Biffle Finishes Fifth in Crash-Filled Busch Race

GREG BIFFLE—60—Grainger Ford Taurus (Finished 5th) - “He (Kevin Harvick) checked up out of the throttle. Kevin knows he came up out of the throttle and he got loose over there and I got in the back of him. It was not intentional by any means and I know that there will be some fans pissed at me. It wasn’t on purpose and I was on the receiving end at Richmond a while back, if people remember that. It’s just racing. That’s going to happen. I was putting a lot of pressure on him and he got loose up of the corner and that’s all there is to it.” DID YOU THINK IT WOULD COME TO BLOWS? “I got all I could take for fighting before. I got fined and had points taken away. I’m running for a championship and I just want to do the right thing. Kevin is upset and he has a right to be. We’ve all been in that situation and I feel bad for doing it, for getting him turned around. I didn’t do it on purpose, certainly. I was on the brakes. If you back to the in-car camera, he lifted off the throttle and we got into him. That’s just the way it is. He was loose and probably should have let me go back by, considering I let him go eight laps before that. The handle went off his car and mine was coming back.” YOU STILL CAME HOME IN FIFTH. “It was a good points day for us. I feel bad that the lapped cars have to take our leaders out like that, the guys leading the points. It’s bad to happen around here. It was treacherous all day. Hopefully some of those guys gained experience, and when we come back in the fall, they’ll be a little more careful. We’ve all been there, and I’ve been in the way before here, and now we’re running good and I’m pretty excited about that.”

JASON KELLER—57—Albertsons Ford Taurus (Finished 29th) - “It’s unfortunate what happened today. We had a really good car and qualified good. We did a lot of good things, but the end result didn’t show. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time and it’s just unfortunate.” IT LOOKED LIKE LAPPED TRAFFIC WAS MORE OF A PROBLEM THAN USUAL. “Some of them are just in the way. They don’t work to hard at it, they just stay in the way. I don’t mind racing with back-markers, but I don’t like racing with field-fillers. I could be mad at who caused it and I could be mad that the situation was allowed to happen, it’s just unfortunate. We need to try to take the good out if it. We qualified third and we were running second. If we do that then we’ll be A-OK and we can get back into the points lead a third time.”

KASEY KAHNE—98—Channellock Ford Taurus (Finished 32nd) - “There seemed like there were a lot of cautions today for a first-time racer here. The Channellock car was pretty good, but this was just my first time here. There was a lot more action going on out there than I expected. I expected it to be a full day, but there was a lot of action. We finished. We finished a lot of laps down, but we finished the race.” YOU MADE REPAIRS TO THE CAR. HOW MUCH EXPERIENCE CAN YOU GAIN WHEN YOU RETURN TO THE TRACK SEVERAL LAPS DOWN? “I can take away the 200-some laps that we finished. That’s a ton of experience compared to what I had coming into the race. I’ll just be that much more ready for the next race and the next race here. You really learn a lot when you’re on the track with 42 other cars and you’re not just by yourself.” YOU’VE RACED ON SHORT TRACKS BEFORE BUT HOW DIFFERENT WAS IT HAVING FENDERS ON THE CARS? “Some people used them move people out the way. It’s completely different from not having any fenders, I know that. It’s just something that I have to get used to and go from there. It’s a lot different racing with no fenders and it’s going to take a little time to get adjusted.”

