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[/media-credit]FORD QUALIFYING RESULTS
7th Greg Biffle
14th Marcos Ambrose
18th Aric Almirola
24th Carl Edwards
26th Matt Kenseth
31st Casey Mears
33rd Josh Wise
34th David Ragan
36th David Gilliland
37th Michael McDowell
43rd Mike Bliss
DNQ Timmy Hill
Greg Biffle, No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Qualified 7th) – “Oh man. My car is so fast it isn’t even funny. I never got loose and my car was flat stuck out there. I guess I just ran higher than everybody has been running down there and I got in the gray. I got in the slick. I mean, the track is black as can be but I must have just been off line. I got off line down there and didn’t know it. You can’t see it. It is nearly physically invisible and I just got off line in three and four. I could have turned it down but I just said I would let it diamond a little bit and my next lap I will run it right on the white line and it just slid and started taking off. It was like I was in the fuzz and I never had any momentum.” THE GOOD NEWS IS YOU ARE FAST FOR TOMORROW RIGHT? “Oh yeah, it is going to be real good.”
Matt Kenseth, No. 17 Best Buy Ford Fusion (Qualified 26th) – “It was just awful. We have been way too free since we have been here and the track seems a lot more free than last time. We didn’t get much practice in the backup car with me wrecking the other one and having to put the motor in and all that stuff. That got us behind and we just missed it by a lot there in qualifying.”
Carl Edwards, No. 99 Subway Ford Fusion (Qualified 24th) – “I just messed up the first lap pretty bad and I just didn’t readjust well enough on the second lap but the good news is that the car is lap and we will be good tomorrow. Hopefully we can get a Ford on the pole though. The good part is that we are going to be fine for tomorrow. This is the kind of track where you can move up through the field, so we will be good as far as that goes tomorrow.”
Aric Almirola, No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion (Qualified 18th) – “It was an okay lap, not great. It just wasn’t good enough though. We were up on top of the race track a little bit slipping and sliding and couldn’t really put the power down like we would like to. I think we will be okay come tomorrow though. I think our race car was pretty good in race trim, we will just have to wait and see.”
Marcos Ambrose, No. 9 Stanley Ford Fusion (Qualified 14th) – “I am spewing. I got loose at the white flag there and lost time because of it. If we missed it and we start top-15 then it isn’t a bad miss. You can move around pretty good here though in a race and we will be in the front half of the field, so that is good. It is a bad day for us, but not as bad as many.”
David Gilliland, No. 38 Rich Santorum for President Ford Fusion (Qualified 36th) – “I was super, super loose out there. We were lacking grip. It is a product of this track and tire combination we have here and we are in a backup car too so we weren’t taking any extra chances. You are definitely on pins and needles out there, more than you would like to be.” DO YOU THINK AFTER THE TWO RACES TODAY IT WILL BREAK IN A LITTLE? “I don’t think so. I don’t think it has broken in at all since the first lap we got out here. They need to do something different in my opinion.”
Casey Mears, No. 13 GEICO Ford Fusion (Qualified 31st) – “It wasn’t a very good run. The track has changed a lot. We were really loose yesterday in qualifying trim but with the track being cooler we could hang on to it. Today, in the heat, we actually tightened the car up to make it better but it was still just really, really loose. We just couldn’t get off the corner. We tightened it up and it hurt me getting in. It didn’t want to turn getting into the center. Because the track got so slick we didn’t have any forward bite. It was a handful and we didn’t get a good lap in but I feel like we’ve got a good race car.”
David Ragan, No. 34 Barrett-Jackson Ford Fusion (Qualified 34th) – “We just didn’t make enough adjustments I believe on our Barrett-Jackson Ford. We were pretty happy with it yesterday and I think the track didn’t have as much grip today as it did yesterday. We just didn’t go as far as we needed to on some of the adjustments. I would have liked to ran what we did yesterday but we will be ready to go for the race on Sunday.”
