Ford Qualifying Results:

2^nd – Brad Keselowski

4^th – Joey Logano

13^th – Carl Edwards

18^th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

21^st – Marcos Ambrose

23^rd – Aric Almirola

28^th – Greg Biffle

31^st – Michael McDowell

34^th – David Gilliland

35^th – David Ragan

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Fastenal Ford Fusion – “I hate to admit it, but I’m very happy with 13^th.  We were about a 25^th-place car in practice and I was nervous about this and it went well, so that’s good.  I’m telling you, we’re within striking distance.  We’re better than we have qualified in the spring and now we work on race trim.  We’re always better in the race here than we are in qualifying, so we’ll just go focus on it and keep digging.  I’m really proud of the guys.  They rolled the dice big and made some big changes.”  HOW WAS YOUR LAP?  “The car was a lot closer.  The battle for us was we were very slow in practice, but Jimmy and the guys did a great job.  They basically rolled the dice and changed about six things and it worked, so that was like straight off of the trailer.  I’m really proud of the guys for getting it right.  Now we’re gonna go work on race trim and while I know 13^th is not great, but considering I thought we were gonna be about 25^th I’m real happy with it.”

JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “It’s a decent place to start.  We know what we have to do, but this is the second time we came here and set a track record but didn’t start first.  We’re good at that this year.  We’re good at going fast in the first round and then it’s something we’re missing in the second round.  We don’t carry the speed over as well as others do, so we’ll figure it out.”  THE TOP FIVE ARE ALL GUYS YOU’RE BATTLING FOR A SPOT AT HOMESTEAD.  YOUR THOUGHTS ON BEING IN THAT KIND OF BATTLE.  “I’m not surprised that’s what happened there.  We’re gonna have to race them hard for it.  It’s not gonna be easy.  We know that coming into it and we’re in thick of doing what we need to do to make it happen.  Hopefully we’ll up towards the front all day and try to make it happen.”

BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – PRESS CONFERENCE – “This is really an intense qualifying format and with the sun going down this track picks up a lot of speed.  It’s there.  You’re out there and you’re holding onto it, so I still have a little bit of adrenaline going there.  We just missed it, I guess by a couple thousandths of a second, so I’m kind of running through my mind where that was – one day at a time and right now I wanted to be on the pole.  We were close, but was just a little bit off.  Either way, it’s a good start.  We like that and we’ve got to make the most of it come Sunday.  I’ve been very encouraged.  We had great speed here in the spring and it seems like we maybe found a little bit more, so I’m very, very optimistic about tomorrow.  We know there are gonna be some other drivers that are really good here.  Obviously the 11 is on the pole.  Kevin has really run well here for probably the last five or six races.  He’ll be one of the guys to beat, so it should be a great battle come Sunday.  I’m looking forward to it and we’ll see how it plays out.”

IT SEEMS THE MAIN BEEF WITH YOU IS THEY FEEL YOU DON’T LISTEN TO THEM AFTER THE RACE AND YOU TURN YOUR BACK WHEN PEOPLE WANT TO TALK.  DO YOU FEEL THERE’S ANY VALIDITY TO THAT?  “To answer your first thing, I honestly haven’t paid that much attention to it.  I knew early on in the week it was gonna be one of those weeks and I kind of put my head down and focused on Phoenix and my Madden team to kind of get me through, so I honestly haven’t spent a lot of time with all that stuff and the rhetoric.  I think at the end of the day we all have our own biases.   I don’t think it’s really productive for me to get into the he-said, she-said because at the end of the day we disagree.  That kind of is what it is.  I think the more I dig into becoming what someone else wants me to be, the less I stay who I am and who I am is someone who can win races and be a championship threat year over year with a great team that supports me, a great cast of family and friends.  I’m not looking to become what everyone else wants me to become, so I have not spent a lot of time on that rhetoric and I don’t wish to spend a lot of time trying to justify anything I do or don’t do.  I feel pretty good about the actions I’ve taken.  Certainly I’m not perfect.  I’ve made some bad ones, but I didn’t make any bad ones last week and I still feel that way.”

DO YOU THINK ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR ACTIONS AND IF YOU WOULD HAVE DONE ANYTHING DIFFERENTLY WHEN JEFF GORDON CAME UP TO TALK TO YOU?  “You always think about that stuff.  I’ve thought about it and moved on, and feel good about it.”

ROGER PENSKE MADE A STATEMENT SUPPORTING YOUR ACTIONS.  HAVE YOU TALKED TO HIM?  “We spent a lot of time talking this week.  We talk a lot anyway, so I should probably preface that point by saying that.  We have a really active dialogue, which is one of the reasons why I love driving for him and I’m proud to do so, but beyond that we’ve addressed this situation as we would any situation.  I can say and it means a lot to me that he’s been extremely supportive, probably more so than you guys will ever know, and I feel very confident about my position in this sport and with my team at Team Penske accordingly.”

DO YOU FEEL THE SIX WEEK SUSPENSION FOR THE CREWMEN WHO PUNCHED WAS APPROPRIATE?  “I didn’t really think that much about it.  They took an action.  Again, I go back to I have my own set of biases on that, obviously.  I don’t envy their job, that being NASCAR, at any given time.  I’m glad I’m a competitor and not an official because I think no matter what decision they would have made there would be someone saying it was the wrong one.  I’m not sitting here clapping for joy or angry either way on that direction.  I don’t take any pleasure in someone else’s pain, so it kind of is what it is there.  That’s why I haven’t put a lot of thought into it.  I hate to use that cliché, but I can’t spend all my time worrying about the other people.  I have to worry about winning this weekend, this race, and this championship.  That’s where my focus is and will continue to be.  Really, a lot of these conversations and a lot of these talking points are meant to serve as a distraction, so to sit here and really comment on a lot of them would really be to justify them because I know the things that I’m doing are the right things.”

DO YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS WITH KEVIN BEING RIGHT BEHIND YOU?  “I have a concern that I know I probably need to win the race.  That’s my concern and I want to have the most speed I can have.  I want to have the best execution, whether that’s restarts or pit road.  Those are my concerns.  Beyond that, I haven’t put any thought into it.  My answer to all that other junk is I plan on being in this sport for a long time and whatever happens there I’ll get through it, just like I have this past week if something was to happen, which is doubtful, so I don’t feel too bad about that.”

HOW MUCH WORK WILL YOU DO TOMORROW TO MAKE SURE THE RUN YOU HAD TODAY PAYS OFF?  “I think Kevin probably has a tenth on us.  We’re right now probably a second to third-place car and Kevin probably has a tenth on everyone based off the spring read and today’s practice read.  A tenth isn’t super-close, but it’s not too far away where we can’t reach it.  If we could find that, I would feel really confident.”

HOW ANALOGOUS IS THIS TO TALLADEGA, A TRACK YOU’VE WON AT TWICE AND THIS ONE WHERE YOU HAVEN’T WON?  “I definitely had to win Talladega, too.  Technically, I don’t have to win this race, but the probabilities are that I do.  I think it will be very hard to pass three cars in points.  I think I’m within five on all three, but that means if you didn’t win you’d have to beat at least three cars by five spots on the track and these are good guys.  These are good drivers and good teams.  There’s a reason why they’re this far in the Chase and to beat all three of those by five spots, that’s a tough task for anyone to really feel good about.  But you know if you win you’re in and that’s the great thing about this system and we have a great shot at it, for sure.  We have to keep pushing and keep working at it though.”