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All-Star: Ford NASCAR Sprint Cup Qualifying Recap, Quotes
BOBBY LABONTE – No. 96 Ask.com Ford Fusion (Qualified 7th)
"I think overall the guys did a great job. Our pit stops, we’ve changed a lot of guys around this year and we’re trying to get better and better as we go. I think tonight Ben said it was a 12-something stop and I don’t know what our lap time was because they don’t give you that stuff here for this deal. The car didn’t drive as good as I wanted to, but it seemed like it had some speed to it, so I feel like we’re sitting second right now. I don’t really know. When you go out early like that it’s kind of hard to gauge, but I think we’re only a tenth off of where Jeff is at, and we had no penalities, so we’ll take that and see what we’ve got."
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ANY CONCERN ABOUT LEAVING PIT ROAD FOR THIS QUALIFYING SESSION? "Yeah, you don’t do that every week. We build our stuff nowadays to obviously last 500 miles, but we don’t usually leave pit road like we are for this deal here. Our guys do a good job on that and when we leave pit road we try to leave as smooth as possible, but as fast as possible. Overall, tonight we just had a smooth one, so that’s good. We’ll take it and see where that ends up."
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Qualified 14th) – "It’s a fast race car, very fast. It was good. My crew was real fast, but we had one loose lugnut. It’s frustrating, but that’s kind of how our season has been. We’ve just had little bitty things that keep us from reaching our potential and now is a better time than any to work them out. We’ve got a real important race next weekend that we’ve got to get geared up for."
DO YOU GET REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS RACE? "I was real excited for a minute. That felt good. That felt real good and then we had a penalty. That’s all right. My guys have been working hard. They got a little excited. They went a little crazy. They tried to get me out quick and they did, but NASCAR will get you. They’ll get you."
BUT YOU HAVE SOME SPEED UNDER THE HOOD. "Yeah, it feels good. Let me tell you, that feeling right there, that’s worth a lot. It was only like a minute that I thought I was on the pole, but that was one nice minute right there. I liked it."
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (Qualified 3rd) – WHAT IS IT ABOUT YOUR PIT CREW ALWAYS BEING SO GOOD? "They do a good job. They work really hard at it. They take a lot of pride in having good pit stops on these kind of days and on race day, so it was pretty solid. We’ve been really good this year. They obviously won a couple races for us and have had us in contention to win. We’ve been a little more inconsistent than we’d like, but they’ve been working really hard on it and our cars have been getting better and the pit stops are getting better, so I feel good about that."
THE PIT STOP IS THE KEY HERE, RIGHT? "Yeah, to lose a half-second on the track or a second is harder than it is to lose it on a pit stop or getting in a pit stall or something like that, so that’s the most important part. But you have to have it all right. We were just a little off on the track. We were real close, but we were just a little off and that was probably the difference for us."
YOU BROKE THAT HENDRICK LOGJAM UP FRONT. "When I rolled out there and saw those Hendrick cars there I kind of laughed because they’ve got everything going so good. Their cars are good. They’re good on pit road. All of the guys are driving them, so they’ve got their stuff together right now. They’re tough to beat no matter what we do."
MATT KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE – WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TOMORROW. "I don’t know. We weren’t really very good in race practice today, but our qualifying run – our first lap – wasn’t really great. I was pretty loose and lost a lot of time for those guys there. I thought we got on pit road good. Our pit stop was pretty good. I don’t think it was the fastest one, but it was pretty close to the fastest one and I didn’t do very good leaving pit road. There are a lot of things that go into qualifying good here and you’ve got to him them all just right to be able to run as fast as Jimmie did."
WHAT’S UP WITH YOUR QUALIFYING EFFORTS ALL OF A SUDDEN? "I always qualify good when there’s a pit stop in the middle. I don’t know. Last week was probably just dumb luck. I think last week was our fourth pole or something like that, so every 100 starts or so we’ll win a pole (laughing).
PaddockTalk Perspective
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