CARL EDWARDS WINS FIRST NEXTEL CUP RACE

· Carl Edwards captured his first NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series victory with today’s win at Atlanta.

· Edwards becomes the 74th different driver to win a Cup race in a Ford.

· The last driver to register his first NNC win in a Ford was Greg Biffle when he triumphed at the Pepsi 400 at Daytona in 2003.

· The last time a Ford driver swept the Busch and Cup races in the same weekend was when Jeff Burton captured both events at Phoenix in 2000.

· Today’s win was the second of the season for Ford (Greg Biffle at California).

· Taurus has now won 86 points races and 94 overall when taking into account victories in the Budweiser Shootout and All-Star race. Ford has 556 all-time NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series triumphs.

· Today’s win marked the 28th all-time win for Ford at AMS, but only the third in the last 21 events (Dale Jarrett in 1997 and Kurt Busch in 2002). Those 28 wins tie for the most Ford wins at any single NNC active race track, along with Bristol. Ford has won at Daytona, Lowe’s and Richmond 27 times each.

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus (Finished 3rd) – “I just got beat out of the pits. These cars go aero tight and it’s so hard to pass. I just got stuck behind my teammate and the 48. I was better than them, but I was too aero tight. With the aero package you just can’t pass.” PRESS CONFERENCE – “I think our Post-It/National Guard car was one of the best race cars – us and the 48. Carl beat us out of the pits there at the end and he had a pretty good car all day too running third. We were just a little bit too tight. We were behind those cars. I mean these cars get so aero tight that it’s terrible, but I just got too tight behind those two race cars there at the end and couldn’t do nothing. If I would have known coming in the pits I was gonna leave third, then maybe I would have made an adjustment, but you just never know how you’re gonna end up on the race track so that’s what we got.” CAN YOU DESCRIBE WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TODAY? “It’s the worst day of my life. We had a great race car and we were in position to win. We could beat the 48 for sure and Carl got up there and blocked enough air. With two race cars in front of me I couldn’t do nothing. I felt like I could beat the 48. I’m pretty confident I could beat the 48, but I couldn’t beat Carl. I mean, I didn’t plan on him being there, so that’s the way it goes.” ANYTHING ABOUT THE LAST PIT STOP THAT PUT YOU BACK IN THIRD? “It was just the race off pit road. Man, I was so excited. My guys, you watched the broadcast. I don’t know if they had us going down pit road on TV, but I’d beat them out of the pits by 20 car lengths on every stop. And then the second-to-last stop the 48 beat us and the last stop the 48 and 99 beat us and that’s the way racing is.” WAS YOUR CAR TOO TIGHT BECAUSE IT WAS BEHIND TWO OTHER CARS OR BECAUSE IT WAS LATE IN THE RACE? “No, I was too tight because I was behind two other cars. These cars are just so poor in traffic. It’s unbelievable. It’s really tough and hard to explain, but they’re hard to race. I mean, they’re not hard to race but they don’t make a lot of downforce now. When you’re behind other cars they just won’t turn at all and with two cars in front of me they were just blocking too much air. I made a run at them early and got tight coming off the corner two or three times and had to have the front wheels turned pretty hard and just burned the right-front off of it after about four laps and I was finished.” HOW IMPRESSIVE WAS CARL’S PERFORMANCE? “I guess it’s pretty good for him. I mean, his pit crew got him off pit road first and he must have freed the car up a bunch on that pit stop and his car was right. He was turning it way sideways coming off the corners, but that’s what he needed to do for that short run at the end. He might have brought the tire pressures up, but he wasn’t a factor all day. I know that.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Scotts Taurus – MEDIA CENTER PRESS CONFERENCE – HOW DID YOU DO IT? “I have to thank my sponsors first because if it wasn’t for them coming on board, I wouldn’t be driving the car this year. Scotts, World Financial Group, AAA and Office Depot. I thank Jack Roush for giving me this opportunity. As far as the race is concerned, my pit crew got us off pit road, I believe, first on that last pit stop and that was unbelievable. If it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t have been in position to win. As far as the race, I just drove as hard as I possibly could trying to figure out a way to get by Jimmie, which is just about impossible, and it just worked out at the end. I can’t believe it worked out.”

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING? “No, not at all. To be honest with you, this is beyond my wildest dreams and I’m enjoying every minute of it. About two and a half years ago I was working on my dirt car in my garage at home and this is pretty cool. It’s unbelievable.”

