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.”

Ford Qualifying Results:

2^nd – Joey Logano

6^th – Brad Keselowski

11^th – Carl Edwards

18^th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

21^st – Greg Biffle

25^th – Marcos Ambrose

27^th – Aric Almirola

29^th – David Ragan

34^th – David Gilliland

JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – PRESS CONFERENCE – “I was not first, but we were close to it.  Jamie laid down a hell of a lap there.  A half-tenth sounds like nothing, but around Martinsville here that’s quite a bit, so congratulations to them and we’ll be able to have a very fast Shell/Pennzoil Ford.  I thought we were decent in race trim earlier today.  We only made a couple qualifying runs, so I thought overall we laid down a decent lap there.  I thought we were in really good shape after the first round.  We only ran two laps and most guys ran at least three.  The only ones that ran two were me and Kenseth and we still got beat by the guy that ran more laps, but, overall, I thought it went well.  We just came up a little short.”

YOU HAVE BEEN IN THE TOP 10 FIVE OF THE LAST SIX RACES HERE.  IT SEEMS LIKE MORE GUYS ARE STARTING TO FIGURE THIS PLACE OUT.  DO YOU AGREE?  “Yeah, I feel like the last couple of years especially we’ve been able to kind of figure out what we need to go fast here.  This is definitely one of those race tracks that it’s usually the same guys that run faster every single year.  One of them is Matt’s teammate there, so I don’t know what it is – I don’t know if it’s a setup they have or if it’s just a certain driving style or the way they attack the race track, what they’re looking for in their car, the patience that those guys have and show throughout a run, I think all of that kind of stacks up as to what makes a good driver at Martinsville.  And I feel like I’ve been able to hone in on that and communicate with my crew chief as much as I can, talk to my team and try to get as close as we can.  We tested up here last week and I thought that was good.  I thought we were able to kind of hone in on our setup a little bit and try things you don’t typically get to try here because it’s so hard to practice here when your tires wear out so quick.  You’re never really sure what the change did, so the test helped us a lot with that and it showed today just not enough.”

HOW MUCH TROUBLE IS HARVICK IN STARTING FROM THE BACK?  “You start back there and it’s tough for a lot of reasons.  Obviously, the leaders are gonna be there in a second, so you’ve got to go pretty hard.  But, really, when you’re that far back the line that checks up so much, the inside lane just keeps checking up a lot into the corners and you can shove the nose in pretty quick there and really be trying to take care of yourself – the next thing you know you’re in the back of a car – so I think that will probably be something you’ve got to be aware and obviously guys fighting to the bottom and the sense of urgency back there is very high, so you’re not really saving any tires because you’ve got to go.  If it’s a long run, that’s where you can get in trouble pretty quick, if it’s a long green flag run on the first run.  I’ve been there before that’s how I know.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 EcoBoost Ford Fusion – “I think we could have been a solid sixth or seventh, and I hate to give up anything, but I’m also aware that this is statistically probably better than I normally qualify here.  So we feel like we’ve got a good race car that’s got some speed in it.  Our Ford EcoBoost Fusion, if we do everything right tomorrow and figure something out for Sunday I think we’ve got a shot at having a really good run, so it’s a good day for us.”  WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE CAR GOT OUT OF THE GROOVE ON YOUR LAST ATTEMPT?  “What happened was I went faster on my first lap than I had on any of my first laps, so I got down into one a little bit deep, got the brakes and the tires chattering, and got up a little bit.  I got two more laps after that, but I think that second lap would have probably been good enough for a seventh or eighth or something.  I was having fun out there and I guess that’s the name of the game.  The car handles pretty well and had some speed in it, so that’s better than we are normally here.”

BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Alliance Truck Parts Ford Fusion – “We had a decent day.  We came here and tested and I thought we were very competitive.  I think we’ll be better in the race than we are in qualifying, that’s kind of our trend here, so I’m optimistic when we can start up front.  We’ve been a car and a team that’s come to Martinsville, I think, five of the last six times and finished fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth.  I’ve been right there, but have just needed a little extra step to be able to win.  We came here and tested and put a lot of effort into this weekend and hopefully this will be the weekend.”

THE 48, 11, 24 WAS THE WHOLE SHOW, BUT IT LOOKS LIKE SOME OF YOU HAVE CAUGHT UP.  WHY?  “I think the testing ban that came in 2008 kind of froze the field and that group was ahead at that time, and along with their driving styles are pretty good here, but you combine all those things together and they just seemed to maintain an advantage that we couldn’t really seem to displace.  I think we’re definitely gaining on it and hopefully today is an indicator of that.”

DID YOUR TEAM HAVE TO COME DOWN FROM THE UPHORIA OF LAST WEEK?  “I don’t know why you’d have to, but I think we’re all enjoying it.  With this kind of Chase everybody knows that each bracket could be your last bracket and you have to enjoy it while you can.”

HOW MUCH TROUBLE IS HARVICK IN STARTING FROM THE BACK HERE?  “I’ve been there and it ain’t no fun, but if you have a strong car and you can stay out of the early trouble, it doesn’t seem to be too big of a hurdle, other than the poor pit selection.”

WILL WE SEE A RACE HERE SUNDAY THAT MIRRORS THE INTENSITY OF LAST WEEK?  “I don’t know the answer to that.  Talladega is its own animal in a lot of different ways, but in that particular scenario it’s its own animal because it’s the last race of a bracket.  I always feel like the first race in these brackets is probably the most conservative of all because you don’t want to be playing from behind in the next two.”

ARE YOU CONCERNED YOU ARE THE ONLY CHASE DRIVER WHO HASN’T WON AT THESE FINAL FOUR TRACKS?  “I would be concerned if we hadn’t run well at any of these four tracks, but we’ve run well.  Like I said, Martinsville we’ve been in contention.  Texas, we’ve led laps and almost won several times.  Phoenix, we’ve led laps and almost won.  Homestead, we could be a little bit better at, but we’re going there to test so I think that will hopefully nullify anything there, so I’m very optimistic.”

SO YOU’RE DUE AT ONE OF THESE PLACES.  “Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel.  I like that.”

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE COMPARED TO DALE EARNHARDT?  “I said it earlier this week.  I understand why everyone wants to compare someone who is successful to Dale Earnhardt because of what he meant to this sport and because of his drive, intensity, large fan base.  I’m OK with accepting the fact that there was only one and there won’t be another one.  And like I said earlier this week, it’s a lot like music in that you can be influenced by another band, but we’re still a different band and we still have our own codes.  The sport has changed so much that, quite frankly, Dale Earnhardt wouldn’t be Dale Earnhardt if he came out today – in my eyes at least – so I’ve accepted that and moved on, but I understand why everybody wants to make that comparison.”

IS ANYBODY IN A PAYBACK MODE THIS WEEK?  “Not really.  I think everybody is just looking to have a good, strong outing to the first race in this bracket.”