Carl Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion, and Greg
Biffle, driver of the No. 16 3M Ford Fusion, held separate Q&A
sessions Friday at Texas Motor Speedway. Both spoke after practice
about this weekend’s race and other issues.

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion – WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT
DANICA PATRICK POSSIBLY COMING TO NASCAR NEXT YEAR? “Here’s the deal.
It’s simple. If Danica Patrick could come over here to NASCAR and
run well, it would be great for the sport and it would be great for
the sponsors that she brings over here. The fans would love it, so I
think the better she does over here – barring running in front of me –
the better it is for the sport and I think that’s good.”

WHAT IF SHE
DOESN’T DO WELL? “Then she doesn’t do well. There are a lot of
people who have come over here and not been able to do well, and I
think Juan Montoya is the best example, to me, of a guy who has huge
talent, who came over and had a mass of success in other things, and
was able to do it. He’s as good as any of us over here now, so if she
doesn’t do it, I don’t think it would be a huge surprise, but, like I
said, for all those reasons I hope she does well.”

WHAT ABOUT DOING
INDY CAR AND STOCK CARS AT THE SAME TIME? “I’ve never driven and Indy
Car, so I don’t know. But it is a fact that these cars are different
than almost anything else out there, I guess, so the more time you can
spend in these heavier cars, the better. I know for me personally,
what I came from were lighter-weight dirt cars, USAC Silver Crown
stuff, and these cars were quite different, so that will take a little
while. But I don’t think running another car at the same time hurts
you.”

HOW IS YOUR CAR? “We’re good. This is the best we’ve been in
a long time and I’m happy. We need to go out here and get a top-three
or top-five qualifying effort, and then go out and race well. That’s
a fast race car over there. To me, this is a really fun race track.
This would be a great place to get that first win of the season. This
is the best we’ve been in the first practice in a long time.”

WHAT’S
THE DIFFERENCE? “I don’t know what the difference is, but I’m sure if
we end up running as well as we think we can this weekend, we’ll know
what we need to work on. This is the point in the year where you
really want to build some momentum, you want to have something good to
go into the winter with, and this could be a good weekend for us.
We’ll see what happens.”

ANY FEEDBACK FROM OTHER DRIVERS ABOUT THE
NATIONWIDE TEST AT TALLADEGA MONDAY? “No, I didn’t talk to anybody
about the Nationwide test at Talladega. I got to run the new car at
Lowe’s Motor Speedway, and I think I ran it somewhere else. I ran it
twice and it was good. There wasn’t anything bad about it, so from
what I read about the test at Talladega I think it went pretty well,
so that should be good. The biggest thing they could do with those
cars is give them about another 200 horsepower and it would be great.”
 

HOW FRUSTRATING HAS IT BEEN THIS YEAR COMPARED TO LAST YEAR AT THIS
TIME? “It’s really frustrating. I don’t know how many wins we had at
this point last year, seven or something, but we had nine wins last
year. That was an amazing year. I’ve kind of tried to think of it
differently, it’s not that we haven’t had no wins this season, it’s
just that we’ve had nine wins over the last two. That sounds a lot
better, but I’d like to have 10 or 12 wins over the last two seasons
by the end of this year, but it is frustrating. You go out and you do
the very best you can. I feel like I’m doing sometimes a better job
in the race car and we’re not getting the same results, but that’s
what makes this sport tough. The good times are good, the bad times
you’ve just got to dig in and work.”

YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T IMAGINE THIS
COULD HAPPEN. “No, I know the possibilities. In 2005 and 2006 were a
lot like this, where we had huge expectations. The media is so nice
to me. Everybody was so pumped and voted us to win the championship
and everybody was on board, but I knew in the back of my mind that
things can go great or they can go bad and no amount of speculation
can affect that. It’s just how hard you’re working and whether you’re
working on the right things, so, yeah, it’s frustrating but I know how
cruel this sport can be.”

CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED -- DOES IT MAKE YOU APPRECIATE LAST YEAR EVEN
MORE? “Oh yeah.” WHAT ABOUT THE NATIONWIDE SEASON? “The Nationwide
season I feel like we’ve been as good as we can be. I made a mistake
at Michigan that cost us 80 or 100 points, but, other than that, we’ve
won when we could win and we’ve run second when we could run second.
I feel like we just have to have more horsepower there. Literally, we
need more horsepower and that’s what we’re fighting right now, but
once we get that, I think we’re gonna be really good. Hopefully, the
things we’re doing here with the crew chief changes, hopefully that
stuff helps for next year, and then the new engine stuff that they’re
working on, I hope that pays off too.”