SCOTT RIGGS—10—Nestle Nesquik Ford Taurus (Finished 9th) - “It was a good weekend for us. We had a lot better car than we showed there. Somehow I always picked the wrong lane and got hung up behind slow cars and kept losing a position here and there. It seemed like lapped cars played a bigger role than they should have today. We were a little loose at first on the tires and then all of a sudden the tires got built up and we were way tight. We just kept on adjusting on it and coming in and adjusting on it, and had to make two stops where I think Jeff (Green) only made one. We had a lot worse finish than we did car. Right there at the end, we got to the top five and we thought we could maybe move up a position or two more, and all of sudden, it got as loose as it could be with me and fell the way back to ninth. I came to found out that we had a right-rear tire going down.” YOU’RE A ROOKIE HERE, BUT DID YOU FEEL THAT THERE WAS A LACK OF UNDERSTANDING ON WHICH GROOVE THE LAPPED TRAFFIC SHOULD PASSED? “At a place like this, it reminds me of Southern Nashville Speedway or Orange County Speedway where I used to run. The bottom is the place to be and there’s no second groove. It’s just tough, tight racing here. When a car is a lap down it’s usually because something is wrong and the car isn’t working well. If the car isn’t working well, it usually means it needs more room to get around the race track, and that’s just what you need to get around him. That just makes it tough and tight.”

BOBBY HAMILTON, JR. —25—Team Marines Ford Taurus (Finished 13th) - “We made it through the day, but we had a better can than that. One of the lapped cars stayed in our way the whole day and got us up in the wall and I think it may have bent up the parts on the upper A-arm. We pretty much kept our position and finished the race. We were a top-10 car. The 47 car, we blew him off all day long, and he finished 10th. We ran out of tires early trying to make adjustments to the car. The Ford Taurus was good, but we kinda out-smarted ourselves this week.” WAS IT A CASE OF TRYING TO TURN AROUND THE SEASON IN ONE RACE? “No. It was being impatient on my part with the some of the lapped cars and that stuck me in the wall off of 2. It kinda ruined our day, but the guys kept on tinkering with the car and got it so tight at the end that I could hardly drive it. But, we’ll take it. Hopefully that will move us up in the points; there were a couple cars ahead of us that fell out. We’ll take it.”

KEVIN LEPAGE—71—Matrix Motorsports Ford Taurus (Finished 34th) - “I’m really disappointed that we got caught up in that early wreck. I got in the back of Greg Biffle and put a hole in the radiator. It’s a shame because we had a heck of a race car. The car ran competitively, lap times to the leader, and sometimes even quicker in lapped traffic. The car worked really good, and when you have to change the radiator you lose 30 laps. It’s just a tough day.” BY MAKING THE REPAIR AND RETURNING TO THE TRACK YOU WERE IN EFFECT POINTS RACING. “You just have to keep going. We’re talking to a bunch of people right now, so we want to stay in the points chase even though we skipped a race. We had a very good week as far as people calling us and wanting to meet with us, so you have to do what you have to do. I wasn’t going to put myself in a predicament where I was going to get it torn up any more than it already was. We finished 34th and gained a few points in the process.”

SCOTT RIGGS PRESS CONFERENCE

TALK ABOUT YOUR RACE. “It was just a long day at Bristol. We were a little too tight at the beginning of the race, so we sorta slipped back in the pack a little bit to third and then we came in and made our pit stops, and of course, you get shuffled in the field because only half of the field pits. We just tried to bide our time all day and be patient. We kept working on our car and made another pit stop later in the race, and actually just tried to keep our nose clean and made our way up to fifth place. I really felt that I could work my way up at least a couple of more positions and maybe come out of here with a top-three finish. Right there with 25 to 30 laps to go, we had a right-rear go flat. Then we had that long red flag at the end there and we couldn’t come in and it put us back pretty far and finished ninth. It was a good experience, a good day, I guess. We know that we have a good car when we come back to Bristol and at least finished in one piece and on the lead lap. Like I said, having a tire go down and holding on to it, that was good day.”

WERE YOU ABLE TO STAY OUT OF THE NUMEROUS CAUTIONS? “A lot of cautions were awfully close to me. A lot of guys out there were really aggressive and trying too hard sometimes, but most of the time when they tried too hard, they ended up being one of the cautions later down the road. I was just trying to give everybody respect and give the guys the same respect they give me and try to race everybody clean and try to keep my car in one piece, and come home in one piece and on four wheels.”