Fort Worth, Texas — It was quite a finish at tonight’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series O’Reilly 400K at Texas Motor Speedway for Roush Racing teammates Carl Edwards and Jon Wood. Edwards’ second-place finish was his young NCTS career’s finest and second Top-5 of the season. It was Wood’s third Top-5 and second-straight of the season.

Both Edwards and Wood led laps during the race. Edwards looked to have a chance to earn his first NCTS victory as he led with six laps remaining, however, his No. 99 F-150 just could not match the speeds of race-winner Brendan Gaughan’s truck. The win was Gaughan’s third-straight at TMS.

CARL EDWARDS -99- ROUSH RACING FORD F-150
YOU CAME CLOSE TO CAPTURING YOUR FIRST TRUCK SERIES VICTORY TONIGHT? “I could smell it and then I realized that was just Brendan Gaughan coming. That’s what we needed. Jon Wood and I both had a great run for Roush Racing. Those guys back at the shop work their hearts out and I know they were watching and listening. I’ve got to thank them all. These guys work nonstop and they have faith in me and that’s all a driver needs. We had a bad weekend at Dover, and this was so much fun out there tonight. Doug Richert [crew chief] is a smart man; we made adjustments the whole race. It was so cool to see Jon Wood running up front, too. I could see him back there laying back; I knew he was going to get me. I was just enjoying every minute of it. Leading a race like this, it’s a dream come true. My mom was here tonight and I just told her all of those nights in the garage, all the help she gave me, those laps leading there at the end was worth everything we’ve ever done.”

WERE YOU HOPING THAT JON WOULD BE ABLE TO KEEP BRENDAN FROM CATCHING YOU. “Absolutely. I was really hoping that we could hold Brendan off. If we had another restart, we were so good on restarts and then we would fall into a push, but Brendan is a heck of a guy. It’s good to see him win because he has so much fun in victory lane. We’re going to get there. One and two for the [No.] 50 and [No.] 99 is coming up.”

JON WOOD -50- ROUSH RACING FORD F-150
“Our performance speaks for itself. We’ve had great trucks everywhere we’ve gone. I can’t say enough about my pit crew. We did a great job in and out of the pits today. We had a great truck. Once again, the Roush racing unsponsored Ford F-150 was up front again. I still can’t say enough about the guys. Carl running up front, us running up front, our performance speaks for itself.”

ARE YOU GOING TO COMPETE IN TWO WEEKS AT MEMPHIS IF YOU CAN’T FIND SPONSORSHIP? “Like I was telling people earlier, the Roush Racing unsponsored Ford ran well again this week. Hopefully we can keep on going and keep this streak of Top-5s going.”

TERRY COOK -29- POWER STROKE DIESEL/OIL MATE FORD F-150 (FINISHED NINTH)
“We were struggling the whole race. We’ve never had one that loose at Texas Motor Speedway. We’ve got a good crew chief and a great crew. We just missed a little bit on the setup. I’m not exactly sure what it was or where it was, but that was the loosest truck that I’ve ever had over an entire race anywhere. This is about the last place that you want to loose. We had a handful the whole race long. They got it better, but we could never get it to where it needed to be to race with the competition. We would get into some clean air and we weren’t too bad, but if we got anybody near us and we were dead in the water. The pit crew did their job all might long. We went from 10th to third on one pit stop and everything was working the way it was supposed to; we just didn’t have the truck underneath us tonight. This track usually gets tighter as the race goes on, but we were loose in, loose through the middle and loose off everywhere during the first run. We got it better where we could at least get off the corner, but at these tracks you can’t be loose in and we just couldn’t put any wheel input to the thing. Any time that you put steering wheel to it to get it to turn through the corner, the thing was bout to swap ends. It got better on the longer run when the fuel would burn off, but we could never find the correct balance.”

