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DAVID GILLILAND press conference

DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 freecreditreport.com Ford Fusion (finished 2nd) – “It was a great day for us. He kind of hit on some stuff there late in Happy Hour that just made the car drive really, really good, and I told my crew chief, Cully, ‘This is what we need to be able to stay on the race track, not mistakes,’ and it was fast. That’s a combination for a good day, and then it was in my hands not to make a mistake, and that’s harder than it sounds here. I’m just real proud of all the guys, freecreditreport.com and all of our sponsors, and I’m really proud of Yates Racing. As a whole, where we were last year, just in these 16 races or how far we are now, it’s 180 degrees of where it was and I think it still has the potential to get even better. So, I’m real proud of that and real proud of being a part of that.”

WHAT DID YOU THINK WHEN YOU HAD JEFF GORDON IN YOUR REARVIEW MIRROR? “That’s an uncomfortable feeling, I can tell you that. Coming here with my dad and helping my dad race and stuff and watching Jeff win races, so I wasn’t real excited about having him back there, for sure. Our car was pretty good on the restart before the last one – I kind of got away from Jeff a little bit going up the hill. So, that made me a little more comfortable on the second one, but it was super slick the last lap, so as far as challenging for the lead, it was everything I could do just to stay on the race track. It was wild back there. It was incredible.”

THERE WERE THREE RESTARTS IN THE FINAL LAPS, AND KYLE BUSCH PULLED AWAY EACH TIME. WAS HE THAT MUCH FASTER? “With the re-starts, out first gear was pretty high. It was hard to really get going. When you’re leading the race and you have control and you can go when you want, it’s hard to time it – especially with the first gear as high as it was – for me, it was. And then the tires want to spin. You gather you so much stuff on the tires under caution here, there was so much stuff on the race track today, it made it difficult.”

ON THE FINAL RESTART, HOW MUCH OF IT WAS TRYING TO CATCH KYLE BUSCH AND HOW MUCH OF IT WAS TRYING NOT TO GET PASSED BY JEFF GORDON? “Obviously, I wanted to catch Kyle. But once I got up to turn four, I quit worrying about that and just basically focused on keeping my car on the race track. We went through there once and thought, ‘Well, the next lap will probably be better because 40 cars have gone through there,’ and the last lap it was every bit as slippery as the first lap going through there. It was everything I could do to keep my car on the race track at that point. Kyle was sliding around, and I was, Jeff was – so it was a handful. The restart before that, Jeff said I got a good run on Kyle and was able to apply a little bit of pressure to him, just hoping he’d make a mistake. That’s the toughest thing about this race track that I’ve learned. And my dad told me the first time I raced here, ‘Race the race track.’ And you can see it in the races or out on the track – you’ll catch someone and just apply a little pressure and they’ll start locking up the brakes here, locking it up there, and then overdriving it here and then pretty soon they’ve got two wheels off the race track. You just got to race the race track, and after I went through turn three and four up there I just basically focused on that and trying to keep Jeff behind me.”

WHAT WAS YOUR STRATEGY TODAY, AND DID YOU THINK IT WORKED OUT? AND, DID YOU THINK YOU WERE CLOSE TO RUNNING OUT OF FUEL AT THE END? “No. Our strategy was pretty good. We’ve done a lot of road-course testing to try to our fuel mileage the best we can, and the cautions fell right for us today, too. It put us in a position to be able to run in the top six or seven, there and we were able to stay up there, our car was good enough to stay up there, which is good. I think for the last about 80 percent of the race we were up there. So, it’s good. When you’re back in the back, there’s a lot more stuff that happens and you take more chances running up through there. Our fuel mileage was good. I was conserving fuel up until we had those last couple of cautions and my crew chief, Cully, said, ‘Go ahead and go. Give it all you got.’”

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN AN ENDING LIKE THAT BEFORE HERE? “It was tough. As the run went on and you burned the fuel off my rear brakes kept wanting to wheel hop a little bit, so as the run went on I had to keep adjusting my brake bias to the front a little bit. But, it can happen. Every lap you’re on the edge, right there, keeping your brake balance the best you can, so you can stop the best. But that’s something that helped me, is adjusting my brake bias. I wheel-hopped there probably four times there today, and luckily I wasn’t on the inside of somebody today to cause an accident.”

DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’RE MAKING STEADY PROGRESS TOWARD BEING COMPETITIVE AT THE OTHER TRACKS? THIS IS KIND OF A HOME TRACK FOR YOU. “Absolutely. That’s why we go to the race track each week. We’re working hard at it. It’s not easy, I’ll tell you that. It’s a challenge each and every week, but definitely. I feel like we’ve definitely made an improvement on the mile-and-a-half stuff. Our short-track stuff has been much better than it was last year. Richmond, we had our best car we had and we ran in the top-10 and got involved in an accident. So, we’ve had a little bit of bad luck, but, definitely, I feel like our performance has improved 90 percent from what it was last year – our cars are much better. You talk to people and they say, ‘You’re just learning experience,’ but you really learn anything driving a car that really shouldn’t be on the race track. So, we’re having to re-learn a lot of things this year, and running up in the front with Jeff Gordon, and you’ve got to earn that respect and that goes a long ways. It’s just a steady process that we’re chipping away at.”

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion (finished 8th) – A TOP-10 FINISH ON A ROAD COURSE MUST MAKE YOU VERY HAPPY. “I feel like we won. This is the only track on the circuit that we never had a top-10 at, and we fixed that today. That’s my best finish ever here – and Dale Jr., too, that was pretty fun racing him at the end. I think that’s both of our first top-10s – I think it’s the only track neither one of us had a top-10 at, so that’s pretty cool that we drove hard and got a good finish.”

YOU’VE NOW MOVED INTO THE TOP 12. IS IS TOO EARLY IN THE SEASON FOR YOU TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT BEING IN THE TOP 12? “I don’t know if it’s ever too early to look at it – you always look at it on the way home, especially if you’re moving up to see where you’re at and see what happened. But, the bottom line is really you do the best you can every week, and try to finish as high as you can and try to lead laps and do all that and the points take care of themselves – the higher you finish, the more points you get. So, really, it’s not a strategy, when you race hard and try to be smart and do the right things and hopefully get some good finishes and get back in it.”

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (finished 11th) – YOU MADE A LOT OF SPOTS UP AFTER DROPPING FROM THE LEAD. “Yeah. I mean, I feel stupid. I just had a bunch of rubber on the tires and just screwed up.”

IS THAT A CONDITION YOU DON’T KNOW UNTIL AFTER THE FACT? “Yeah, obviously. The thing is, it caught me off-guard. Here’s what caught me off-guard – our tires don’t shed rubber anymore, they put off powder or dust. Well, this was the first race track where there’s marbles again – the old famous marbles. And I had it all over my tires, and when I made the first initial left, I just thought it was because the nose was up in the air because we were going so slow, and I kept in the gas a little bit. If I would’ve let off then, then I would’ve been okay. But, just gum on the tires, like bubblegum – all that stuff rolled up on the tires. And you had to peel it all off before the car would turn or stop – and I just ran off the race track.”

AFTER YOU DROPPED TO 30TH, YOU MADE UP 19 SPOTS, SO YOU OBVIOUSLY HAD A GOOD RACE CAR. “I did. I had a good car. I probably stood a chance at winning if I could’ve gotten out front. But, I just screwed. That’s all there is too it. I feel bad for the guys, real bad for 3M, and everybody who works so hard on these cars. We did our pit strategy right, we got the lead, and I just drove off the track on the green flag.”

JAMIE McMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion (finished 18th) – WHAT HAPPENED LATE IN THE RACE? “I don’t know. I just got run into the back of. I guess the 29 car wheel-hopped or, I don’t know, just drove over his head. We had a second- or third-place car and should’ve finished there, and we didn’t.”

WHEN YOU HAVE A CAR THAT’S THAT GOOD, AND YOU’RE RUNNING WELL, AND THEN SOMETHING HAPPENS THROUGH NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN TO COST YOU A GREAT FINISH, HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT? “There’s nothing you can do about that. You can’t really focus on your results. I think, as a driver, you do your job and the team did their job. We had a good car, we had a good pit strategy, good fuel mileage, I drove really well – just had a guy get out of control and get into us. That’s out of our control, so what are you going to do?”

MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 21 Little Debbie Honey Buns Ford Fusion (finished 42nd) – “It’s just very unfortunate. We were racing really good there. The Wood Brothers and the whole crew gave me a great car. We were fighting with Elliott [Sadler] pretty hard; he got into the back of us, spun us out, but that wasn’t the problem – I was actually just selecting first gear on the downshift when he hit me. It’s just unfortunate, one of those deals. But, we leave here with our heads held high. We raced hard and we raced well at the front there, and it was just a lot of fun.”

YOU MUST BE SATISFIED WITH YOUR DEBUT. “I couldn’t believe it, you know? Here I am passing Jeff Gordon and racing with Earnhardt – it’s just fantastic. It’s what I dreamed about, dreamed what it would be like, and it’s certainly like that. It’s just fantastic. It’s just a shame we couldn’t finish the race.”

MORE ON HIS DEBUT. “Yeah, I’m just so excited about it. I would never have dreamt that we would’ve run this well. I just wanted to try to get in the race and just race. We did that, we ran up front, raced some guys, with Gordon and Earnhardt – just a blast. It was everything I dreamt it would be like.”

IS THERE A LESSON THAT YOU TAKE OUT OF TODAY? “It’s hard work. I wish I would’ve come over 10 years ago. I’m just so lucky to have this opportunity with Little Debbie and the Wood Brothers crew. I just want to thank them so much for giving me the chance. Road racing is my background, it’s where I feel most comfortable. I’m not saying every week is going to be like this; this is definitely a race I’m going to remember for a long time.”

YOU MADE UP A LOT OF GROUND AFTER YOUR FIRST PIT STOP. DID YOU GET MORE DOWNFORCE? “Not really – just had to drive harder. We were just rolling around there through the first third of the race. The pressure’s coming on there the last part of the race, and unfortunately we just didn’t make it home. What happened in the incident when Elliott got into the back of me, I was just downshifting to first gear and the impact behind me just must’ve shoved the gearbox and broke the gears. We actually finished without first gear – it put a hole in the gearbox casing. We didn’t want to oil the track down for everybody else. We leave with our heads held high.”

LEN WOOD – co-owner No. 21 Little Debbie Honey Buns Ford Fusion – HOW DID HE MARCOS AMBROSE DO IN HIS DEBUT? “He did what we all expected – to put it up front. He managed to get up in the top five – pretty much most of the time no worse than a sixth- or seventh-place car. It was just unfortunate the way it worked out. He just got hit in the rear wheel. I don’t know whether – when he went to change gears and go to first gear it must’ve broken first gear and thrown a tooth out of the side of the case. There’s a hole in the transmission. Pit strategy was worked great and the car was good – it just didn’t work out.”

Carl Edwards won the NASCAR Nationwide Series race in Milwaukee. He remains fourth in the standings.

David Gilliland was the top Ford driver in the NASCAR Sprint Cup race in Sonoma, Calif., finishing second in the No. 28 Fusion. Gilliland moved up two spots in the standings to 21st.

Erik Darnell was the top Ford driver in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race in Milwaukee, finishing fourth in the No. 99 F-150. Darnell moved up two spots in the standings to eighth place.

Mike Neff, driver of the Old Spice Mustang, was the runner-up in the NHRA race in Englishtown, N.J. Neff moved up one spot in the standings to eighth place.

Brian Friselle and Mark Wilkins were the top Ford drivers in the Rolex Series race in Lexington, Ohio, finishing fourth in the No. 61 Ford-Riley Daytona Prototype.

Jamie Slone won the Ford Racing Mustang Challenge race in the No. 6 Mustang FR500S at Lexington, Ohio.

DEARBORN, Mich., June 22, 2008 - Defending Nationwide Series Champion Carl Edwards earned his first victory of the season in the NASCAR Nationwide Series race in Milwaukee, while David Gilliland and Mike Neff each garnered runner-up finishes in their respective series on a busy weekend for Ford Racing.

Edwards’ victory was the 14th Nationwide Series win in his career and was his first in the Series in just more than a year. He remains fourth in the standings.

