Ford teams Texas II race quotes

Carl Edwards, Roush Fenway Racing Ford

Photo by: Action Sports Photography

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion

WHAT DID YOU SAY TO TONY WHEN HE DROVE BY. “I just told him ‘good job.’ He did a great job today. Those guys stepped it up and I’m proud of my guys for hanging on and for still having the points lead. At the end of the day, we’re going to the final two races. Although we would have loved to have won today in our Aflac Fusion, to be three points ahead and then to have the third and fourth-place guys farther behind, it looks like it’s truly gonna come down to Tony and I and that’s gonna be a lot of fun."

WHERE DID YOU COME UP SHORT TODAY? “I think Tony said it there. On that last restart, I think if I could have stayed in front of him, I’d have been able to get him. The restart before that he spun his tires and I felt really good about that one, and he timed it just right on that last restart and hung on my door. I give those guys credit, they’ve done a good job, but now we get to kind of pull out all the stops here. Our Aflac team, we’ve been hanging on. We’re leading these points. We get to pull out all the stops for these last two races and there couldn’t be a better place to finish it than Homestead. I think folks ought to stay tuned. It’s gonna get pretty exciting and I’m just glad Tony and I are out there and we can race for this thing.”

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GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion

“We had a pretty good car. I got the car off a little bit on Saturday, I have to admit. I probably didn’t have the right front swaybar in it, a few other things. The car was just real twitchy and hard to drive. I couldn’t drive it at all when the sun was out. When it cooled down and got dark, my car really took off. The last pit stop of the day when you’re trying to make up, that extra little inch made me slid through the box and that probably cost me a third-place finish or a couple of spots anyway. We fought hard and came back and that’s what a championship team is made of – not giving up and fighting back.”

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MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Crown Royal Ford Fusion

“It’s hard to be disappointed when you run in the top five. I was a little disappointed in our performance. We just dropped the green and we weren’t really that great. We led some in the beginning having the track position and clean air. We kept fighting it, but we just could never get enough rear grip in it off the corner all day and really kind of struggled. So I’m happy to get a top five. I wish we could have performed a little bit better, but that’s all we had. We had great pit stops. Jimmy made great adjustments. I thought we did everything we could possibly do, but we just weren’t fast enough.”

ROUSH FENWAY WAS STRONG TODAY. “This has always been a pretty good track for the organization. You always want to win. It’s fun to be disappointed to be fourth, but all of our stuff seemed to run okay.”

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AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 43 Best Buy Ford Fusion

“That was probably the most comfortable I’ve ever felt on a mile-and-a-half, especially one like this. It was fun. From the start we were just passing cars and making good adjustments. The track was tough because the sun would keep popping out and the track would change a lot, but, overall, I felt like it was definitely the best I’ve ever felt in a car around one of these places. We just got a bad break there on the two tires. We didn’t need that extra caution. I got back into sixth on the restart and we were good, and then the yellow came out and we went backwards after that. It was a good fight to get back to 10th, but, overall and more importantly, that’s something to build on.”

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TREVOR BAYNE – No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion

“We had to battle there all day long. We missed it to start the race because the track freed up a lot, but we didn’t really expect it to be that much freer. We knew it would free up a little bit, but we just didn’t adjust enough. And then every time we would make a change the track would change more and we never got ahead of it until the very end. Once it started cooling back off our car was really fast. We had one bad run after the 20 car blew up. I don’t know if we got his oil on our tires or just garbage or something was wrong, but that run we were 14th and I thought we were gonna be able to drive to the top 10 because our car was strong, but it was just slipping and sliding and it drove like a different animal and I fell back to twenty-something. At the end we had a good car again and I was able to rally back to 17th.”