Edwards Finishes Fifth in Darlington Nextel Cup Race

Edwards Finishes Fifth in Darlington Nextel Cup Race

Menards/MAPEI Ford Fusion (Finished 38th) – “If you take a look at the right side of this car, it’s obvious to see what got us back here. I just got into the wall a couple of times. I got into the wall about lap 15 and I’m gonna say I’ve hit it about six times by now. I think we bent the rear end back or something, but it’s just extremely loose. We had to come in and work on it before NASCAR tells us to come in and work on it.”

KEN SCHRADER – No. 21 Motorcraft Ford Fusion (Finished 41st) – “We cut a tire. When I got into David Ragan on the yellow before that, I messed up the front end. We thought we had it all fixed. Maybe we did and maybe we didn’t, but we cut a right-front.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion (Finished 5th) – “My guys did a great job. I guess I got onto pit road wrong and we got a penalty, but I had fun. This is the greatest race track we go to by far. They need to build about 10 more of these all over the country. We need to race at them once a month for sure. This is a blast.” WHAT ABOUT THE BATTLE AT THE END? “It’s crazy, but that’s what makes this place so great is you can race so hard. My hat’s off to Jeff Gordon and those guys. They did a great job, but our Office Depot team did great today. This is the best finish we’ve had in a while and I’m really proud of them.” WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE PIT ROAD INCIDENT? “I don’t know exactly what happened.

I guess my right sides weren’t on the commitment line. I just did everything I could to get to pit road and I guess I messed it up.” WHAT ABOUT A FIFTH-PLACE FINISH. “It was a lot of fun. I appreciate all of the fans sticking around for the race today and I hope everybody had a good Mother’s Day. It was a lot of fun for me. This is my favorite race track. Congratulations to Jeff and those guys. They’ve been on a roll and it’s awesome to see somebody do that well, but we’re creeping back up and we’ll go onto wherever we’re racing next and have a good time.” WAS THE RACING ANY DIFFERENT WITH THIS CAR? “It was pretty good for me.

You could hit the wall harder with these cars and not mess them up, so that was fun. It was just a fun race. I thought they did a good job here. I wasn’t too happy with these cars at Phoenix and Richmond, but this was all right.” YOU AND MATT LED SOME LAPS. DO YOU FEEL YOU’RE GAINING SOME GROUND? “Yeah, we’re gaining some ground. We’ve got guys that are working really hard on it and I’m really proud of everybody. It’s neat to lead some laps and run really well, qualify well, it was good.”

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