We have to get better. We aren’t a Chase team right now. Points to me, obviously you want to score every point you can but we need to be better before we worry about making the Chase. Today was a big step. We were never really good here and we were a top-five car all day. Thirteenth sucks in the end compared to what we had, but I am proud of what we did today instead of the points.”

- PCGCampbell for Ford Racing, Press Release