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE BACKFLIP? “I almost didn’t make it around on that one. I was a little wore out and excited. I was definitely off, but I’ll make it up to them next time. Tyler Walker gave me that idea. He’s a World of Outlaws driver and now he drives in the Busch Series and it’s just a good way to show how excited I am. I don’t know. The pictures look kind of neat. I think that’s kind of cool, but that’s about it. It’s just something fun to do.”

JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – No. 99 Scotts Taurus – WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT WHEN HE’S DOING THE BACKFLIP AND WHAT ABOUT THE 99 TURNAROUND? “The first time I saw him do it I thought it was luck. I went over and said, ‘We’re going to be doing this a long time and if you keep doing that and relying on luck to get you around it’s not gonna work.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. When I was in college I had a girlfriend that would help me with it. I had a padded room and I fell down a lot, but I’m not gonna fall down. I can do it.’ I guess it’s not bragging if you can do it and he’s been doing it really well. The 99 team gets a standard ration of grain and nutrients just like every other team – the very best we’ve got all the time and that’s what it’s had forever. Bob Osborne was there before Carl came and we’ve only had a handful of people change. Just a few people have changed and it’s realized its potential. Not all the combinations are right for all the drivers any given time, but Carl has gotten in there. He took a look at Mark Martin and said, ‘You know, if Mark can drive it, if you’ll just serve me up a portion of what Mark’s got, I’ll go out and do my business with it.’ On the other hand, when Mark won his race at Las Vegas in the Busch Series – actually Carl let him have one with his flat tire at Las Vegas – they asked what he thought about Carl and he said, ‘You know, if I was a little younger I’d pick up the backflip myself.’ I’m pretty sure that will take him a long ways.”

CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – DID YOU KNOW YOU HAD HIM AT THE STRIPE? “Boy, yeah I guess I did know. That was kind of a surreal moment for me. I don’t really know how to explain it. I was thinking a lot of things and somehow, yeah, I knew we won the race. Was it really like a foot or something? I thought it was a little more than that, so that makes me more grateful.”

YOU JUST FOLLOWED JIMMIE THE LAST FEW LAPS. “Yeah, I’m really glad he was leading the race with 10 to go rather than me because I felt like for not having won a race before that point I would have been really, really nervous leading. Just like yesterday in the Busch car, I was a little nervous. I don’t think I drove as well as I did today in the Cup car being second – being able to watch everything Jimmie was doing and taking that into consideration and pressure him. I was just kind of carting around trying different things. I noticed he was having just a little bit of trouble every once in a while, so I could tell that I was giving him a little bit of pressure, but, man, it just all came together there on that last lap. It was pretty neat.”

YOU WEREN’T HAVING THE EASIEST TIME CHASING JIMMIE. “Yeah, the race track has different levels of grip all over it and I was using one amount of throttle, which was all of it. Every once in a while we’d go over a spot that didn’t have much grip and it would spin the rear tires. I was just being really aggressive and I probably hurt our chances a little bit by doing that, but the car was just a little bit free. In Bob Osborne’s defense, I’m really excited about how well he got it for that last run because that was the best it had been all day and I was able to go hard pretty comfortably – more than I could earlier in the day.”

YOU GOT REALLY SIDEWAYS. “Yeah, coming off of two? I grabbed a lot of right turns on that one, but when you’re trying that hard it’s pretty easy to correct those things.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – WHY WILL CARL BE DIFFERENT FROM OTHER YOUNG DRIVERS WHO START FAST BUT DON’T MAKE IT ALL THE WAY? “That’s the stuff of editorials. We’re yet to determine how good he can be, but I certainly think he’ll be able to go all the way. I was more excited watching today’s race. In fact I’m still so excited I can hardly talk. I’ve never been more excited at any race than I was today, including the first race we won in 1989 with Mark. For Carl to fall into Jimmie Johnson’s tire tracks and go out there and noodle a place on the race track where there was enough grip for him – to spin the daylights out of his Goodyear tires. I don’t know if anybody but me looked at the tire, but before he did his burnout, when he was out there doing his backflip, he’s got two inches of rubber missing – two inches of cords showing all the way around the outside of that left-rear tire. So he had no tire at all. He did it strictly on guts and determination. That is incredible that he was able to pull that off. I couldn’t be more excited or proud of Carl and his family and Scotts and everybody that stands behind it. I told Carl he’s my retirement. If I can do this thing as long as he can do it, then maybe that will be enough for me. Right now I’m 63, I would 83. Yeah, I could probably do that. (laughing).”

