Ford Texas Busch Qualifying
FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES O'Reilly Challenge 300 Qualifying, Page 1 November 3, 2006 Texas Motor Speedway ASHTON LEWIS, JR.-25-Team Marines Ford Fusion (Qualified 19th) - "I'm pretty happy with it. We never got to make a run in practice. We had talked about it and felt like it was going to be flat out, that the track was definitely going to have it in it. Unfortunately, we had a problem with the fail-safe throttle and the first lap was pretty much junk, as you could see. We figured it out for the second lap, but I didn't have the courage to go for a wide-open lap. I know there's faster times out there, so I don't know where it will end up, but for the guys and taking a shot at it, it was pretty good." WHAT FAIL-SAFE MECHANISM DID YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH? "It's on the gas pedal itself, not the one on the steering wheel. We'll get it figured out for tomorrow." CARL EDWARDS-60-Ameriquest Mortgage Ford Fusion (Qualified 6th) - "That's not going to be the pole, but it's a pretty good lap for me. I think if I could do it over again that I wouldn't go any faster. The guys did a great job. We didn't make a mock run. Darrell Morrow and PK (Pierre Kuettel, crew chief) and all of them did a good job. It was fun; it was a little free. The last time here I wrecked it in qualifying, so they were on me pretty hard not to do that. A big improvement from wrecking." GREG BIFFLE-16-freecreditrepot.com Ford Fusion (Qualified 18th) - "That was flat out all the way, just pushing on the brake pedal down there in three and four. It kind of bounced around a little bit, but it really stuck good. Eddie Pardue (crew chief) did a great job with the freecreditreport.com car. I hope it's that good tomorrow. A decent qualifying run, we didn't make a qualifying run in practice. I'm pretty happy with that lap." IS IT TOUGH WHEN YOU DON'T MAKE A MOCK-QUALIFYING RUN IN PRACTICE? "The cars don't change that much, and it's not that big of a deal. There's nothing that we can change from race trim to qualifying anyway. If I tape it up and make a qualifying lap, whatever I've got is what I've got and I've got to drive it anyway, so we can't adjust it, so I'd rather not know what it's going to be like and use all of my time to get the car right in race trim." MARK MARTIN-6-Ameriquest Ford Fusion (Qualified 1st) - "Mike Beam (crew chief) called a 28.02 or something like that, and I was real busy because I going into turn one, and I asked him on the backstretch, 'Was that the pole?' He said, 'Yeah, that's real good.' So I said, 'I really don't need to be running the second lap then because it had my attention.' Our team is just awesome. This is our truck team and they have this Ameriquest Fusion really working today. I'm real proud of the way that it drove in race trim and this was surprise. That was about eight-tenths faster than our mock run was in practice. It was a big surprise, but the car was just spectacular. I look forward to tomorrow." STEPHEN LEICHT-90-CitiFinancial Ford Fusion (Qualified 3rd) - "These guys have done such an awesome job all weekend. The car was good since we unloaded it. I screwed up the second lap. The first lap, I burped it a little bit in one and two and then I was wide open on the second lap. It felt so good that I tried to overdo it turn three and overshot the corner, otherwise it probably would have been better. The thing is, we're more happy about our race trim than we are our qualifying trim, so it's pretty exciting. This CitiFinancial team has done a great job." WIDE OPEN WASN'T THE BEST OPTION IN TURNS THREE AND FOUR? "No, that corner is a little bit sharper. If I would have backed off a little sooner and got back to the throttle early, I probably would have picked up another tenth or so. That's about all it has; it's pretty close." MATT KENSETH-17-Pennzoil Ford Fusion (Qualified 7th) - "It was all right. I don't know how to go much faster, so it was all right." WERE YOU ONE OF THE DRIVERS THAT OPTED TO STAY IN RACE TRIM DURING ALL OF THE PRACTICES SESSIONS TODAY? "No, we did and we gained a lot of time. We didn't run very fast in practice and we were struggling a little bit. We definitely made it better. I don't know if it's good enough to win, but we made it better." FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES O'Reilly Challenge 300 Qualifying, Page 3 November 3, 2006 Texas Motor Speedway STEPHEN LEICHT PRESS CONFERENCE "We're really excited. The CitiFinancial team did a great job this weekend. Ever since the car came off the trailer it's been fast. They worked hard all day long and we're actually more excited about our race-trim setup than we were about our qualifying setup. To come out of there with a third, that's awesome. They did a great job. The car was awesome. I overshot turn three a little bit and if I hadn't done that, I might have been a little bit faster, but a great lap." MARK MARTIN PRESS CONFERENCE "First of all, it was a real tribute to Mike Beam and that team. That's my truck team, and everybody knows how awesome they've been. They took on the seven Busch races as well this year, and they're pulling double-duty this week. For them to give me this kind of effort is pretty incredible and pretty amazing. I love those guys so much and I love working with them. This is a cool way to wind up our Busch thing. It was a surprise that the car was that fast. I did very much like the car in race trim. I made a mock run and was not very impressed with it and made some considerably large adjustments for qualifying and it really perked it up. It's a big surprise to us. I feel like we're going to race well. We may have to adjust on the car quite a bit tomorrow based on the fact that is a different kind of a setup than we've run in the past. We may have to kind of adjust along the way tomorrow, but we're off to a good start." TALK ABOUT YOUR CUP CAR THIS WEEKEND. "I was very pleased with the Busch car and we went over and started the Cup practice not that much different, a little bit different, and we made some of the changes that brought it toward the Busch car. To be honest with you, I was very pleased with the Cup car in race trim. I was very disappointed with it in qualifying trim. I guess we'll learn more about it tomorrow because we won't be trying to mix both. I feel like I've got a great Busch car with our Ameriquest car and I'm hoping that we have a fairly competitive Cup car. This is not my favorite car. We're not used to doing this, but in the course of three weeks we lost my two favorite cars. That's not typical for us. We usually get one car and race it a lot, and that's what we were doing with the car at Charlotte, and then we were going to do the same the thing with that car at Atlanta and we lost it as well. This is the car that we ran at Pocono. It has run well in race trim today and we hope we'll run good on Sunday." ARE THE SPEEDS GETTING TOO FAST IN THE CUP CARS? "The cool thing about it is that unlike lots of places, this tire is backing up hard. And, that's wonderful. It makes for great racing. That means you need to put tires on when the caution comes out. That means that the speeds will slow down quite a bit on a run. It's all good stuff. But, if it held its speed, like brand new asphalt would, then, yeah, I would agree and say that we're getting up there flirting with too much speed. In race trim, the times and the speeds are going to back up pretty hard and that's going to be great. That's going to make for some really good racing and if we get the top groove rubbered in, people will be running the bottom, middle and top. It's going to be good, great racing." DAVID RAGAN DID NOT QUALIFY FOR THE CUP RACE THIS WEEKEND. HAVE YOU HAD A CHANCE TO TALK WITH HIM YET? "I haven't talked to David today. He's doing double-duty as well with the truck, in the 6 truck tonight. I'm sure he's disappointed, but then you have to look at the Roush cars were not fast, and he did not have a fair chance because you had Jamie McMurray about 45th and Greg Biffle 39th. If you look down the list, it wasn't his fault that he didn't make the race. It was our fault by not having faster stuff for all of us to drive today. We, obviously, don't know why that is. If we all would have been better then he would have been up there solidly." -30-