RICK CRAWFORD -14- SAC/CIRCLE BAR MOTEL & RV PARK FORD F-150 (FINISHED 14TH)
WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN YOU AND THE NO. 18 TRUCK? “The Circle Bar Motel & RV Park Ford was having a tough time all night long running with somebody either behind it or beside it. It was terribly loose, but the guys on the crew did a great job in the pits. We came into the pits second and fourth and left both times in the lead. It was a good job by the Circle Bar race team. Me and the [No.] 18, we got into it once before and basically did the same thing. Luckily, we both straightened them up. That time we got together and I couldn’t save it. I thought that he would have given me a little more room. He’s a good driver, but he didn’t give me anything and I lost it over there. I’m glad I didn’t hit any harder than I did.”

JON WOOD PRESS CONFERENCE
TALK ABOUT YOUR RACE TONIGHT. “I think the thing that kept me going all night, I could see that white 99 coming and then going back and then coming up. I think we were so even all night long and I was driving my ass off to stay in front of him. That made me keep up with everyone else I guess. We just had good trucks. Bottom line, you can’t say enough about it. Our engine program is great. Our sponsors aren’t that good, so I don’t have to brag on them right now. Other than that, we just had a great night.”

CARL EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE
TALK ABOUT YOUR RACE TONIGHT. “Man, it was a lot of fun. Like Jon said, seeing that yellow 50 up there makes you work awfully hard. We’ve got a little rivalry going back at the shop.”

WOOD CONTINUED
“Our office is the same, and any way you put our names on the door, someone is going to be in front. Whoever finishes in front of the other each week gets their name at the top. That’s the big motivation behind all this.”

EDWARDS CONTINUED
“I get the top slot this week. We had a great truck. We went out and on the short runs, we were loose. That’s how we almost got in trouble once. As it would go on, we would get tighter and tighter, and when we were leading it was great. As soon as we got behind anybody, it was no good. I was hoping for cautions at the end. That lap 18 from the end caution helped us. We just kept adjusting on it and I think that’s as good as we could run considering how well Brendan was doing. We’d like to be one-two. Mine was pretty good, but his was just out there. It’s good and that’s what we needed. We have two blank trucks. We had a terrible weekend on my part at Dover last weekend and this is what we needed.”

WERE YOU SURPRISED THAT YOU WERE ABLE TO KEEP YOUR FORD UP FRONT? “That’s great. On the practice sheet it didn’t show us doing that well. We had a lot of Dodges up front, so it says a lot about how our crews work together, the way we work together on the track.”

TALK ABOUT YOUR MOVE THROUGH THE RACING RANKS COMPARED WITH JON. “We come from two totally different backgrounds. My first Winston Cup race was this year, and Jon has been around this his whole life. I’ve learned a lot from him coming here into Roush. He’s an unavailable talent. My journey here, I saw some people sleeping in their vans this morning over in the infield in Turn 1, and I thought, man, I know what that’s like. You have to get to the races and you’ve got to be there however you can get there. My mom came here today and she’s really the one who motivated me to keep going and work hard at this dream. Leading that race tonight, it was amazing, it was worth all the work in the world.”

WOOD CONTINUED
TALK ABOUT YOUR LATE-RACE STRATEGY. “There really wasn’t racing to it with him [Gaughan]. It was just hurry up and get out of the way and keep racing everyone else.”

EDWARDS CONTINUED
TALK ABOUT YOUR LATE-RACE STRATEGY. “I wanted to keep my mine as wide as I could, but the way he [Gaughan] went around me on the outside, other than crashing up both, I don’t think that I could have blocked him. Man, I wanted to do something. There’s only so many things you can do when a guy’s that fast. Besides from crashing him, I don’t think we could have beat him tonight. The strategy was just go as fast as we could.”

THIS IS YOU BEST CAREER TRUCK SERIES FINISH. “That was neat. I was really thinking that we could pull that one off. I was really hoping for a win. Second is awesome. After last week, I would have taken anything as long as the truck was straight.”

TALK ABOUT HOW QUICKLY THINGS ARE GOING FOR YOU RIGHT NOW. “They weren’t going really quickly up until tonight. We’ve had some lackluster finishes. Our team is really great, and I have to thank all the people that came up to me and grabbed me on the shoulder and told me to calm down this last week. I didn’t really try that hard up until that last pit stop. I think that’s what some of these smart veterans are doing and it seemed to work pretty well. I’m trying to learn how to slow down and then race hard at the end.”