ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 19 Stanley Ford Fusion (Qualified 9th) – “I’m
glad to be back at Charlotte. We’ve got a brand new race car these
guys have brought for me this weekend. I’m very happy with it in race
trim. I don’t know where that’s gonna stack up because there is
plenty of grip tonight in the race track. I don’t know about my track
record. I don’t know if it’s gonna last through the night or not, but
I’m proud of my guys. It was a great night and I’m very happy with
it. We’ll go and get the most of it on Saturday night.” HOW IS IT TO
PRACTICE IN THE DAY AND RACE AT NIGHT? “That’s when you have to have
a good crew chief, and I think I’ve got the best one in the garage in
Todd Parrott. We’ve had a lot of success together. We qualified
second last week and that’s the best we’ve qualified in a long time.
We feel like we have a really good car for this weekend. It’s his job
to make all the adjustments and my job to try to hold it to the mat,
so he did his job very, very well for tonight. I was very, very
pleased with the car. We’ll see how it ends up.”

AJ ALLMENDINGER – No. 43 Insignia/Best Buy Ford Fusion (Qualified 3rd)
– “The 43 team has been fast unloading the last few weeks and in
qualifying the last couple of weeks we just kind of lost it a little
bit. I’m not very good around here, so when I threw that lap down, it
felt good but there was so much grip on the race track you didn’t
really know how good the car was, but Mike Shiplett and all the guys
on the 43 team pumped me up. Mike is fun to work with. He’s always
pumping me up, even when I’m a little nervous about qualifying or
struggling after practice. He’s just a great guy to work for and have
as a crew chief, so I’m happy we’ve got Wix Filters. We’ve got a
sweet little paint job on the car this weekend, it’s their first time
as a primary, so we’ve got them up front and hope we have a great
Saturday night.”

PAUL MENARD – No. 98 Menards Ford Fusion (Qualified 5th) – “It was a
good lap. I was hoping for more and an early draw might hurt us here.
I’m not sure how much more it’s gonna cool off, but it’ll probably
get some more grip. It was a good lap, though.” HAVE YOU EVER GONE
THIS FAST BEFORE AT CHARLOTTE? “It’s pretty close if it’s not. I
remember some guys running in the 27’s here a year or two ago. I’m
not sure if I was one of those guys, but it was pretty fast.” HOW WAS
THE LAP? “Charlotte is one of the most temperature sensitive tracks
we go to and obviously we practiced and it was sunny out and a little
bit slicker. The sun went down and it’s dark, so the track has a lot
more grip. I was hoping I’d go a little bit faster. The car felt
really good and it felt like I could maybe have gotten a little bit
more, but we’ll just have to see how it holds up. I didn’t hold back
anything, but I messed up because I didn’t run a perfect lap. I ran a
95 percent lap. I could have gotten just a little bit more here and
there if I would have hit my marks just right, but there is more speed
out there and somebody is probably gonna get it.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Aflac Ford Fusion (Qualified 2nd) – “I was just
telling them that I’ve got my own billboard up there in turns one and
two, so you have to run well when you’ve got your own billboard. We
were close to getting the first spot, but that was a really good lap.
That’s a fast lap around here. It’s almost too fast to take in what’s
going on around the center of the corner. When you watch these cars
go around, you’re all bound down in the corner, your elbows are up and
you’re doing everything you can to keep it going in the right
direction and my guys did a really good job. That was a fun lap.”

DAVE BLANEY – No. 37 Andy Griffith Show 50th Anniversary Ford Fusion
(Qualified 47th) – “The track has tons of grip, but mine just wouldn’t
go any faster. I ran it way harder than I should have and that was
it. We just didn’t have any speed in practice and I didn’t think it
would cure itself there. We’ll see what we can do Saturday night.”

FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Bank of America Qualifying, Page 7
October 14, 2010 Charlotte Motor Speedway

BILL ELLIOTT – No. 21 JDRF Ford Fusion (Qualified 37th) – “The main
thing is that it’s a new deal this week and everything is different.
We’ve got a lot of new pieces, but practice today wasn’t bad. We
learned a lot of new stuff and we keep gaining, so the goal is to just
try and keep getting better. That’s what we’ve got to keep doing and
I’m looking more towards the race. That seems to be more forte
anyway, but it’s great to have this new paint scheme with the
Juvenille Diabetes Research Foundation on our hood and I hope we can
bring more awareness to this cause by running well in the race on
Saturday night.”

DAVID RAGAN – No. 6 UPS Ford Fusion (Qualified 26th) – “The lap felt
really good. Obviously, it’s a pickup from our practice time, but I
felt like it should have been a little faster than that. The car did
what it was supposed to and we made a few small adjustments, but,
overall, it felt great. It was a little weird it didn’t go much
faster, but we’ll have to race that. It looks like we’ve got some
good cars around us, but everybody did a good job and that was about
as fast as it would go.”

TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 34 Long John Silver’s Ford Fusion (Qualified 48th)
– “The balance of the car was pretty good. We just seem to be lacking
some speed today in qualifying trim. We worked on race trim for 90
percent of practice and found a decent balance. So I think we found
something that will be really good to start with tomorrow. I’m
disappointed in the lap time – the car handled not too bad. I’m not
sure we would change anything if we had to do it all over again. I’m
happy with the work the guys did today and excited to start off
tomorrow in race trim.”

DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Taco Bell Ford Fusion (Qualified 36th) – “It
was a good day. We came into Charlotte with our Taco Bell Ford Fusion
having to qualify again, so we really focused on qualifying trim.
Peter (Sospenzo) and the guys came with a good setup right off the
trailer. We were second-fastest of the go-or-go-homers and from there
we just worked on it and kind of made it better. We didn’t make any
big gains in practice, but we did make small gains. And we’re in the
race – that’s first and foremost. I’m really looking forward to
tomorrow to be able to run some race trim stuff and see what kind of
car we have in race trim. I feel really good and confident about our
set-up and I feel like we’re going to have a great day.

AJ ALLMENDINGER AND CARL EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE

AJ ALLMENDINGER – “It was a bit of a surprise. The car was good in
practice. In race trim I was really excited about it. With about the
15 laps we ran the car was handling really well, and then in
qualifying trim the thing seemed pretty good, but the car was better
than the driver honestly in qualifying. I usually struggle here, so
for the actual qualifying lap Mike Shiplett, he does a good job
pumping me up. I saw my teammates were fast and they were saying the
track had a lot of grip, so I just went out there and tried to lay
down a lap the best I could and the car was solid. It got a little
bit tight in three and four. I don’t know if that hurt us and our
chance to maybe get the pole, but, all in all, from where we were in
practice and how the car was handling in race trim I’m real excited.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow and to go out there and work on the
car, and for Saturday night to get the new sponsor, Wix Filters, get
that up there. The car looks really cool, so hopefully for their
first primary on the 43 we can go out there and put on a show for
them.”

FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Bank of America Qualifying, Page 8
October 14, 2010 Charlotte Motor Speedway

