Edwards Wins Michigan Nationwide Race, Stenhouse Second and Bayne Fifth

Posted by fordBR on June 22, 2011 in: News|Comments Off

CARL EDWARDS, No. 60 Fastenal Ford Mustang (Finished 1st)  “Ricky Stenhouse is a driving machine and here comes Jack Roush. Jack got us some fuel miles and we couldn’t dare run out of fuel with that Ford Focus out front in the pace car, it is all about fuel mileage today. Jack leaned her down and we didn’t need it, it was great. Mike Beam did a great job with the strategy. I didn’t think I was going to get by Ricky. I cannot drive any harder than that. That was as hard as I could drive to get by him. He is going to be a force to be reckoned with.”

HAD YOU EVER HAD A DOMINANT CAR MORE THAN… READ MORE

Please visit our website:

www.robinsonbrothers.com

Edwards not to be forgotten … for 2011

Posted by fordBR on November 24, 2010 in: News|Comments Off

By Mark Aumann, NASCAR.COM
November 22, 2010 12:01 PM, EST

Back-to-back victories to end season not lost on 99 team, offers promise again.

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — It’s not often that a two-race winning streak gets an asterisk.

For Carl Edwards, wins at Phoenix and Homestead to close out the season are definitely a reason to celebrate, particularly when the first ended a 70-race winless streak. But at Phoenix, Denny Hamlin’s fuel-mileage issues stole the headlines and on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Edwards had to share the spotlight with five-time champion Jimmie Johnson.

Edwards was asked if it was frustrating to have his Victory Lane celebration interrupted. After all, he faced a similar situation in 2008.

“I tell you, it’s a lot more frustrating to not be in Victory Lane and watching somebody out there doing their donuts and all that stuff,” Edwards said. “I’ve been in this position before. We have won this race, and whoever wins this race is usually watching somebody else celebrate out there with the championship.”

However, after winning that race two years ago, Edwards was installed as the odds-on favorite to win the championship the following year — and promptly went winless until last weekend.

“Please don’t do that again,” Edwards pleaded with the media. “That didn’t work worth a damn.”

During the past two weeks, the smiles and jokes have returned for Edwards, who admitted the strain of going almost two seasons without a victory was hard on him, crew chief Bob Osborne and owner Jack Roush.

“A 70-race winless streak is very difficult,” Edwards said. “It’s difficult because Jack owns this team. He goes to bed and wakes up every morning, I’m sure, thinking, ‘How can we make this better.’

“I go to bed and wake up every morning, thinking how can I be better, and Bob does the same thing. When you don’t get the results you want, you first look at yourself and you say, ‘Hey, how can I do better?’ It’s very easy to start looking around and start pointing fingers at everyone else.”

So for Edwards, finishing the season with back-to-back victories was a great way to close 2010.

“To look at what we have done and look at these two race wins and [finishing] fourth in points and say, ‘Hey, if you would have told me 10 races into the season that this is how we were going to wrap this thing up,’ I would not have believed you,” Edwards said. “This is beyond the comeback that I expected [and] it’s really beyond what I hoped for. This is a very good, good finish to the season.”

If anything, Edwards wishes the Daytona 500 was next week rather than next year.

“Heck, yeah, I wish the season was just starting,” Edwards said. “That would be nice to start the season with these two wins but we’ll go for three in a row at Daytona and that would be a heck of a place to get three in a row.

“We have been close at Daytona in a couple races, and that would be nice. So we’ll go there with guns blazing and I think we are going to be better than we have ever been, starting next season.”

If anything, Edwards believes he and his team have learned their lessons from 2009, mainly because of experience and horsepower.

“I feel a lot better right now going into 2011 than I did going into 2009, and that’s because I feel we have a lot of momentum and things are getting better,” Edwards said. “We have a new engine that we are working on that just keeps getting better.

“That is the best performance down a straightaway that I have had in a long time [Sunday]. We just got a lot of good things going. I can’t tell you guys how much this means to finish a season like this, this is just spectacular for us.”

