TREVOR BAYNE – No. 16 Ford Drive One Mustang – “That’s the best
mile-and-a-half car we’ve ever had, I believe. We had a shot to win
this thing on a short run. I got a little bit free after about 20-25
laps and we were at a run that was gonna be 20 laps. It was gonna be
perfect. We should have been around fifth and we came out 11th and
you just get back there where you shouldn’t be and get around some
guys that are racing really hard and end up getting wrecked. That was
a hard hit and I hate it for this Ford Mustang because I think it
could have had confetti on it tonight, but I’m really proud of what my
guys have done – Chad Norris and everybody for giving me a great car –
so we’ll just take it to them at Richmond, I guess.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. – No. 6 Blackwell Angus Ford Mustang – “Our
Blackwell Angus Beef and Cargo Mustang was strong all night. We
struggled there in the pits in the middle part of the race and were
able to overcome it. We caught a right-front tire that almost gave us
some trouble there. It almost went down, but I’ve just got to thank
all the fans for coming out. We had a good crowd tonight, and
Nationwide Insurance. I’m just glad to have this Blackwell Angus Beef
and Cargo Mustang paint job back on this thing.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 60 Fastenal Ford Mustang – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW –
“I’ve got to say Happy Birthday to my grandma, Phyllis. They’re
watching the race from Kirkwood, Missouri and we’re gonna take the
trophy home to grandma. Thank you guys, I love you. I’ve got to
thank Fastenal. This was a big week for Fastenal. We announced a big
partnership for next year. That’s huge. I’ve got to thank Ford,
Valvoline, the Nationwide Series, all the fans here, Wiley X and
Aflac. We had a big day yesterday and I was inspired by the kids at
the Aflac Cancer Center, so if you folks want to donate, Aflac will
double your donation at Aflac.com/friends, so it’s a big weekend for
us here. I can’t believe we got the pole and the win. What a heck of
a race.” YOU TRIED TO STAY POSITIVE AND KEEP YOUR TEAM IN IT EARLY
ON. “I’ve got a great team. These are great guys. Man, everybody
raced really well. That was as hard as we could race out there. Kyle
and I, Kevin. I raced Kasey. That was a lot of fun. This track is
as good as it gets. This is a blast. I can’t wait for tomorrow.”
FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Great Clips 300, Page 7
September 3, 2011 Atlanta Motor Speedway
RICKY STENHOUSE JR. PRESS CONFERENCE – “The race itself was fun. This
race track is a lot of fun. It’s old and it wears the tires out and
it’s rough. That’s my kind of race track. I like to get up on the
wheel and drive it hard and it worked out for us tonight. Our
Blackwell Angus Beef and Cargo Mustang really ran well. We struggled
in the pits and got behind and had to make some time up, but once we
did we were okay. We caught a good break and caught the right-front
tire, it shredded but it didn’t blow, so we caught that. If we would
have stayed out one more lap it probably would have blown the
right-front and there at the end it was just fun racing with Kyle and
Kevin. I wish we could have had a little more for Carl, but it was a
good weekend for Roush Fenway. The last few laps there, the last run,
I think we had a tire coming loose, so I kind of had to take it a
little easy and made sure we finished and it was a good points night
for us.”
DOES THIS TRACK REMIND YOU OF RUNNING YOUR SPRINT CAR AROUND THIS PART
OF THE COUNTRY? “Definitely. I think that’s one of the reasons why I
like this place. You can move all over the race track. You’re
sliding no matter what. There are other race tracks you can slide,
but not everybody is sliding so it doesn’t pay off. When everybody
starts slipping and sliding and you can turn right going through the
corner most of the time it reminds me of any sprint car race track
that I’ve run on. I think that’s where it helped us out here
tonight.”
DID YOU FEEL PRESSURED KNOWING SADLER WAS STRUGGLING OR DID YOU JUST
TACKLE THIS RACE AS YOU ALWAYS DO? “When you have a good race car
it’s really fun to drive and when you have an opening it’s tough not
to take it as a race car driver. It seems like if you take that
chance and kind of take control of it, you feel a little bit better
instead of just riding. So I felt a little more in control making
some of those moves, a few I probably shouldn’t have made, but they
worked out.”
FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Great Clips 300, Page 8
September 3, 2011 Atlanta Motor Speedway
CARL EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE – “The car was spectacular from the
first lap on the race track the car was great. Mike and Scott and all
the guys did a really great job with it. It’s amazing how these cars
have progressed over the last year to year-and-a-half. They’re really
fast. Trevor was fast. Ricky was fast. Our car was great. It was
just a fun race. I love this race track. Whatever it is about this
race track that makes it so much fun to drive we need to figure out if
we can engineer that into some other race tracks. This is as good as
it gets, so I’m excited for tomorrow. I’m really excited to go run
500 miles here.”