DID YOU QUESTION THE CREW
CHIEF CHANGES? “We all agreed that the crew chief change could be
good. Right now, the first week out, David Ragan is screaming fast,
I’m fast, and it’s working. Dan Stillman was over in our hauler
talking to us, and it’s pretty cool to have a team like that where you
can move people around and see how it goes. But it’s a three-race
trial, really. Our Scotts Save-a-Lot team, we need a little boost and
maybe this will be a way to get it.”

HOW DO YOU COMPARE THE
COMPETITION LEVEL THIS YEAR FROM LAST YEAR? “I may not be the right
guy to ask. To me, the competition wasn’t easy, but I felt like when
we got our stuff right, when my car was balanced, I felt like I could
win almost every race that we were in last year, and I really felt
good about most of the races. This year, from where I’m sitting, the
competition level has increased hugely. Not only are guys faster, but
there are more fast guys and that’s tough. Compared to five or six
years ago when I started this, there’s no comparison. It’s way
tougher now.”

EXPLAIN THAT. “If I had a really good race car five
years ago, my car was perfect and we had a competitive car, I could go
out there and I might have to race two or three other guys – maybe
only one – and, other than that, we had everybody beat. Right now, if
you’ve got a perfect car and everything is good, there are six or
seven guys – maybe 10 or 12 at a given race track – that you’ve got to
beat. It makes the strategy on pit road, driver input, changes on the
car by the crew chief, it puts all of that at a real premium.”

HOW DO
YOU SEE THE DOUBLE-FILE RESTARTS AFTER 20 RACES? “I think the
double-file restart is good. At first, I was really nervous about the
potential for a disaster, but all of the drivers seem to be doing
really well with it, and the fans I’ve talked to – even the people
close to me like my brother and my dad and my friends at home –
they’re like, ‘That’s the greatest thing ever. It’s so much fun to
watch,’ so I think that’s a good move NASCAR made there.”

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – DO YOU GO BACK AND LOOK AT
WRECKS LIKE TALLADEGA? “I just saw the replays is about all I’ve
looked at. There might be some more work with the roof flaps that
need to be done with these cars. I don’t remember the old car getting
turned around backwards and up like that right away, but they’re going
pretty fast so they got turned around backwards pretty fast.
Normally, you go sideways for a little bit before it ends up backwards
and cuts the speed off. Those spins were pretty fast to be backwards,
so you’re pretty much full-speed backwards, so it may be hard to keep
those cars on the ground. That’s just restrictor plate racing. We
could have a half-dozen of them upside-down, or we could have none for
a year or two. It all just depends.”

IT DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO
WITH THE BUMP DRAFTING RULES? “No, that had nothing to do with it.
There was no new bump drafting rule. All I heard is everybody talk
about a new bump draft rule, there was no new rule. You’ve never been
able to bump draft in the corner. They’ve said it for the last 10
restrictor plate races – no bump drafting in the corner. Granted,
guys have bump drafted in the corner and not been penalized for it,
but there has always been the rule of no bump drafting in the corners.
That’s what they’ve said.”

GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – WHY ENFORCE IT NOW? “Keep in mind nobody got
penalized at Talladega, but because that’s what causes about 70
percent of the accidents is the guy pushes on a guy in the middle of
the corner. For instance, the previous Talladega race when Carl spun
me out it wrecked half the field. He tried to push me in the middle
of the corner. NASCAR has to say, ‘Don’t push in the middle of the
corner. We’ve told you over and over and over, do not do it. Now,
we’re gonna penalize you if you do it.’ They could have penalized us
before because they did tell us, but they elected not to and now
they’ve elected to say and put it out there that ‘if you do, we could
penalize you.’ They didn’t say they would. They said they’re gonna
be watching very close. I pushed Jeff Gordon a couple times in the
entry part of the corner – didn’t actually push him but touched him,
just riding the brake pedal and trying to stay right close to him. I
think it’s a matter of a guy abusing that just shoving them all the
way around the corner down the straightaway and driving away from the
field. And here’s the other thing, when two cars do it, it’s hardly
ever a problem going straight or in the corner. We’ve been successful
about it in the corner when two cars do it. When three cars do it,
it’s gonna be a wreck, especially in the corner. You get three guys
bumper-to-bumper in the corner, bang, you’re gonna wreck. Down the
straightaway we’re having a hard enough time managing it – three and
four pushing each other – you see the line looking all nervous going
down the straightaway and that’s because everybody is against
everybody’s bumper, and they just simply want when the corner comes to
quit doing that. Be as aggressive as you want, but don’t be hitting
the guy in the corner. A lot of people criticized it, but it didn’t
affect the racing. The only thing pushing in the corner does is gets
two guys to break away from the pack for half-a-straightaway. That’s
the only thing it does.”

