Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 Qualifying (Martinsville Speedway)
Sunday, October 27, 2013Ford Finishing Results:
4th – Brad Keselowski
9th – Greg Biffle
12th – Carl Edwards
14th – Joey Logano
19th – Marcos Ambrose
20th – Aric Almirola
21st – Casey Mears
23rd – David Gilliland
31st – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
43rd – David Ragan
BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – “It was a decent day. It seems like every time we come to Martinsville with the Miller Lite Ford Fusion we run right in that fourth, fifth, sixth range and I was just trying to break out and get to victory lane, but came up a bit short today. It was a solid effort. We were quite a ways off at the start of the race and Paul Wolfe and everybody on the 2 crew dialed us in a little better and got some decent track position there at the end when it counts.”
WHAT MADE TODAY SO DIFFICULT BECAUSE PEOPLE WERE ALL OVER THE SCORING PYLON? “It’s just short-track racing with different tire strategies. These guys are getting smarter and smarter every year about how to play the strategy game.”
JIMMIE WAS COMING RIGHT BEHIND YOU TRYING TO GET ANOTHER SPOT AND YOU BATTLED HIM HARD. “He has a good car here every time he comes here and he’s a good driver here. He was definitely one of the guys to beat, but it’s our job to try to get every spot we can. We can’t just lay over for him, whether that was him or Matt, but it was good racing.”
IT WAS A FUN RACE FOR US TO WATCH WHAT WAS IT LIKE BEHIND THE WHEEL? “I guess we saved our fun for on the track, instead of off it. It was a down day to start and an up day to finish. We weren’t where we wanted to be at the start, but we worked on our car and got it better at the end. The last run was by far the most competitive we were and had probably about a fourth or fifth-place car and that’s where we finished at the end, so it was a decent day. I guess it’s a better showing than what we’ve had here in the past, but I’m still hungry for a grandfather clock. I want to win and we just need a little bit more to be able to pull that off.”
HOW INTENSE IS THE RACING HERE? “It’s a short track and by definition there’s not a lot of room to race. With 43 cars here there are a lot of cars on top of each other and eventually you’re going to make contact and wreck each other and make someone angry. I don’t think I made anybody angry today and we had a decent showing, so I guess we’ll move on.”
YOUR CAR WAS VERY CLEAN AT THE END OF THE RACE. “You’re not gonna win these races with your car all tore to hell and you’re probably not gonna win these races without putting a scratch on your car, so you’ve got to have a balance of both and mine is probably right where it needs to be. We just need a little bit more speed.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Geek Squad Ford Fusion – “It was tough. We were terrible and then we actually made it back up and we were OK there at the end, but it just wasn’t good enough.”
A LOT OF CAUTIONS AND A LOT OF DIFFERENT STRATEGIES TODAY. “It was kind of wild because there were a lot of cautions, so that gave us the opportunity to get our laps back and things like that, but if you didn’t take tires when you needed to it was rough. There was just a lot of strategy to it. It was a really tough race. Our car was a middle-of-the-pack car and we made it to 12th, plus Greg finished well, so we salvaged something. I caused the first two cautions when the car was real hard to drive on entry, so that was pretty frustrating. I felt bad about that. The car was real, real loose in and that was the reason I hit Kvapil there like that. It was kind of embarrassing to do that, but that’s how it goes I guess. I’m going to apologize to him right now.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion – “We had a great 3M Ford Fusion. It was a good day for us. I just wish that wouldn’t have happened (the rear bumper flapping forcing him to pit road). We had a top-five car here today, finally to get in the top-five at Martinsville, but that’s like our fourth or fifth top-10 in a row so I’m pretty happy.”
ARIC ALMIROLA – No. 41 Maurice Petty Hall of Fame Inductee Ford Fusion – “It was just a long day. We fought hard and I’m real proud of my guys for all the hard work. We battled through a lot of adversity today, but it was just not the day we were hoping for. We just really struggled to get our car to roll around the center of the corner and that ended up hurting us.”