AJ ALLMENDINGER CONTINUED — ARE YOU FEELING LIKE SOMETHING HAS
CLICKED FOR YOU? “Honestly, it’s just experience with the race team.
This is my first full year working with Mike Shiplett and all the guys
on the 43. For us to come together and really assemble the team, at
the end of last year we kind of had a few of our guys working
together, but, really, it’s our first full year and obviously working
with Ford for the first full year. The alliance with have with Roush
Fenway, I think it took awhile in the beginning of the season to get
our cars and what we wanted and I think just over the last six to
seven weeks Mike and I have been really working well together. We
kind of made some changes inside the race team engineering-wise, just
putting a couple people here and there and I think that’s helped a
lot, so just all together we’re clicking. The race cars are getting
better, the guys at the race shop are building great cars, making the
cars lighter. This is probably the lightest car we’ve run all year –
the newest, updated body – so the cars are just getting better and
when that happens I get more confidence, Mike gets more confident, and
I feel like we’re clicking. To me, what’s exciting is we’ve had some
good races but even the races that we’ve struggled in – Kansas, even
Fontana last week – when we’re running 30th in the beginning of the
race, those are the races typically at the beginning of the season
where we would finish 25th. We’d kind of stay there. We wouldn’t
make the car any better. We’d struggle all day and we finished 10th
at Kansas and if it wasn’t for that late-race yellow last week at
Fontana I think we had a chance at 10th, so those are the races I’m
really proud of – the ones we struggle in and can still make something
good out of it. That’s what makes these teams that are so good – the
48, the 29 – makes them what they are is not the good days, but when
they’re struggling, to make something good out of it.” WHAT ACTIVATED
THIS SUCCESS FOR RPM? “It’s everything I really talked about. The
alliance with Roush Fenway and Ford keeps updating stuff and making
motors faster. We’re working well together and I think all the cars
are starting to run well and that’s good, especially in qualifying
trim I think the last few weeks there has been an RPM car on the pole
or the front row, so the whole race team is working well together,
working hard and just trying to go out there and make everything
better. It’s not one thing, it’s a lot of small things and everybody
is working well together. When the teams run strong, I think that
just gives everybody confidence and it shows throughout the
organization.” DID THE TRACK CHANGE MUCH FROM PRACTICE? “For me,
like I said, the car was good in race trim. I know what I want it to
feel like in race trim here, it’s just that I’ve always struggled in
qualifying. It was the same thing, the car wasn’t really that bad in
practice, I could just never really get a good lap and a feel for how
to get around this place, especially today with being so cool. There
was so much grip on the race track that you just really had to get
after it and to be able to go back in the truck and look to see what
other cars were doing on the race track, being compared to like the 39
and the 20 car – seeing what they were doing on both ends of the race
track helped me out a lot, and listening to Paul and Elliott on the
radio talk about how much grip the race track had. I went out there
just knowing that there was gonna be a ton of grip and to just try to
get after it from the things I learned. I think the car was good all
day, I just needed to keep getting better.”

FORD RACING NOTES AND QUOTES Bank of America Qualifying, Page 9
October 14, 2010 Charlotte Motor Speedway

AJ ALLMENDINGER CONTINUED — YOU’RE KIND OF ON A ROLLERCOASTER WITH
QUALIFYING OF LATE. “We got on such a good roll there qualifying-wise
and Kansas all weekend we struggled and we were never really good. We
were struggling, especially on Friday and Saturday, even Sunday we
struggled a lot, and we pulled something good out of it at the end
there. Fontana last week we were second after practice, but didn’t
have a great draw. We went out second and just got the car a little
bit too tight, so I think it was a combination of the draw hurting us
last week and I didn’t hit a real clean lap last week, so I felt like
the car was a lot better than we qualified. We came here and it was
the same thing, we unloaded well. The biggest thing for us, and
something that I think over the last six or seven weeks that has
improved, is just unloading good off the hauler and getting on the
race track and being good in race trim, and then being able to go over
to qualifying trim and make that work, so I think it’s part of the way
the Sprint Cup Series is, you just have to keep working hard and some
weeks are better than others.”

CARL EDWARDS – “Pit stall selection will be huge. It’s a 500-mile
race, so we’ll stop plenty of times, so that’s really good for us. I
believe, just like it is every week, it’s gonna be important to be out
front and have clean air and starting up front will help us with that,
so I’m really proud of my guys. We focused really hard on qualifying
today and it worked out.” DO YOU WISH YOU HAD IMPROVED YOUR
QUALIFYING MONTHS AGO? “I think we started at the right time. We
made the chase and I feel like our qualifying is as good as it’s ever
been right now, and this is when it needs to be good. At the
beginning of the year we didn’t have a good enough cars in the race
and we needed to work on race practice. Given the limited amount of
practice you’ve got to decide. If you work on qualifying, you are
giving up something for the race, at least we felt like we were, so,
yeah, I joke around with Bob about that same thing though. We started
qualifying well and I said, ‘Hey, it only took us five or six years to
start focusing on this,’ and now I don’t think we’ll go back. I think
we’ll stick with working with qualifying harder in that first
practice.”