Ford Friday Phoenix Advance, Kenseth, Biffle and Edwards

Friday November 7, 2008

 

Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion, is in eighth place in the standings heading into this weekend’s race at Phoenix International Raceway. Kenseth won at Phoenix in ’02.

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – IS IT A BIG DEAL TO FINISH AS HIGH IN THE STANDINGS AS POSSIBLE? “You always want to do as best you can, bring your best stuff and put your best foot forward – you’re always trying to win races and finish as high as you can finish. It’s important to finish the season as high as we possible can. Hopefully, we’ll move up in the points a little bit more, and have a good feeling about it going into next year.”

DO YOU START EXPERIMENTING FOR NEXT YEAR? SOME TEAMS ARE MOVING PERSONNEL AROUND. “You can maybe move some personnel and that type of thing, but this car NASCAR has us locked in so tight, there’s not a lot of experimenting, really, that can be done anymore. There’s a lot of real little things here and there, but it’s not very much. We used to be build new cars every year and try different body configurations or different-style chassis and stuff, but they’ve got so many rules and have got these things so locked in that there’s not really a lot of extra experimenting and testing and stuff we can really do.”

YOU’VE BEEN VERY CONSISTENT FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS. WITH TWO RACES REMAINING, YOU HAVEN’T WON, YET, IN THE CUP SERIES FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2001. HOW WOULD YOU ASSESS YOUR SEASON? “There’s been a lot of bright spots in our season, a lot of things I think we’ve done right and there’s been a lot of mistakes that we’ve learned from to make our team stronger. There’s ups and downs. I’m disappointed that we don’t have a shot at the championship, and at this point we haven’t had a win yet, but the bright side is we’ve been able to make the Chase, we’ve been able to be consistent, there’s a few races we had good enough stuff to win in the right circumstance. So, you know, kind of right in the middle of the road.”

ARE THERE OTHER THINGS OTHER THAN WINS THAT RACE TEAMS LOOK AT TO MEASURE SUCCESS? “Yeah, of course. It’s not two teams, it’s not like a football game where there’s one winner and one loser, there’s 43 of them out there, and obviously when you run sixth that’s better than running 16th or whatever. You still measure how you are compared to your competition, and we haven’t been as good as the top few of our competition who are the ones up there running for a championship. We’ve been as good or better than a lot of the teams.”

AS CONSISTENT AS THIS TEAM HAS BEEN, COULD YOU HAVE IMAGINED GOING THIS DEEP INTO A SEASON AND NOT YET GAINING A WIN? “I don’t ever expect to win. When we win, I’m happy about it, pleasantly surprised. I’m kind of like the Mark Martin deal – I mean, you never know when you’re going to have your last one, you never know if you’re going to get another one. So, you’ve got to enjoy everyone that you get. It’s really hard to win, obviously, Jeff hasn’t won yet this year. It’s hard to win these days. There’s a lot of competition, these cars are close to the same speed. Everything’s got to go right.”

Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion, is in third place in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings with two races remaining. Biffle has two second-place finishes in his last six starts at Phoenix.

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion – YOU’VE GOT TWO TO GO, YOU’VE GOT SOME GROUND TO MAKE UP BUT YOU’VE HAD A HECK OF A CHASE. YOUR THOUGHTS? “Yeah, we have had a heck of a Chase. If I had to go back and do anything over, I think we’d do exactly the same thing as that we’ve done. We’ve came to the race track every weekend the best prepared we can. We’ve tested, we’ve digested, thought about what we needed to do. We’ve run our best. I think that’s all we can do, is come out ever week and be the best we can and see what happens. I thought last week, we were going to definitely make up a little bit and the table turned there late for us in the race, but we still gained a little on Jimmie. We’ve got two races left to try and get it done.”

THERE WAS SOME DISCUSSION LAST WEEK AMONG THE ROUSH DRIVERS HOW CARL WAS ABLE TO MAKE THE DISTANCE. DID YOU FIND ANYTHING OUT THIS PAST WEEK ABOUT WHAT THEY WERE ABLE TO DO? “Actually, we haven’t got into that yet. Simply because the fact that we didn’t have a production meeting last week. Jack wasn’t there and the guys were busy. They still had there regular meeting, but we didn’t have that meeting which probably would have got more in detail into that. But more than anything, we need to learn from that mileage to try and improve our other cars versus what did he have or what did they do different than everybody else. We certainly want all of our cars to get really good mileage. It was the whole race, it wasn’t just the end. He didn’t do something spectacular at the end to manage to save his gas to get there. They didn’t start saving gas until 10 to go, which is pretty surprising that they made it considering Jeff Gordon tried to save right from leaving in to pit road and just babied it the entire way and just barely made it. We need to look at that and try and make our cars better across the board. It’s positive for us as a company that we’re able to get that good mileage. He got that mileage all day. We need to look back and see if we can improve our cars. We really don’t know exactly yet what the difference is. Driving style will make a slight difference in mileage, usually a tenth or a half-a-tenth or something like that. There’s a lot more than that there that we can definitely all learn from, so that’s good.”