CARL’S ENTHUSIASM SEEMS TO INFECT EVERYBODY, INCLUDING YOURSELF. “It’s contagious. It was also Bob Osborne, our crew chief for our 99 car, it was his first win. It was probably more folks that had their first win today than any time in recent memory, any team in recent memory. That’s a fairly new, young, yet to be really successful group of people that are assembled there. Carl, when they had a bad pit stop he rubbed them down and said, ‘Guys, it’s gonna be OK. We’re in this together. It’ll be alright.’ He gives praise where it helps and he consoles where it helps. Carl is the entire package and there aren’t that many entire packages out there as we see.”

CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – WERE YOU AS LOOSE AS YOU APPEARED AND DID YOU MAKE THE CALCULATED DECISION TO FREE THE CAR UP ON THE LAST STOP? “I don’t know what that last corner looked like, but we tightened the car up that last run. That’s the tightest the car had been. I was just driving it harder, so once you get the car pivoted, you can really stand on it when it’s tight like that and that’s what we were doing there. The car was just about perfect. All four tires were aimed the same direction, the throttle was down and whatever it looked like that’s what it looked like. I don’t really remember much about that last corner, I was just kind of going wherever it was going.”

BIFFLE SAID IT APPEARED JIMMIE MIGHT HAVE BEEN CLEAR ENOUGH OF YOU TO MOVE UP AND BLOCK. JIMMIE SAID HE MIGHT HAVE HAD SIX INCHES BUT IT WAS TOO CLOSE TO RISK. DO YOU THINK HE HAD ROOM TO BLOCK AND WERE YOU ANTICIPATING THAT? “There wasn’t anything in the world that was gonna take my foot off that throttle pedal at that point. Nothing. Whatever would have happened it would have happened.”

YOU ARE THE 11TH GUY IN HISTORY TO WIN IN ALL THREE SERIES AND THE FIRST TO REGISTER HIS FIRST BUSCH AND CUP WINS ON THE SAME WEEKEND. CAN YOU PUT IT IN WORDS AS TO HOW YOU FEEL? “Some day I’ll be able to explain it better, but I can’t really describe to you guys what this all means to me. It means a lot. I don’t think I could describe it right now, but it just means the world to me.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW BIG THIS IS FOR YOU AND HOW YOU GOT HERE IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME? “Everything just worked out perfectly. I had a lot of really good people. My mom (Nancy Sterling) and her husband, Jim Sterling, are unbelievable. They’ve helped me so much. My mom has always been my backbone and supported me so much. My dad is the smartest racer in the world and I feel like the things I do on the race track and the way that I approach racing is because of my father. But as far as getting from running our dirt car to here, I just realized through a little bit of help from my mother that the only way you can get where you want to go is to make it happen and to make things work. So I printed business cards and went to every race that I could get to physically and did everything I could do to meet as many people as I could. I sent out resumes and did everything just to get opportunities. I tried not to get opportunities that were so far advanced that I couldn’t perform well. I tried to just slowly step up the ladder. People just gave me opportunities. Mike Mittler put me in his Craftsman Truck way before anybody should have put me in something like that. It’s a long story, but the bottom line is a lot of folks have really just been very good to me for some reason. I’m really grateful.”

MARK MARTIN – No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Finished 4th) – “I worked pretty hard today and so did all of my Viagra team. We had this Taurus pretty hooked up, but it wasn’t good enough to pull it off there at the end. It was a good run and I’m awfully proud of all these guys. Our Roush-Yates Engines, Kraft, Pennzoil and everybody that supports us. I’m ready for some Gatorade.” ARE YOU GOING TO DO A BACKFLIP AS PART OF YOUR SALUTE TOUR? “I’m too old.” HAPPY WITH THE RUN? “Yeah, we didn’t quite have what we needed to win. We were awfully good on the long runs. We did good to come out where we did with that short a run at the end. Our car was really good on long runs and gave up some on the short ones.” HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ROUSH RACING SO STRONG AS A WHOLE BEFORE? “I don’t know. I’m just happy we are.”

KURT BUSCH – No. 97 IRWIN/Sharpie Taurus (Finished 32nd) – “There’s nothing you can do. We weren’t that aggressive on right fronts, but we kept blowing them. We got involved in that accident on the first lap and then poked a hole in another right-front tire, so it was just a bummer day.”