When Martin Truex Jr. had to make an unscheduled stop for a tire going flat, Edwards’ main focus turned to watching the laps tick off and keeping an eye on what was happening in the Chase.

“I don’t think anyone wanted to be out there racing those guys too hard, just because of the potential disaster that you could be a part of,” Edwards said. “We joked about it [and said,] ‘Hey, it would be nice to watch that whole thing out of the rear-view mirror.’ And that’s what we did almost all day.”

Even if it meant delaying his celebration a few minutes for a fireworks display.

Please visit our website: www.robinsonbrothers.com

NASCAR: Kahne and Edwards Post Top-10 Finishes in Coke Zero 400

Posted by fordBR on July 7, 2010 in: News|Comments Off

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Finished 38th) – “I just got loose getting into turn three. We had a pretty fast UPS Ford Fusion, so it’s a shame to tear one up like that. I don’t know who else got involved because it happened pretty quick, but I just got free. I don’t know if someone was right underneath me on the bottom, but our car just got free and I was chasing it and tore it up.”

DAVID STREMME – No. 26 Air National Guard Ford Fusion (Finished 37th) – “I don’t know. We either cut a tire down or got in that oil or something, and I got loose and then wrecked. We were just riding and trying to mind our own business and it ended up not working out, but we’ll just keep going.”
 
ROBERT RICHARDSON, JR. – No. 37 Mahindra Tractors Ford Fusion (Finished 23rd) – “We’re gonna go try and get back in it because all he did was knock the right rear tire out, so we might be able to get back in it. Still, I was very impressed with how the backup car drove tonight, but hopefully we’re not done. We’re gonna try to figure it out and get back out there.”
 
TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 38 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion (Finished 34th) – “For us, it was just a bad day and it kind of got worse. I don’t know what happened. All I saw was smoke. I was up by the wall and I couldn’t really go any slower and came down the hill into the grass and there were just a pile of cars there and I couldn’t make my way through when I was going through the grass and piled into the 78. It was just a mess. I about had it stopped, but there was nothing you could do with all those cars parked there.” IS THIS WHAT HAPPENS WITH LESS THAN 20 TO GO AT THESE RACES? “Yeah, it is. The give and take is all just take. When the money is on the line, everybody is just gonna go for everything they’ve got and not really give an inch and not cut anybody any slack. When you do that and with how these cars are already sliding around as much as they are, it’s pretty easy to get turned around.”
 
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 3M Ford Fusion (Finished 20th) – “It was actually gonna be a pretty good night. I got through those major wrecks with minor damage, but the real problem was we had a major oil leak and I had to stop on pit road and fix it. It’s just frustrating because our car was okay to continue, but our oil wasn’t. That’s kind of mysterious, so we’ll have to figure out how that happened next week so it doesn’t happen to somebody else.”
 
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Finished 6th) – “I’m not exactly sure what happened, so that’s why I went and asked. We were just coming to the start-finish line, having a good race, and the 2 car for some reason just turned left and hit me. I don’t know if he didn’t know I was there or if he did it on purpose, but it seems like he was just frustrated. We all get frustrated when we have a bad day, so I’m sure it’ll be no big deal.” DID YOU GET IT STRAIGHTENED OUT? “No, he didn’t want to talk, so that’s okay. He doesn’t have to talk. I just wanted to see what the deal was.” YOU WERE IN POSITION TO WIN. WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE FINAL RESTART? “We just got hung up on the bottom and the guys got a good run on the top. And then the second time Jeff went to go around the 33 a little early. I thought maybe we could stay in line and the three of us could make a run on the top, but he had to do everything he could and that’s the way it ended up.”
 