“It just feels good to win a race - for our team, for everybody at the shop and all the guys who have been working hard and sticking with this program even though we haven’t won a race in a long time,” Edwards said. “It means a lot to have all that support. This win is a huge relief.”

Edwards’ teammate David Ragan also had a strong performance, finishing fourth and moving up one spot in the standings to fifth place.

Edwards carried his momentum into the NASCAR Sprint Cup race the following day in Sonoma, Calif., finishing ninth to remain fourth in the standings. David Gilliland led the rest of the Ford drivers across the line with a career-best second-place finish.

“Our strategy was pretty good,” said Gilliland. “We’ve done a lot of road-course testing to try to our fuel mileage the best we can, and the cautions fell right for us today, too. It put us in a position to be able to run in the top six or seven there, and we were able to stay up there, our car was good enough to stay up there, which is good. I think for the last about 80 percent of the race we were up there.”

Matt Kenseth also joined Gilliland and Edwards in the top 10, with an eighth place finish. Kenseth’s sixth straight top-10 finish moved him into 12th place in the standings, the final transfer spot for the championship Chase.

Marcos Ambrose, who was making his Sprint Cup debut, and Jamie McMurray each had a legitimate chance at victory before being collected in wrecks. Both drivers were running in second when they were collected.

Erik Darnell was the top Ford driver in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race in Milwaukee. After winning last weekend, Darnell was seeking back-to-back victories and led for 32 laps before eventually finishing fourth.

Darnell moved up two spots in the standings to eighth place. Rick Crawford remains the top Ford driver in the standings after an eight-place result. Crawford sits fifth in the standings, just 109 points behind leader Johnny Benson.

In the NHRA race in Englishtown, N.J., Mike Neff made it to the final round for the third time in five weeks. Neff defeated Ron Caps in the first round, Tony Pedregon in the second round and teammate John Force in the third round before losing to Tim Wilkerson in the final.

“It was another close one, but as a driver you need to win those,” said Neff. “I didn’t do my job right there. I was late. I should have had a good enough light to get us a win right there, so I am really disappointed with myself.”

Neff moved up one spot to eighth place in the standings. Ashley Force remains second in the standings, 132 points behind Wilkerson, while John Force moved up one spot in the standings to third place.

Meanwhile, in Lexington, Ohio, Jamie Slone’s No. 6 Ford Mustang FR500S was the dominant car of the weekend in the Ford Racing Mustang Challenge race at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. Slone took the pole in qualifying and led from flag-to-flag to win.

The Grand-Am Rolex Series was also in action at Mid-Ohio as three Ford’s finished in the top 10. Brian Friselle and Mark Wilkins were the top Ford finishers with a fourth place showing in the No. 61 Ford-Rile Daytona Prototype.

Next weekend, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and the NASCAR Nationwide Series will be in Loudon, N.H., while the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series will be at Memphis, Tenn. The NHRA will also be in action in Norwalk, Ohio.

CARL EDWARDS – No. 60 Save-a-Lot Ford Fusion – (finished 1st, qualified 11th) – TALK ABOUT YOUR RUN. “First of all, a huge thanks to Erik Darnell. I’m sure Drew would say the same. He did a really good job and that was very much appreciated by me. I also have to thank PK [Pierre Kuettel]. We made this crew chief swap this week and I think Drew would also agree with me that PK did almost all the work on this car and got it set up to come here. He’s a huge part of this win. We’re thinking about him. It just feels good to win a race for Save-a-Lot and for our team and for everybody at the shop and all the guys who’ve been working hard and sticking with this program even though we haven’t won a race for a long time. It means a lot to have all that support. This win is a huge relief.”

DREW BLICKENSDERFER – No. 60 crew chief – TALK ABOUT YOUR FIRST NIGHT ON THE PIT BOX WORKING WITH CARL. “Obviously it went pretty well. I’m kind of hating to go to Loudon next week, I might mess something up. At Roush Fenway, we do things in a way that really inspires teams. The 17 team and the 60 team and the 6 and the 16, all of our crew chief offices are within five feet of each other. We all know what everybody else is doing. We all stay in constant communication. We work hand-in-hand with each other’s team. So coming over to the 60 wasn’t anything new. The guys knew who I was; I knew they were. It isn’t like I switched teams. I just went to a different car number, really under the same team, Roush Fenway. It wasn’t difficult at all coming over to work with a guy like Carl, obviously that makes everything a little easier.”