IS THIS LIKE THE FOURTH QUARTER OF THE SUPER BOWL, TWO MINUTES TO GO AND YOU’RE DOWN A TOUCHDOWN? OR IS MORE LIKE YOU’RE DOWN A TOUCHDOWN AND THERE’S ONLY 20 SECONDS TO GO? “I would say we’ve still got a whole quarter to go, because next week, if we need to pick up 149 points, there’s about 20 seconds left, because somebody’s going to have to have a problem within the first 10 laps of the race or 15 laps of the race and finish 43rd and we’re going to have a spectacular day. So, right now, we still have two races. That’s still a big deficit, it’s still 75 points per race, which is a lot. There again, we’ve talked about it all along all the scenarios, all the things, anything can happen. Anybody can get a flat tire, anybody can break a rear-end gear, anybody can have the engine fail or break a transmission on a re-start – all of those things are out there. Or, have two ignition boxes go out at the same time. Anything can happen. We’re certainly just going to worry about us and just dig as hard as we can.”

YOU’VE HAD A STELLAR RECORD AT HOMESTEAD. IS THERE A CERTAIN POINT NUMBER THAT YOU FEEL IF YOU’RE WITHIN THAT NUMBER HEADING INTO THE FINAL RACE…? “Well, it depends on what happens to Carl this week because not only are we trying to beat one car, we’re trying to beat two cars. So, even if I have a great race here and get closer and Carl finishes top-five down there and we win, he’s still going to be ahead of us in points. But, I feel like we can make up any amount of points. Jimmie has been – I think it’s fair to say whatever the points are from 15th to 20th, and if we win the race you stand a chance of beating him. Most of the time he’s going to run better than that, but that’s probably point-wise your outside chance at pulling something off. That’s what Tony Stewart did when we went there – I think he finished 16th or something like that, didn’t have a great night, 17th, he was a lap down at one point, and we won the race and ended up 35 short. So, I don’t know what the deficit was in ’05 going into Homestead, but probably 35 less than that would be the magic number.”

BOTH MATT KENSETH AND JEFF GORDON HAVE NOT WON RACES THIS YEAR. YOU’VE GONE THROUGH A SEASON WHEN YOU HAVEN’T WON AND KNOWN YOUR TEAM WAS BETTER THAN THAT. DOES IT HAVE A PARTICULAR STING WHEN YOU DON’T GET A WIN? THE ZERO KIND OF HANGS THERE? “Yeah, it does. I’ve been really fortunate. I’ve been able to win a race every season I’ve been in the Sprint Cup Series so far, but I’ve come up short in the Craftsman Truck Series of winning in a season. And it does, it is tough. You get nervous when you get three-quarters of the way through the season – it was Kansas last year that pulled our zero column, we were able to put a “1” in there. Then this year it was all the way until Loudon and Dover, so, yeah, it is hard. But some of the guys make it look so dang easy. Kyle Busch winning a whole bunch early in the season and now Jimmie and myself and Carl winning a bunch right in a row. It is tough. It is tough when you go a season without winning a race.”

IF YOU HAD TO VOTE FOR DRIVER OF THE YEAR IN 2008, WHO WOULD YOU PICK AND WHY? “Oh, I’d pick myself. I don’t know. Driver of the Year – well, that would be really hard right now. That would be really hard because a lot of guys have done a spectacular job. One could say Kyle Busch did a magnificent job three-quarters of the season. He’s been a little under the radar since then. And Jimmie Johnson has done a great job – they’ve positioned themselves, they’ve won races, they made the Chase and they’re leading the Chase, and Carl’s had a great season, too. So, I think there’s three or four guys that would be in a really, really tight race for that.”

THERE’S TWO RACES LEFT. IS IT BONSAI TIME? DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO MAKE SOME CARL EDWARDS MOVES, CRAZY MOVES? “I’ve been doing that the last eight races, so I’m doing all I can do. Man, I’m just doing all I can do. I’ve been driving the wheels off the thing every single lap. You know, it’s frustrating like at a place like Atlanta, where we normally run better than we did and we finished 10th, but, gosh, you know, that stung to drive as hard as we can and end up 10th. But, yeah, we’ve got to do what we can do. That’s it. I can only change my outcome and not anybody else’s. So I’m going to try and get a couple of wins here in the last couple of weeks, see what I can do.”

