Ford Phoenix Truck Race
FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Casino Arizona 150 (Truck) November 10, 2006 Phoenix International Raceway
MARK MARTIN-6-Scotts Ford F-150 (Finished 2nd) - "Well, Johnny earned it. They showed they were really fast on new tires in qualifying by smoking everybody. He earned it. He came from the back of the pack, and we had a great truck and he passed us. They deserve to win tonight. Our strong suit was long green flags, and we got that early, but we didn't get it late."
MARCOS AMBROSE-20-Team Australia/Aussie Vineyards Ford F-150 (Finished 15th) - "We got a pit lane penalty there, and that was very unfortunate. That caught us with a truck that we couldn't turn on, and on the long green-flag run we lost a lap. We fought back and got a lap back. We probably gained 10 spots that we shouldn't have there to sneak into the top 15. It's not too bad. We'll take that. We definitely qualified better and I feel like we're starting to get a handle on these shorter tracks. I'm done with the short tracks this year, and I feel like I'm getting better on them, and hopefully I have a few more in years to come."
DAVID RAGAN-50-PurposeMoney.com Ford F-150 (Finished 17th) - "We had a 15th- or 16th-place truck and finished wherever we did. A disappointing night. I'm glad that we finished on the lead lap. We had a few high spots. We know what we need to do different when we come back here. There are a few things that we just took a gamble on just trying to make things happen, and it didn't work. I'm definitely very proud of everybody on pit road. We had awesome pit stops and I feel like I let them down a little bit on the race track, but we just didn't have the truck to get up there in front and have fun with those guys."
ERIK DARNELL-99-Northern Tool + Equipment Ford F-150 (Finished 10th) - "I qualified better than I thought we would, but the truck still wasn't that good. They didn't give up on me. They adjusted on it during the race. I'm not very happy with the finish, but it's another top-10. The truck was really too tight, especially on long runs. We threw some pretty big adjustments at it during the last pit stop, and it didn't do much to it all. The truck just didn't seem to want to respond to anything tonight, so we were just fighting for everything that we could. We got lucky there with lapped traffic, and picked the right line a couple of times and were able to pick up a couple of spots and ended up in the top 10. That's about it, though." DO YOU FEEL THAT A TOP-10 FINISH IS THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO FOR THIS TEAM NOW ON A WEEKLY BASIS? "Honestly, yeah. This team has come together really well, and for the most part we've had some really good trucks. You look at the last six races or so and we should have been in the top 10 for all those. At Talladega and Vegas, we didn't get the finishes that we thought we should have. We really had to fight it here tonight. The truck was not that good."
MARK MARTIN PRESS CONFERENCE
"We had a great truck all through practice and looked like Johnny was the other strongest truck out there. It kinda showed tonight. Our truck was awesome on long runs and it took a little while to show its true strength, and Johnny just put it on us. He smoked everybody qualifying. He came from the back of the pack. He passed us, and we didn't get much green flag in the last part of the race. That's where my truck was the strongest, so we came up one spot short."
ERIK DARNELL PRESS CONFERENCE
"We really had a tough go of it tonight. We struggled all through practice. We weren't very good. John Quinn and all of the guys did a great job just working on our Northern Tool + Equipment Ford. We still struggled. We qualified better than I thought we would, but we were not very good in the race. I think we were about a 15th- to 20th-place truck. Them guys never gave up on us. We adjusted on it during the pit stops. We got lucky with a couple of the yellows out there with the restarts, with the lapped cars with where they were at, and we picked up a few spots and we came out with a top-10 tonight."