CARL EDWARDS (continued) – WAS THERE REALLY ANY TIME TO ESTABLISH ANY CHEMISTRY WITH DREW TONIGHT OR TODAY AT ALL? “No, we’ve talked for a total of about 10 minutes. We learned a little bit about the way we communicate today. It was a long race with a lot of pit stops and a real chassis race, so we got talk a lot during the race. Jason Hedlesky [spotter] actually joked around one time that we talked for a whole lap under caution and Jason thought that was funny. We’re just getting to know one another and hopefully this is a relationship that continues in this manner for a long, long time and that would be very cool for me.” WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT DREW THAT HE’S ABLE TO COME INTO HIS FIRST RACE WITHOUT ANY TIME WITH YOU AND WIN RIGHT AWAY? “I think it says a lot about Drew and his composure. I mean, he got pretty much called into meeting and told what was going to happen and was very cool that PK and Drew and all the guys on both teams were all okay with all the changes. Everyone kept their heads up and went forward. I think that says a lot about Drew and PK and all the guys that change like this that we can do it without missing a beat.”

CARL EDWARDS (continued) – CAN YOU RUN THROUGH THE CHRONOLOGY? YOU MUST HAVE SEEN EACH OTHER BUT YOU BARELY KNEW EACH OTHER ON TUESDAY OR HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? “Yeah, I was just asking him now exactly how to pronounce his last name. I’ve been calling him ‘Drew’ all week because I didn’t want to mess up his last name.”

DREW BLICKENSDERFER (continued) – “Obviously, we’re around each other by the race and we’re around each other’s teams at the race track. I probably talked today more to Carl than I talked to Matt [Kenseth] in two years. And we got to talk together more today on the radio that we’ve spoken in the whole time that I’ve been at Roush and he’s been at Roush. Today was a pretty important day for us to get it off that way and looking forward to Loudon where he’s actually in the car in practice and we get to find out exactly what loose means and tight means and each other’s lingo.”

CARL EDWARDS (continued) – CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE BATTLE WITH BOWYER, HOW YOU SET THAT UP AND WHAT HAPPENED? “What happened with Clint, I’m not real proud of. I like Clint a lot and I have a lot of respect for him and I just got into him. I dove for the bottom and there wasn’t enough room and I hit him. That’s what happened. When we restarted, he kind of left the bottom opened and I got in there a couple of times and I felt like my car was really good there. When he went into [turn] one, I thought he was going to leave it open and I stuffed a nose down there and hit him. I’m just glad he didn’t wreck.”

IT’S MORE THAT A YEAR SINCE YOU WON. WAS THERE A POINT WHERE IT WAS EATING AT YOU REAL BAD? “Yeah, that’s what we do. I’m a competitor and I want to win more than anything in the world. So, yeah, it’s very frustrating to do all this interviews and they put up the chart and say, ‘Look how great your 2007 season started. Look how terrible it’s been since then.’ Those are terrible graphics that somebody made up that I have to talk about seems like all the time. It’s very nice to get back into victory lane. It’s very good. This is what Jack [Roush] pays me to do and that’s what the sponsors are all counting on and that’s what the whole team works for – to win.”

YOU PASSED ON THE TYPICAL CELEBRATION BECAUSE? “The back flip is something that I do because I’m real excited to win and I feel like doing it when I win. Today, with what happened with Mr. Kalitta and the way I passed Clint, I just didn’t feel like doing a back flip. I felt bad for the fans, they were a little upset about it, but hopefully we’ll come back here next year and we’ll do it again and I’ll give them a really nice one.”

WHAT’S IT LIKE FOR YOU TO HAVE SAVE-A-LOT ON BOARD, NOT A REGULAR SPONSOR AND GET THE WIN? “It’s very good to get the win for Save-a-Lot. I felt like we could have won at Las Vegas and we ended up wrecked there. Then we had a spectacular crash at Talladega with them. I was kind of thinking this white car is not that lucky. I couldn’t believe it when they threw the white flag and I made it all the way around and then the checkered flags. It worked. It happened. That’s very cool. They’re a great company. We’ve had a lot of fun so far. We’re actually going to do a production day there next week and it will be very cool to go to their headquarters in St. Louis on the heals of a win.”