WITH THE NEW CAR AND LIMITED CHANGES THAT YOU’RE ABLE TO MAKE TO IT, WITH NASCAR SAYING THEY’RE NOT GOING TO CHANGE THINGS IF THEY CAN HELP IT, GOING FROM 2008 TO 2009 IS PRETTY SAFE TO ASSUME THAT IF YOU’RE GOOS AT THIS POINT IN THE SEASON, YOU’RE PROBABLY GOING TO BE GOOD GOING INTO THE FIRST PART OF NEXT SEASON, AND IF YOU’RE STRUGGLE NOW, YOU’LL STILL BE TRYING TO FIGURE IT OUT THEN? “Yeah, that’s a pretty fair assessment, I think. Guys that are pretty decent now are probably going to start the season pretty decent. The only thing that I would say is although some of the guys are hit-and-miss right now, depending on what the test policy ends up being and how aggressively they test through the winter – a lot of times track temperature and things like that play a role when you’re trying to test and nobody else is there. You come out here in January and you may not have the optimum conditions and you may not figure a lot of stuff out, but some guys could hit on some things and come out of the gate super-strong nest year – teams like Evernham, Childress, they could come out fighting next year and knock off some wins right away and be just of the heap instantly like Gibbs did this year. That’s what they did. They came out with gloves up and were really, really strong. We were all looking at the Hendrick organization and we weren’t looking at these guys, really. So, I think that somebody could surprise us, but I think it’s going to be the regular kind of characters again.”

CARL EDWARDS, driver of the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion, is in second place in the standings and carries a two-race winning streak into this weekend’s event at Phoenix.

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion – YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT RACING THIS WEEKEND AT PHOENIX WITH TWO RACES TO GO. “I’m glad to be here at Phoenix. This is a really great race track to race on. Our team has been doing really well and the last couple times we’ve been here, we’ve been extremely fast. A year ago we were real fast and we had a little bit of misfortune. Then in the spring we were great but we didn’t stretch it on fuel mileage like some of the guys that beat us. I feel like our last couple of runs here have been great. I’m glad to be here. Practice went pretty well and I’m looking forward to the races.”

IS THERE A NUMBER THAT YOU FEEL THAT YOU NEED TO SLICE THIS LEAD TO TO HAVE A REALISTIC CHANCE IN MIAMI? I don’t. As long as we maintain or gain some ground, I feel like we have a great chance at Miami, just based on the probably that anything can happen. If we run well enough, we could theoretically run down Jimmie and still have a chance to beat him without anything going wrong with their car or their race. When you add in the variables that could go wrong, I think that as long as we’re within 130 or 140 points at Homestead, we’re still mathematically in it. Obviously, the best thing will be to go out and lead a bunch of laps, win the race and do what we’ve been doing and gain a ton of points. All we can do is the best that we can do, just like we have the last few weeks. Just go out there, be aggressive and race hard.”

THIS IS A BIG WEEKEND FOR YOU IN BOTH SERIES. HAVE YOU EVER HAD A WEEKEND LIKE THIS BEFORE WITHOUT HAVING SO MUCH RIDING ON THE LINE? “Yeah, I guess it comes down to these last couple of weeks. If it’s even closer next week, it will be even more pivotal. But every week you have to get as many points as you can and every point counts. It does come down to crunch time, but in a way we’ve been trying to treat every race like these races. I think that’s what kind of helps us to stay confident and not get too worked up because we have been racing every weekend and every point is very important.”

HOW CONCERNED SHOULD THE 48 BE OF YOU GUYS? “I think that definitely Jimmie and those guys are aware of where we’re at and we’ve been closing points. I can’t speak for them, but if I were in their position, I’d be nervous because everybody sees how this sport can go and in a matter of a week or two weeks things can change, drastically. I hope they’re worried about us. I think they are.”

IS THE NATIONWIDE CHAMPIONSHIP RUN ALMOST FUN COMPARED TO THE CUP SIDE? DO YOU EXPECT TO SEE THE SAME NUMBER OF CUP GUYS RUNNING NATIONWIDE NEXT YEAR CONSIDERING THE ECONOMY? “That’s a good question. The Nationwide side, we won it last year, we won the driver’s championship. I do feel like there’s less pressure there just because, whether it’s right or wrong, we won it last year, but at the same time it’s still a really fun challenge. For that matter, the Cup thing is fun too right now.

“Jimmie is a great competitor and so is Clint, I’m really enjoying the race with these guys. I hope I come out on top and can beat them, but they’re both really good competitors. Probably, just a little bit more emphasis in my mind on the Cup championship because that would be huge, but they’re both fun. I don’t expect to see as many Cup guys full time next year. But it’s hard to keep these guys out of race cars, so I think that they’ll be a lot of teams putting together multiple driver programs kind of modeling it after what the Gibbs guys have done. I think that that works out pretty well for sponsors and it gives the drivers races to race that they enjoy racing. I don’t know, you never know until it kind of all gets put together here in the next month or two. Hopefully, that series can survive and the sponsorship doesn’t take too much of a toll on it.”