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Trex USG Sheetrock/DeWalt Taurus (Finished 31st) – “Somebody wrecked way up front and we just got collected in it. The rest of the day all we could do was make some laps, burn some gas and wear out the tires. There’s nothing you can really do.” IT’S JUST THE WAY THINGS HAVE GONE FOR YOU LATELY ISN’T IT? “Yeah, I don’t know how much to elaborate on it but it’s been bad so far. A lot of things have been out of our control. Maybe a little bit has been in our control, but most of it has been out of it. We obviously have the equipment to get it done at Roush by what everybody else is doing. We just have to get some runs together and start getting some finishes.”

RICKY RUDD – No. 21 Motorcraft Genuine Parts Taurus (Finished 33rd) – “It’s pretty frustrating. We’ve had good race cars every week, we just haven’t had a chance to show it. Today was the longest we ran without having some trouble. It was kind of a freak deal with the wheel bearing or something. I don’t know. I think we got up to fourth or fifth and Fatback was just tweaking the car and tweaking the car. I think we would have had something there at the end.”

CARL EDWARDS PRESS BOX PRESS CONFERENCE – DO YOU FEEL LIKE A SUPERSTAR? “No, I definitely don’t. I don’t. I guess from the outside a couple of years ago if you would have told me we just won this race and won the Busch race and everything was just going great I’d say, man, I feel like a superstar. But it doesn’t happen quite that way. It seems like there’s an awful lot of work and an awful lot of people like Bob Osborne and Jack Roush, who put so much work and effort into it that now I think I have a better understanding of what it takes. The thing that makes it happen, there’s nothing magical or spectacular, it’s just hard work and dedication. So it just seems like I don’t feel like a superstar. It’s like, ‘Wow, it’s amazing that all of this work is paying off.’ It’s that type of feeling.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR DIRT RACING BACKGROUND? “I had a lot of fun when we were doing our dirt racing and stuff. I got to do some fun jobs like substitute teach and I worked a little bit of construction and things like that. All of that made me realize that I really wanted to make a living racing because this is a lot of fun. The dirt track experience, I wouldn’t trade that for anything. That and the USAC Silver Crown experience, the Baby Grand Stock Cars, everything I’ve driven, I think, has helped me to prepare for this and I think it’s done that with actually handling the car and the differences in all the race tracks. It’s helped me with that and being able to adapt to the different engineering stuff that Bob comes up with as far as springs and setups because they all handle very differently.”

WE KNOW YOU CAN DO BACKFLIPS, BUT CAN YOU LEAP TALL BUILDINGS IN A SINGLE BOUND? “That’s funny (laughter).” YOU WERE TRYING TO PASS THE LEADER AND HOLD OFF THE THIRD PLACE CAR. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? “I just feel like way too many people have worked way too hard for me not to give it 100 percent until the very end of that race. That’s all there is to it. I’m not going to give up – ever – no matter what. I learned that from my father early on racing and I’ve learned it from a lot of people since then in life. That’s all there is to it. If you can get it done, get it done because there’s only one opportunity.”

HAS JIMMIE JOHNSON TOLD YOU THAT HE THINKS YOU’RE THE NEXT SUPERSTAR? “Jimmie has been an amazing competitor. He’s been someone, just like everyone, I look up to Jimmie for his abilities and what he can do in a race car, but he’s also been a really nice guy. I’ve met a couple of guys like that, Mark Martin and some others really stand out, but Jimmie seems like one of those guys that has a really good time racing. I think he enjoys it like I enjoy it and it’s fun to race against him. When we were racing for lead out there, he’s holding thumbs up out the window at some point in that race and I was like, ‘Man, this guy is just having a blast.’ He did that in the Busch race yesterday, too, so he’s pretty cool. To be able to win against him, that makes this win very special to beat him on the last lap. That’s a big deal for me.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – CAN YOU GO OVER YOUR REASONS FOR LEAPFROGGING CARL FROM TRUCK TO CUP? “First of all, let me say that it takes three things to make these race teams work. This is not a secret, but I feel very strongly about it. It takes a driver that can. It takes technology and support from a manufacturer that is competitive with what else is out there and it takes a team that’s able to support all that. I felt that I had a team in the 99 team that was able to support all that and I felt that I had technology or was demonstrating that I had technology that was capable and I wasn’t willing to let the 99 team die, in spite of the fact that I lacked sponsorship. My decision making about keeping the 99 team alive was, I told Geoff Smith, our president, we will continue to run the car until we have no prospect of sponsor and you tell me I can’t afford to do it. So we didn’t reach that point where we couldn’t afford to do it, even though our prospect for sponsors in the dark days there weren’t great. Carl was the heir apparent for the 6 car. I designated Carl years before to be in the 6 car, so we were gonna run Carl one year in Busch and then move him into the 6 car when Mark retired. But with needing to make the decision to keep the 99 car alive, we had to go ahead and put him in the slot.”