DREW BLICKENSDERFER (continued) – WILL YOU USUALLY WEAR A RACE UNIFORM OR FIRESUIT? DID YOU NOT WEAR ONE BECAUSE OF HOW FAST THINGS CHANGED? “Actually, I don’t. I don’t wear a fire suit. I normally would have a crew shirt on, but yeah, things went fairly fast this week. I kind of went away from wearing a firesuit; the way NASCAR has it know. If you don’t meet minimum speed you gotta go behind the wall and fix it. If I need to go over the wall, there’s big problems. We have very qualified guys, especially on the 60; they’re a full time team. Darrell Morrow is too qualified to be a car chief in the Nationwide Series. He can take care of anything that needs to be done over there. I wore a firesuit changing tires, so I kind of want to stay cool and maybe breathe a little easier without one.”

CARL EDWARDS (continued) – DO YOU THINK THIS WILL AFFECT WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO TOMORROW? GETTING TO AND FROM SONOMA? “No, if we can get out of here pretty quick and get a little sleep on the plane, this is what I prepare for. I try to be as physically fit as I can be. Tomorrow’s going to be fun. It’s going to be really hot and pretty strenuous and that’s what I train for. I’m really looking forward to it. As long as Clint is not too mad and I don’t have to race around him, we’ll be all right.”

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 Discount Tire Ford Fusion – (finished 4th, qualified 13th) – “We just needed a little bit more. The car was pretty decent all night. We were just a little tight through the center and fighting bouncing getting in. For the most part our Discount Tire Ford Fusion pit crew did an awesome job on pit road and we just got to keep working on particulars, top fives are great and top 10s are great but we’ve just got to keep working on the details.” YOUR FIRST TIME IN THE CAR WAS FOR THE RACE AND YOU MOVED FROM THE BACK TO A FOURTH PLACE FINISH. “Yeah, we can practically set them up within pretty close where we can get it close in ten minutes in practice if we needed to every week. And Auggie Vidovich does a good job and Mike and all the Discount Tire team do a good job preparing these cars. Nothing falls off and we have pretty reliable motors every week. It is fun just making laps and getting good finishes but we always want a little bit more.”

MARCOS AMBROSE – No. 59 STP Ford Fusion – (finished 16th, qualified 21st) – “It was a frustrating night. We had a tight race car towards the end and it really hurt us. We made some changes and worked on it during the race, but we were always going to be a little behind [traveling between two races, missing qualifying]. But we’ve got to look at the big picture. We came all this way to keep the points from ticking over and we did that.” YOU STARTED IN THE BACK AND MADE IT INTO 17TH BUT COULDN’T GET MUCH HIGHER. WHY? “We just couldn’t go. It was tight all night. We were getting close there for a while and we were looking in good shape to get close to the top 10. But we couldn’t get it just right and it started to get worse. We hung on at the end and it wasn’t much fun having to work so hard because it was really tight, but while it’s frustrating you’ve got to think that we got a bunch of points, so in that regard we achieved what we came here to do. We’ve got a big day ahead tomorrow in California. The No. 21 Ford Fusion continues to go well. We had a brush with the wall but we got away with it without anything serious. The big deal for us was to get in the race, so now that we are there and we have a fast car it’s going to be a very excited day for everyone at Sonoma tomorrow.”

COLIN BRAUN – No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion – (finished 21st, qualified 10th) – TALK ABOUT YOUR NIGHT RUNNING IN THE TOP 10 “We just pretty much got wrecked by the 9 there. I don’t know what he was doing or didn’t see me or what. We were well up alongside of him and he just came down, turned into our door of our No.16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion and spun us around and that was that. We got back out there, it wasn’t too bad, I thought we were still in good shape and tried to pass the 33 on the outside and he turned up into us and wrecked us again. It’s unfortunate that those two guys had to do that and be that way. I guess that’s part of racing and I certainly won’t forget that.” DID YOUR TRUCK RACE HELP IN TONIGHT’S RACE? “Absolutely, it helped a lot. I felt that I knew what the race track was doing a little bit more than if I had never turned a lap here before. That definitely helped me out a lot. I felt a lot more comfortable out there. I think we can make adjustments a little bit easier and a little bit better than what we could of if I had no experience here. It was definitely good. We had a fast car, that’s for sure, I thought we had a car that was competitive enough to run solidly in the top 10 probably in the top five there. It shows we definitely had the speed, I guess we just need to have some luck go our way.”