DO YOU EVER THINK BACK TO LAS VEGAS? “Not really. We did the best we could there and it didn’t work out. It’s the same as Talladega or Lowe’s, all those races affected the amount of points we have right now. But at the same time, so did Atlanta when the engine blew up and Chicago when we broke the splitter. Every team can go out here and tell you how they lost 100, 200 points all season and how they’d get them back, but these are just the things you learn and really it doesn’t do any good to think about them. We just got to go get what we can.”

CAN YOU GIVE THE NATIONWIDE SERIES THE ATTENTION IT NEEDS GIVEN THE FACT YOUR POSITION IN THE CHASE? “Yeah, I think so. I think that I’ve done it for enough years now and I have a good enough group of guys that when I get in the race car, whether it’s the Cup car or Nationwide car or a dirt car somewhere or something like that. When I get in there to race, I can really focus. I feel like there’s no real issue there. The days like this, you are running back and forth, there’s a lot of activity. But race day is pretty simple on both sides. I don’t think that either one of the series is hurting the other one.”

SOME DRIVERS H AVEN’T WON A RACE THIS SEASON. IS THAT A JARRING THING TO HAVE HAPPEN TO A DRIVER? “The thing is, is that it’s so competitive and I think that that’s evidence right there. We had our year in 2006. Tony went for a long time, Dale Jr., the guys that you’ve mentioned have gone for a long time without a win. It’s a really competitive sport and the difference between wining and losing is such a slim margin that you can have a couple slip away and those might have been the only couple chances that you had for a while. I don’t think it’s a reflection on any of those guys or their performances as much as it’s a reflection on the competitiveness of the sport. I know that when we had that 2006, we were running great but all these little things would happen and everything has to go so perfectly to win that we just didn’t get one.”

DO YOU GET TO ENJOY THE EIGHT WINS THAT YOU’VE HAD THIS YEAR? “Yeah, the enjoyment for that is when it’s going on, like this week and last week. Man, they’re great weeks. It just feels good to win races. But obviously there’s that big goal to win the championship. I look at it as we can’t lose here. Jimmie’s got this big lead and everyone’s written all the articles that he’s running away with it and all that stuff.

“We can go give it our best and we can win the thing and that would be great. If we don’t we will have tried our very hardest and made a good run at him. I don’t think that the points or whatever, at the end of the day, you look at a guy like Kyle Busch and the 18 team, you can’t take away the fact that they’ve won all these races this year no matter where they finish in the points. For the whole summer, they had the rest of us stressing a little bit that they were going to run away with the thing. I think that, for me, you just have to take the enjoyment out of the wins and the good runs and whatever happens in the points, that’s what happens.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR PHILOSOPHY OF GOING OUT AND WINNING RACE AS OPPOSED TO CONSTANTLY WORRYING ABOUT WHERE YOU ARE IN POINTS AND WHAT’S GOING ON? “Jack said the other day that one of my problems is that I’m ultra competitive. When it comes down to it, I’d rather do something and see what happens then to calculate and do whatever is safe. Sometimes that gets me in a little bit of trouble, but for me, I think you’ve got to go out and race as hard as you can all the time and I believe that there is a balance though. Jack is correct. He’s never come and given me advice that I didn’t think was right. We seem to do better this year just going out there being aggressive, racing hard but Jack still keeps us in check a little bit. I’m sure he’s saved us a couple points by leaning on me and telling me what he thinks.”

HAVE YOU FELT MORE AT EASE IN THIS CHASE? HAVE THINGS BEEN DIFFERENT OR THE SAME? “I don’t know. In 2005, I didn’t realize how close we were until after it was over. For me, I try to keep it in perspective. This is a competive outlet and pressure for me was when I was 21 years old, still living at home and wasn’t sure if this was all going to work out. People were telling me that I needed to get a real job. Regular life is pressure. I think this is kind of different. Once you get home and get away from the race track, the pressure for me kind of goes away and the only real pressure that all of us feel is on that restart, getting ready to go race for the win. That’s when the competive pressure really comes on. I’m sure if we have a chance at Homestead it will be a lot of anxious moments just running around. But for now, I feel good about it. A lot like we did in 2005, but in a different way because of the experience.”

This report was provided by an outside PR source and posted by Kim DeHaven.

 

©2000 - 2008 Kim DeHaven and Frontstetch.com. Thanks for visiting the Frontstretch!