Nashville: Ford teams race quotes

ERIK DARNELL -- No. 99 Northern Tool + Equipment Ford F-150 -- (finished 2nd, qualified 10th)

COMING IN SECOND IS TOUGH, BUT THAT WAS A STRONG RUN FOR YOU. "Yeah, it definitely was. Our Northern Tool + Equipment Ford was fast all night. We struggled in practice yesterday; I'm not going to lie to you. We worked our butts off. We changed everything on this truck to end up 25th on the speed chart. My hat is off to all these guys, Matt Puccia [crew chief] and everybody on this crew for helping out this weekend. We had a really good truck. We had a flat tire halfway through and that kind of got us behind. So we were kind of put in a box and had to really work to get track position. [We] didn't take any tires at the end. We were a little bit too tight because we didn't get an adjustment on it. It's frustrating to lose one three laps from the end. It seems like me and Johnny have had a lot of close battles this year. It was good run for us."

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COLIN BRAUN -- No. 6 Con-way Freight Ford F-150 -- (finished 6th, qualified 4th) -- TOP FINISHING RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR CONTENDER PRESS CONFERENCE

TALK ABOUT YOUR RUN TONIGHT. "It was a good run for the whole No. 6 Con-way Freight Ford F-150 team. We qualified fourth and it seemed like everybody and their brother was trying to wreck in front of us. So a lot of times we just had to check up and we fell back to 11th or 12th there at the start. I thought [Mike] Skinner was going to wreck. I guess with the season we've been having we've just been trying to avoid those wrecks and luckily, we finally did that. We stayed out of the wrecks. We had brake problems the whole night, I'm not sure exactly what happened but our pedal got real long. If not for that, I thought we would have something maybe to challenge those guys further up in the field. All in all, it was a great night. My pit guys did a great job on pit road and they've been working real hard on that. We had some great stops. Hats off to them, they did a big part of this. We came in 13th the first time and came out sixth or something like that. Those guys did a heck of a job. It's nice to finish up in the top-10, I wish we could have finished in the top five, but Jack Sprague was pretty fast there at the end. All in all, a good night for us."

WITH ALL THE CAUTIONS, TALK ABOUT STAYING OUT OF THE WRECKAGE. "A lot of it was. The 8 truck decided to run into our door for some reason. We were going four wide at one point and I don't know exactly why we were doing that, but we were four wide and the No. 08 truck came across our nose and I thought that was going to end our night, luckily it didn't. We kept on digging. It seemed like a lot of those guys were driving real sideways and getting jacked sideways. They're running pretty hard, but it worked out for us in the end."

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RICK CRAWFORD -- No. 14 Circle Bar Truck Corral/Power Stroke Diesel by International Ford F-150

(finished 23rd, qualified 6th) --"The Ford Power Stroke Diesel by International is built Ford tough. We finished on the lead lap and that's all I can say for us tonight. We lost track position during one of the pit stops and we could never get the handle back. We kept working around new tires and that kind of stuff. There was a hiccup off of four and I guess I was in the middle. I shouldn't have been, but I guess I was in the middle, and we got stuffed into the fence. But to run 150 laps at the speed, we're running and stay on the lead lap with a truck like lap shows how well the Fords are built and everybody needs to drive one."

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KEVEN WOOD -- No. 21 Air Force Ford F-150 -- (finished 29th, qualified 9th) - "I don't know what happened. I need to see a replay to see what happened. All I know was that I told 'two wide on the bottom' so I gave the bottom guy some room and the next thing I know, I felt a hit in the back end and I spun around. Then I saw about three more trucks wrecking. I don't know who got in the back of us or what it was. Something caused us to go around and we were just out there making laps. I'm proud of my guys on this Air Force Ford F-150 team. They did a great job getting the truck ready for me this weekend."

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JOHN WES TOWNLEY -- No. 09 Zaxby's Ford F-150 -- (finished 30th, qualified 18th)

"We had a fast truck. We had a little bit of a fender bender at the start of the race. I bent the left front fender in a little bit. We got to the pits and got that taken care of and unfortunately, they had already thrown the green. We were doing all we could do to stay on the lead lap. We had a really fast truck with the times I was running out there. We were running some times up there with leader. It's just real unfortunate because we were coming up through the traffic on the restart. I just got behind some guys and they got tangled up. There was just nowhere for me to go because I was already packed in. This is unfortunate. The guys at Roush Fenway gave us a real fast truck and I've got to thank my sponsor Zaxby's today. We've got to keep our heads up. We'll come back and get them next time."

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BRENDAN GAUGHAN -- No. 10 International MAXX Force Diesel Ford F-150 -- (finished 24th, qualified 27th)

"I don't really know what happened. The Circle Bar guys they give me very, very good race trucks week in and week out. And every once in a while in every sport whether it's basketball, football or auto racing, you miss. Tonight was a night that the MAXX Force Ford just missed. My guys have a great attitude and a great heart. We stopped six or seven times. We had to go behind pit wall, move the rear and did not lose a lap. I'm very proud of my guys on that. They were able to get me behind the wall, jack it up, put it on a jack stand, move the rear end and get me back out without losing a lap. It was a very, very hard fought night for my guys. It's just not what the MAXX Force Ford was looking for. We are a good team, we just had an off night."

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE BLACK FLAG? "The black flag early on, somebody checked up on the initial start. Somebody looked liked they missed a shift and a bunch of people kind of scattered. I went down to the bottom side. I waited to not pass the 16 and then I hit the gas and maybe I mistimed it. I'm not going to say it was a bad call. When somebody misses a shift, they always get some leniency. I guess that person didn't miss enough of a shift to make it legit. But Gator, he builds our transmissions and he builds me great restart and start transmissions, so we do have really nice stuff on restarts. If you watch our restarts all year, I pass a person every restart, at least one, sometimes nine. Maybe I just got too good of a start when somebody kind of missed a shift. That's all right. It didn't hurt us because we got the early caution, so we didn't go down a lap and we could do it under caution. It didn't hurt us in the end."

WAS CLEAN AIR THAT MUCH OF A FACTOR? "No, because I ran way behind anybody in clean air and it didn't help me or hurt me. It may have been for the guys that had a good truck tonight. But with our struggles, it didn't matter having clean or dirty air. Dirty air meant I was at least trying to pass people."

-credit: ford racing