KELLER TOP FORD AT TALLADEGA

BOBBY HAMILTON, JR.—25—Team Marines Ford Taurus (Finished 24th) – ARE YOU OK, AND WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END OF THE RACE? “I’m fine. I just had a run underneath the 21, and this yellow line stuff is way out of hand. I just got into him, and when I got into him I checked up and I got hit from behind and turned head-on. That’s just part of Talladega, but the barriers did what they were supposed to and I’m fine.” WAS THERE ANY CONFUSION WHEN THE FIELD WAS FROZEN UNDER CAUTION? “They have no idea of how they’re checking that. The 87 got in front of me two times when he should have been behind me.”

ROBERT PRESSLEY—47—Clorox/Wisk Ford Taurus (Finished 13th) – YOU TOOK ONLY TWO TIRES ON THE LAST STOP AND CAME OUT OF THE PITS IN THIRD. WAS THAT THE RIGHT DECISION? “I think it was. We got to get up there and got to know what we had and saw a lot of what other people had. That there at the end, we just got in the wrong line and it killed us there. We got dropped back to 17th and made it back to 14th. At least we were in front of the two crashes.” WAS THERE ANY CONFUSION WHEN THE FIELD WAS FROZEN UNDER CAUTION? “Yeah, once I was supposed to go behind the 14 car and in front of the 74 and they had it all backwards, and so we didn’t. Instead of gaining a position, I lost two.” DID THE SAFER BARRIERS NARROW THE RACING GROOVE? “I took away that little bit on the edge, but there’s still plenty of race track out there to race with.”

GREG BIFFLE—60—Charter Communications Ford Taurus (Finished 21st) – YOU FELL BACK AT THE END OF THE RACE. WAS THAT A RESULT OF THE CONTACT WITH THE NO. 4 CAR? “No, we lost a cylinder on the restart.” YOU USED THE BUMP DRAFT TODAY. ARE YOU SURPRISED HOW WELL IT WORKED WITH THIS RULES PACKAGE? “I’ve got a lot of power and that made it work. Our cars just have way too much drag. The Fords are really bad for drag, so we ran really good in the draft, but we couldn’t run worth a dang by ourselves.” WILL TOMORROW’S RACE BE MORE OR LESS EXCITING WITH THE DIFFERENT RULES PACKAGE? “It will be better tomorrow, way better tomorrow.”

JASON KELLER—22—SportClips Ford Taurus (Finished 10th) – “It just seemed like right there at the end, we were fortunate to miss a couple of wrecks, but I probably made some mistakes as far as what line I needed to be in. The car drove really good. I got little tight there in the middle part of the race, and Wes made some adjustments. It’s just unfortunate we didn’t finish any better than we did.” WAS THERE ANY CONFUSION WHEN THE FIELD WAS FROZEN UNDER CAUTION? “No, I really didn’t see any. The couple of times when I was up there and we had cautions, everybody fell in line and it wasn’t a real big deal.” DID THE SAFER BARRIERS NARROW THE RACING GROOVE? “No, I really didn’t notice it. I won’t ever say anything negative about a safety improvement, and I didn’t even notice any change in the groove or anything. It was about the same.” DOES NASCAR NEED TO TWEAK ON THIS AERO PACKAGE BEFORE THE NEXT PLATE IN DAYTONA? “I think they could. I don’t like this rules package. I think it hurts our manufacturer a little bit more than some of the other ones. The Fords are running good on the Cup side and we just can’t seem to get them to go on the Busch side. Naturally from my perspective, I’d like to see them change. I don’t foresee them changing them until next year.” YOU FELL ALMOST EIGHT SECONDS BEHIND THE LEAD PACK AT THE START OF THE RACE. WAS IT YOUR STRATEGY TO FALL THAT FAR BACK? “No, we were being a little bit too lenient and too careful to stay away from the pack when we really didn’t need to. We learned a little bit and then raced the middle part of the race. We raced hard and could have been in those wrecks pretty easy, but we want a little bit more and we’re going to work hard on it until we get it.”

MIKE WALLACE—4—GEICO/SportClips Ford Taurus (Finished 12th) – WHAT HAPPENED TO BRING OUT THE LAP 101 CAUTION? “You know what, I would be commenting on something I’m not even sure what happened there without seeing it. I thought the 39, a lapped car, the best I remember I was under Greg and the 39 was there, and I think he’s going to stay at the bottom, and he starts to come up and we all came together. It all happened so quickly; I don’t know what really happened. It looked like it was going to be nice and smooth and it all went to heck. Fortunately, we just got spun around and we were able to put four tires on the thing and finish 10th or 11th. I think we were the best finishing Ford today, but I think we had an opportunity to be a lot better than that if that incident hadn’t had happened. We’ll take it and build on this particular car to go to Daytona with it and try to make it better.” WAS THERE ANY CONFUSION WHEN THE FIELD WAS FROZEN UNDER CAUTION? “No, not more than a position. I still don’t know why we’re doing all of that stuff. For many years it worked it’s own way out and it’s pretty easy with a scoring monitor to figure out who is where. We’ll take it, and as long as they’re treating everybody the same it’s perfect.” IS THIS STILL AN ACCEPTABLE AERO PACKAGE? “It was very stable and the cars were good. It was a perfectly clean race up to 30 to go. The cars were stable, but I think we need a little bit of help as far as the Fords. I think we have a little bit more drag because we’re all kind of in the middle struggling. We got up front and led a couple of laps, which was good, and ran second for a long time, but whether we get anything or not, we’ll just work hard on our stuff and go from there.”