Gatorade Duel Post-Race Quotes
GATORADE DUEL #1
BILL ELLIOTT – No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion (Finished 27th) – “The transmission locked up.” WHAT EFFECT WILL THIS HAVE ON SUNDAY’S RACE? “It doesn’t matter. You know, we got into the wall a little bit there, but it doesn’t look like it hurt the car at all. We’ll just try to make the best of it and go from there.” ANY DAMAGE TO THE CAR? “It just scratched the right-front fender.” IT’S OKAY? “I think so.” WHAT HAPPENED? “The transmission broke. It just hung in one gear. I tried to go to second and it locked it up over there.” BUT, YOU ARE LOCKED INTO THE 500… “Well, it’s a good thing it happened the way it happened, because, if not, we’d have been out of the race. We’re still in the 500.” HOW DID THE CAR RUN? YOU WERE IN THE LEAD AND YOU RAN IN THE PACK. “It was good. I was very impressed. I think we need to make a few little adjustments and just keep digging on it.”
JAMIE McMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (Finished 10th) – “That’s a pretty good car – a lot better car than the one we wrecked, so that’s encouraging. On that last restart, with Jimmie and Jeff behind me, I knew that Jeff would lag a little bit and Jimmie would get on his bumper, and he got on my outside. I thought someone would pull down to the bottom with me – just no one wants to help with old tires because you think he’s not got any progress.” YOU’VE BEEN GOOD HERE THIS WEEK AND IN THE PAST. DID YOU ACCOMPLISH TODAY WHAT YOU WANTED TO? “We wanted to win. But, you know what, before the race we really just wanted to finish and not tear our car up because the other car we left in the shop, and I’ve never sat in it. This is the car that ran well in the Shootout. And then when the race started it drove a lot better than the other one, so it should be a good 500 car.”
PAUL MENARD – No. 98 Menards/Quaker State Ford Fusion (Finished 9th) – “We weren’t that good yesterday, and we made some changes for today, and it’s definitely a lot better. The car’s running and driving really good – especially on old tires. So, we’ll work on it a little more for Sunday. This is a very good starting spot.”
DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 23rd) – IS THE DAMAGE TO THE RIGHT REAR SIGNIFICANT IN TERMS OF WHAT IT COULD MEAN FOR SUNDAY’S RACE? “I don’t think it’s bad enough for a back-up car. This is a pretty fast car, as long as we can get some people to help us out there. Jimmy Fennig will have a good plan and I’m sure he’ll smoke over everything on this car and make the decision, and I feel like he can start tweaking on it, and then it’ll be ready to go for tomorrow’s practice.” PRIOR TO THE INCIDENT, DID YOU ACCOMPLISH TODAY WHAT YOU WANTED TO ACCOMPLISH IN THIS RACE? “We had a fast car, and we were able to run toward the front, we had good pit stops, and were unfortunate not to get the finish we deserved. We had a top-three or -four or -five car, depending on who would help me out there. We’ve got a fast car, and I think we’ll just have to come from the back of the pack on Sunday.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Finished 26th) – “We just kind of got grouped together going in there. I was kind of in the middle and toward the top side a little bit when the 77 came down just a little bit, but not a lot. My car moved up a little bit at the same time and it looked like the 77 was trying to go under the 34, maybe, in front of him and we just kind of all got together there.” SO YOU’RE GOING TO A BACKUP? “Yeah, we can’t fix the one we wrecked. I can’t tell exactly what’s wrong, but it’s not something we can fix at the race track. It’s pretty tore up.”
DREW BLICKENSDERFER, Crew Chief – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – IS THIS YOUR WORST FEAR, LOSING A PRIMARY CAR IN THIS RACE? “We build them so similar that you don’t worry about that as much as you probably used to. The cars, with NASCAR’s template and the way we build them at Roush Fenway, they’re very similar so it’s not a bad thing performance-wise. It just puts the shop in a bind and then you still have two more practices you have to get through of drafting practice that you hope nothing else happens, or then you’ll be on your fourth car. That’s the only fear – that the weekend is not over yet.” WAS IT AN EASY CALL TO GO TO A BACKUP? “It’s pretty easy. The stuff was moved in the back enough to where it got to the oil tank and put a hole in the oil tank, so it’s hard to see visually that there might be something moved. You don’t see anything hanging or dragging, but it is shifted enough to where it got to the oil tank. The right side of it is completely torn off, so it would need quite a bit of work to get that right and at a speedway you don’t want to take that chance.” IS ANOTHER CAR COMING UP FROM NORTH CAROLINA? “We actually fixed our shootout car over the last two days in the body shop – all the damage off of it – and it’s actually getting painted as we speak. I just made the phone call so it’s getting the yellow and black put on it and the decals and it will be up tomorrow.”
GATORADE DUEL #2
TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 28 Golden Corral Ford Fusion (Finished 19th) – “It just wasn’t a very good handling race car. We kind of fought a lot of the same characteristics we fought in practice – really tight through the middle of the corner. The car doesn’t take the bumps very good. You try to run wide open, and it hits the bumps and it’s like you lose the front tires. We’ve just got a lot of work to do. We thought we made some there overnight that were going to help it, but it didn’t really help it at all. So, we’ve got to try some other things. We hurt the back of the car; we got the back of the car too loose in trying to make the front turn, so we’ve got to put that back and work on our front and end see if we can work through our bumps better, and we’ll be alright for Sunday. We’ve got a couple of hours to work on it.” YOU KNEW YOU WERE IN THE FIELD FOR SUNDAY ALREADY, SO WHAT WAS ON THE CHECKLIST OF THINGS TO BE ACCOMPLISHED TODAY? “Number one was to just bring it home in one piece, but we definitely wanted to run better than that. Just kind of see what the handling of the car was. We definitely have some work to do. We were able to bring it home in one piece so we can work on it. That’s a big thing. We wanted to run up front, we wanted to do a lot better job, but, most importantly, we wanted to bring it home.”
BOBBY LABONTE – No. 96 Ask.com Ford Fusion (Finished 6th) – “We’ve just got to work on the handle on it. It’s just out of control for me. I need for it to be tight, but I don’t need for it to be that loose when somebody is under me. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. It’s still just too much of a handful and we’ve got to figure out what to do. We did get another race under our belt there, so that was good. We’ve got some good data as far as tire wear and, hopefully, I can give some good feedback to Todd and we can make it better.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Finished 8th) – “I learned a lot. We’ve got a really good car. It’ll be a good race on Sunday.” IT LOOKED LIKE YOU COULD MOVE FORWARD. “I wasn’t really saving much. Basically, we have a really good car, and they say we have a really good back-up car, so I wasn’t just racing really hard.” ON STARTING 2009. “It’s good to start off strong. I hope we make it through practice without wrecking this thing, and I hope we make through the end of the 500.”
BORIS SAID – No. 08 Scotts/U.S. Chrome Ford Fusion (Finished 28th) – WHAT HAPPENED? “Just ran into Ryan and got into the wall a little bit, and then the next lap, blew the right front out. It’s just one of those things.” WHAT’S NEXT FOR THIS RACE TEAM? DO YOU HAVE A SCHEDULE MAPPED OUT? “We just signed a letter of intent like three days ago with these guys, so we’ll sit down in the next few weeks and get a game plan and map it all out, and then see what’ s in the future for our team. But, definitely, we’re going to run some more races – I’m excited about that. I just feel real bad for Scotts and U.S. Chrome. I think we had a pretty good car. It was wild out there. It was fun.”