KASEY KAHNE – No. 9 Budweiser Ford Fusion (Finished 2nd) – “I have no idea. Everytime I looked up there was a crash going on it seemed like the last 30 laps there. I hit oil when I hit the wall. We had a great run going with our Armed Forces Budweiser Ford and I think I hit oil and just spun out, and then they wrecked in front of me so it actually helped me or I definitely would have been in that wreck because I was already slowed up. The team did a nice job. Another top five. That’s kind of four top fives in a row. I want to thank all of the men and women out there fighting for this country on Fourth of July weekend. It’s a great weekend and we’re happy as can be that we get to race and we love all of them.” WHAT WERE YOU THINKING ON THE GREEN-WHITE-CHECKERED? “Just pick the right line, pick the right car. I got behind Harvick and thought that would be the spot. I knew he had four tires and we cleared the guys and I just stayed behind him. I was watching Jeff because I knew he would be coming and would be quick. It would have been nice to get our Budweiser Ford in Victory Lane. It was still a good run for our Armed Forces car and the team did a good job. It’s another top five.” WHAT WAS THE HARDEST PART OF THIS RACE?  “You had to be aggressive and drive your car sideways all night long. That’s just the way it was. I felt like I had one of the best cars from start to finish, even hitting the wall I still felt like we had a great car. It was just a wild race. I really enjoyed it. I don’t know if the tires were wrong or not, but I thought it was pretty exciting.”
 
ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 19 Air Force Ford Fusion (Finished 22nd) – “I’m pretty sure the 77 caused it. We kind of knew that. I was trying to stay away from him, but that’s just the way my season has gone. I just cannot get a break. I’m proud of my guys. They worked really hard on Thursday. We didn’t unload that great, but we made a lot of good changes. I felt really fast tonight and got in a little bit of a wreck and repaired it, and were making our way back up. We were gonna have a solid top seven or eight finish, just trying to make it to the end, but it’s just one of those years. It’s just very hard to swallow.”
 
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 Jeremiah Weed Ford Fusion (Finished 15th) – “You never know about these plate races because there’s a lot of wrecked stuff, but you can sometimes still get a good finish. Our car doesn’t look very pretty, but we still finished okay. We kind of struggled today. We had something happen to the car and got real loose a couple times. We got in the wall and never recovered from that, but we were still doing okay and I don’t know if Mark got hit or what, but I was running down through three and four and got hit in the right rear and ended up in the wall and that was kind of the end of our day. Fortunately, we were still able to stay on the lead lap.”
 
KEVIN CONWAY – No. 34 ExtenZe Ford Fusion – RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR CANDIDATE (Finished 14th) — “All in all, it wasn’t pretty but I think that was the best finish in the history of Front Row Motorsports. It was a great night, but it was ugly. We fought a very loose race car and couldn’t tighten it up all night long. I just tried to stay out of trouble at that point and trying to survive these plate races is half the battle and we were able to do that all night long. Everybody worked really, really hard every stop making huge adjustments and trying to figure out how to tighten the car up. To come out with a solid top 15 finish in my first race ever at Daytona, we’ll take it.” HOW DID YOU GET IN POSITION AT THE END. YOU WERE IN THE TOP 10 ON THE FINAL RESTART. “Reutimann came on the radio and wanted to know if we were gonna push or work with him and I gave him a really big shove down the backstretch on that green-white-checker. We hooked up really well, but the problem is it pushed us out a little bit too far ahead of the 83 and he caught us in the center and got into us and turned us sideways in the middle of the corner, so we lost a few spots coming to the checkers. That was a little frustrating because we wanted a top 10, but we’ll take a top 15 for sure. Overall, it was a really solid day in the points and a great effort for our whole ExtenZe team. I think it shows the progress we’ve made in the first half of the year.”
 
KASEY KAHNE PRESS CONFERENCE – CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR LAST TWO LAPS? “I was just going as hard as I could there at the end. I think we got the 33 pretty quick down into three, I don’t remember how it went, but I was just pushing the 29.   That was my only choice and I did that. I never had a chance to pass the 29, so I just kept pushing.” HOW RELIEVED ARE YOU TO GET A TOP 3? “I feel really good. There was a lot of stuff going on. Like I said, I hit the wall once when I hit oil and spun just about all the way around and then hit the wall, and then they wrecked all in front of me, so I definitely would have been in that wreck. So I avoided that one by running into the wall myself, and the other ones were in my mirror and I’m happy to run second. It’s definitely a relief to get out of here with a good finish.” 
Please visit our website: 

www.robinsonbrothers.com