MIKE BEAM, Crew Chief – No. 60 Fastenal Ford Mustang – “I thought we
had a good strategy there and then we got penalized with the air hose,
so we had to start at the rear. Then we wanted to go to lap 131 where
we could go from there and then some of those guys started pitting,
but we stuck to our plan and then the caution came out. It was
nerve-wracking there for a while, but, like Carl said, the car was
great and the engine ran great. It was just a lot of fun.”
JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – No. 60 Fastenal Ford Mustang – “I welcome the
opportunity to share the stage here, to be subordinated by my real
fast teammates. To be in the company of fast drivers and fast crew
chiefs is a great honor for an owner like me. Mike is the unsung hero
here. He’s kind of bucked the organization some and he’s provided
leadership for this Nationwide team this year and he had really fast
cars here and I know that he won an argument in the shop to get the
car the way he wanted it here and we won’t talk about that, but Mike
has really done a nice job this year. He has carried it to them and
I’m real proud of Mike and I’m real proud of Carl.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE BACK AND FORTH WITH
KYLE AND KEVIN AND RICKY AND DO YOU ANTICIPATE THE SAME THING
TOMORROW? “I think we’re gonna have just as good a racing tomorrow.
I think the way the tire works with this track surface you can slide
the cars, you can go in the corner and make a big mistake and get
really sideways and you can save it. That was some door-to-door,
hardcore racing out there. I don’t know what it looked like on the
television or from the grandstands, but from the driver’s seat there
was some really, really hard driving and I hope we get to see that
tomorrow. We don’t race here enough. This place is a lot of fun.
It’s really neat to race on a track like that.” WERE YOU CONCERNED
ABOUT BEING SHORT ON FUEL? “I was concerned then because one time we
were supposed to make it to the end and we were half-a-lap short and
that one got us. I’m just giving him a hard time because it’s not a
perfect science. Jack explained it to me, you know he’s a
mathematician and there’s a lot that goes into it. It’s very
difficult with this new fuel system to determine exactly how far you
can make it and that’s why we came down that second-to-last time. We
went ahead and came for fuel just to make sure and, yeah, for a driver
it’s important to really know. I don’t want him to lie to me because
I know they wanted me to go out there and race really hard on the
restart, so they didn’t want to tell me we were short, they wanted to
tell me we were short 10 laps after the restart, but I said, ‘You’ve
got to be honest with me. You’ve got to help me out here,’ so that
was why.” MIKE SAYS. “You’ve got to give us time to calculate it.”
FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Great Clips 300, Page 9
September 3, 2011 Atlanta Motor Speedway
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – KYLE SWEPT ACROSS YOU NOSE AT ONE POINT AND
YOU OBJECTED TO THAT. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT INCIDENT? “Yeah, that
was almost really ugly. I wasn’t very happy about that. He
apologized through his spotter and then he raced me really clean after
that, so that was just hard racing. It was getting really aggressive
out there. Everybody was racing really hard and that was a case where
he started coming up and I almost hooked his right-rear. It was all I
could do to kind of get out of the way and he stopped and then I ran
into his back bumper. I wasn’t very happy right then, but it was
still early enough in the race that it didn’t tear anything up and
since he apologized I figured we’d have a good, clean race at the end.
Fortunately, he wasn’t able to catch us those last few laps.”
MIKE BEAM CONTINUED – WERE YOU WORRIED AFTER THE PENALTY AND DID YOU
CHANGE ANYTHING AFTER QUALIFYING? “About the air hose, luckily there
was like only 14 cars on the lead lap, so I knew that we had plenty of
time to make it up if things went our way. You just don’t ever know,
but when you get in the dirty air you don’t know how it’s gonna react,
but, luckily, the car was pretty good in traffic and the lap times
were real competitive, so I just knew that if we kept our heads
straight that we could get back to the front, so that worked out well.
As far as after qualifying, we just did our normal deal, especially
at a place like this. We didn’t run a lot in practice. We ran really
30 laps on the tires, but we just took a shot at it there. We figured
the race track was gonna be loose at night and it worked out. We did
tighten it up after qualifying a little bit and then we tightened it
up during the race also.”
CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – HOW NERVE-WRACKING IS IT TO BE BACK IN THE
PACK AROUND CARS THAT AREN’T AS IN CONTROL AS YOURS? “My car was
really, really good and it was still a handful to drive, and there
were some guys back there that their cars were not handling well. I
thought everybody was doing a pretty good job for as tough as this
race track can be. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails to
get a penalty like that. Most of them lately have been because I’ve
been speeding on pit road. I thought when he said we had to do a
stop-and-go that I had sped again. I figured Mike would be throwing
stuff at me when I stopped there in front of the box, but, in a way,
it was early enough in the race. We had a fast enough race car. I
tried to just look at it as a challenge and something fun. I think
sometimes everything happens for a reason. I thought that run, trying
to come through the field, I learned a little bit more about my car
than I had running up front, so, in the end, it may have helped me a
little bit at the end. So I thought that was good.”
Ford Racing PR