DID IT AFFECT HOW THE RACE PLAYED OUT WITH
SINGLE-FILE RACING? “No. Remember in 2007 when we were single-file
up against the outside groove? I was running fourth. I was smiling
because we were gonna end up finishing, no wreck, everybody is staying
straight, and then all of a sudden guys started dropping down on the
bottom. I knew that if we all stayed up at the top the bottom row
couldn’t get a run, and I think Michael Waltrip or David Reutimann
blew up in front of me, but we were running single-file against the
wall when that happened, so we’ve done that before. We’ve done that a
lot, and that race track has taught us that you can get up there and
hold off the guys behind you. That’s all we were doing. When you’re
back there in 25th you’re frustrated because you can’t go, but that’s
a product of what we’ve learned.”

AT WHAT POINT DOES IT NOT BECOME
ACCEPTABLE TO SIMPLY SAY, ‘THAT’S JUST RESTRICTOR PLATE RACING?’ “I
don’t know what we can do to change it. We try all kinds of stuff
constantly to make our cars faster. We bump draft. We push. We
figure out if we get two of them hooked together we can drive away
from the field. We’re always learning. We learn if we get up against
the outside wall it keeps the guys on the bottom from getting a run on
us for some reason – because the air buffeting off the left side of
the car doesn’t give the guys enough to get up there. We’ve learned
all kinds of things. That’s just the evolution of restrictor plate
racing. We can’t turn the clock back four years to how we ran here in
2005 at Texas, when I won in the spring and Carl won in the fall. We
ran really good and the racing was different then. We can’t reproduce
that, so whatever expectation you have of five races ago, it’s hard to
reproduce that when we continue to learn and do different stuff.”

HOW
WAS YOUR CAR TODAY? “My car is really good. I’m really happy with
it. We were second on the speed chart. I think we can make it a
little bit better for qualifying and looking over our qualifying notes
from Texas, we think we may not make the mistake we’ve made in the
past and hopefully have a chance at being on the front row at least.’

YOU AND YOUR TEAMMATES HAD LUGNUT ISSUES HERE
IN THE SPRING. WHAT IS YOUR OUTLOOK FOR SUNDAY? “I’m real excited,
especially the way the car is running. A lot of places we’ve been
fast in the spring and gone back and haven’t been fast in the fall, so
this is an exception. That’s good for us. At this race track we’re
fast now. This is the car I almost won the Kansas race with earlier
this year, so I’m pretty happy. It’s a good car. I like the car and
the car is running good.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT DANICA PATRICK
POSSIBLY COMING TO NASCAR? “I think it’s great for our sport to offer
drivers from all walks of life, whether it’s Formula 1, any kind of
open-wheel racing, I think it’s great. This is a tough business and a
tough sport and people come over here and learn. Tony Stewart was
successful at it and other drivers have had moderate success, so
there’s no reason why a driver can’t come in and be competitive in one
series and work their way to another.”

CAN SHE HANDLE DOING INDY CAR
AND STOCK CARS IN THE SAME SEASON? “I think so because I don’t know a
lot about the Indy Car Series schedule, but I know they don’t run as
many races as we do and they have weeks off, so I would think that she
should be able to run – obviously not both full-time – but be able to
run some races for sure.”

WOULD YOU BE COMFORTABLE IF SHE RAN DAYTONA
AS HER FIRST RACE? “I would be. That’s a pretty tough spot to be in
because restrictor plate racing is a different animal altogether.
It’s almost a bad influence to have a restrictor plate race for your
first time thinking, ‘That’s the way these cars drive,’ because it’s a
whole different mindset. If you historically get out the finishing
order from restrictor plate races, they don’t look like normal
finishes from our meat and potatoes race tracks. That’s the first
thing that comes to mind with me is for your very first time being in
restrictor plate trim is different. We don’t draft on a race track
like this (Texas). We try and get away from the other car, whereas
it’s different at Daytona. I’ll be OK with it, but I think it would
be difficult for somebody. I think it would be for me if I look back
at how I got started.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE BANQUET BEING IN
VEGAS? “I’m a little bit more of a Vegas guy than New York. I don’t
have anything against New York. I enjoy going there, but it’s cramped
and busy and all that. I love to gamble, so I don’t know if Vegas is
good or bad for me.”