IF YOU HAD NOT BEEN SUCCESSFUL WITH KURT WOULD YOU HAVE TRIED IT WITH CARL? “I’ve been running multiple cars and multiple drivers in my racing program since 1966, so I believe in what I do. I believe in my methods. They’re well practiced and they’ve been successful over a period of time in four different series, so I wouldn’t have given up on that. I felt that Carl had the ingredients, he had the capability, he was demonstrating the potential to make that move. If we hadn’t have been successful with Kurt, that would have been the first case where I had judged a person to be ready that I had been unsuccessful and there was at least three or four different instances of pulling people ahead like that. When you add up all the things that were going for it, it was just compelling. Carl is so incredible. Kurt was so incredible. There are a handful of drivers behind them that have been similarly demanding that they be given the opportunity when it was available.”

CARL EDWARDS CONTINUED – ANY CONCERN YOU COULD BE SPREADING YOURSELF THIN BETWEEN BUSCH AND CUP? “I wouldn’t change it a bit. Jack brought this up to me as an actual possibility last year at Richmond and I couldn’t have been more excited about it. This is the perfect situation for me. I started driving race cars because I loved it and I love every lap of it, so the more laps the better. I think it’s helping me definitely, especially with a lot of the Cup guys going down and running the Busch cars. I got a chance to race against Tony Stewart and Greg Biffle and Jimmie Johnson yesterday and I learned a lot from there. So I’ve just got to thank Charter and Ford and everyone for giving me such great stuff to go run in. It’s amazing to get to hop in cars – two separate teams. Bob Osborne, the crew chief of the Cup car, and Brad Parrott, the crew chief for the Busch car, are both perfect. The teams are perfect. The engines are perfect and I just get to drive both of them. It’s an honor.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – WHEN DID YOU SIGN CARL AND HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT HIM? “Max Jones and Rich Reichenbach and Jimmy Eikish were running our Truck program, I guess it was three years ago now, in Michigan and they identified Carl as somebody that was incredibly talented and was doing a great job with equipment. There was some limitations of funding and the team was doing a great job. They were doing everything they could. They were keeping the faith and putting Carl in the best stuff that they could, but they didn’t have all the resources that many of the people he was racing against had, and he did a better job than he should have been able to do. When we had an opening, Max went off to Carl’s owner at that time and asked him if he would mind if we put Carl in a full schedule, rather than run the limited schedule he was on and in so doing being able to get him in more resources than he had. His owner was willing to step aside. Mike Mittler was willing to wish Carl well and see him on his way. Mike Mittler and Max Jones and Rich Reichenbach really set the stage for that. We can’t say enough about what it means to be with great companies like Ford Motor Company that stands behind us, and with Goodyear for their great tires, and, of course, our engines ran flawlessly today. The Roush-Yates engine program with Doug and Robert Yates, with David George and all the guys down there. They’re doing such a great job. We couldn’t be doing what we’re doing without all this great support we’ve got behind us.”

WHY IS YOUR TEAM AND HENDRICK SO FAR AHEAD OF EACH OTHER? “Well, certainly we’re benchmarking against one another. We’re parking against one another in the garage and the crew chiefs talk to one another and they look at the hardware. As much as I dislike it and I’m sure Rick dislikes it, there’s a lot of cross-pollination with people that move around and have breakfast and lunch together in the Charlotte area. But, anyway, we’re definitely challenging one another with what we do. I think the Hendrick organization and the Roush organization are fast out of the blocks. I think there will be other players in contention and other teams will obviously win races, but we’re fast out of the blocks. There will be times when other teams that aren’t winning races yet this year will be innovative and they’ll have some of the luck that we’ve been having and they’ll win their share. The way that Brian and the NASCAR organization has got the championship run set up, they’re gonna line these 10 fast horses up nose to nose for those last 10 races and it’s gonna be an all-new ballgame. This is the first part of the season. A minute ago I referred to it as a preseason season and maybe that w