COLIN BRAUN – No. 16 CitiFinancial Ford Fusion – PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF AND TALK ABOUT WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO THIS POINT IN YOUR RACING CAREER. “Basically, I started racing Quarter Midgets when I was five years old. My Dad had been a race car engineer, so I guess I kind of grew up in the sport. After that I started racing go-karts when I was eight. I raced all over America, I raced all over different countries as well. I raced in Japan, Italy and Monaco. I got a chance to travel internationally a lot, which was a lot of fun. After that I started racing open wheel formula cars on the west coast, out in California and Phoenix and Vegas and places like that. I won both of those championships and had a lot fun doing that. Then I started racing sports cars when I was 16, 17 and 18. I won a couple of races there and won the championship in that and then started racing at the end of last year, I started racing a few stock car races for Roush Racing. I did a couple of races there, then got the chance to come and drive this No. 6 Con-way Freight Ford F-150 truck that I drove last night and the whole season. They’ve added a few Nationwide races for me to go and do. I think this is my third Nationwide race so far this year. I’m having a lot of fun driving this No. 16 CitiFinancial car here. I’m just looking forward to going out there and getting to race.”

THIS IS ONE OF YOUR ONLY DOUBLE-DUTY WEEKENDS SO FAR. WHAT’S THAT LIKE TO GO FROM FULLTIME RACING IN THE TRUCK SERIES TO HAVING A TRUCK SERIES RACE ONE NIGHT AND THEN COMING RIGHT BACK, LESS THAN 24 HOURS LATER AND RUNNING THE NATIONWIDE RACE? “For me, it’s great. A lot of these race tracks that I go to, being a rookie, I haven’t been to before, haven’t tested at before, so it’s brand new when I go out there. For me to get a chance to go and do the truck race last night, I learned, I think a lot, about what the race track does, what it’s going to do from our final practice to when we go qualifying and when we go race. I think that’s just a huge help for. Guys like Mike Skinner and Ron Hornaday, I was talking to those guys yesterday and they’ve had more starts at these race tracks than I have had years alive. At least me having one race is a big help. It helps me out a little bit, I guess it makes me a little bit less of a rookie, so that’s a good thing.”

IS THERE ANYTHING FROM KARTING THAT TRANSLATES TO THIS TYPE OF RACING? “I think the biggest thing for me that I’ve carried over was just the fact of being smooth and using the brake pedal and the gas to slow your vehicle that you’re driving down, but do it in a way you can still maintain momentum and things like that. I think it teaches you a lot about being smooth because you have no horsepower in the go-kart, so it’s a lot about keeping your speed up and things like that. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve learned.”

YOU WERE PART OF THE TEAM 16 WITH BRAD COLEMAN THAT WON THE ROAD RACE AT DAYTONA. DO YOU HAVE A FRIENDLY RIVALRY WHEN YOU TWO RACE? “Oh, yeah, Brad’s a good guy and he’s a lot of fun to race. We got to run in Mexico City together and that was fun. I know he’s struggling a little bit here this weekend, but it’s always fun to race against him and racing against any of these guys is a lot of fun.”

WHAT NATIONWIDE RACES ARE YOU GOING TO RUN THIS YEAR AND WHY DID JACK [ROUSH] DECIDE TO RACE YOU IN THIS SERIES? “I’m not really sure why Jack decided to do that. I don’t know if he was in a good mood that day or what. I’m certainly happy to have those races add. I’m doing this race, also Daytona and ORP in Indy. It’s really cool for me to get a chance to go and do these races that are on the same weekend. That’s just a big help. Being a rookie and all, it’s a huge help to back the next night and get a chance to run. I’ll be in that No. 16 CitiFinancial car at Daytona and ORP. I’m really looking forward to that and certainly excited to get out there and race tonight too.”