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Running Their Mouth: 2008 Dickies 500 at Texas

Each week, we’ll go through media reports, interviews, PR and all our own stuff to find the best quotes from the Sprint Cup race, capturing the story of how the weekend unfolded. It’s the most original commentary you’ll ever find: the truth, coming straight out of the mouths of the drivers, crew members and car owners themselves. This week, here’s a sneak peek at what a select few were thinking following the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway:

“First of all, I can’t thank Office Depot enough – Aflac, Ford – fuel mileage was big, and my Ford Fusion gets great fuel mileage. I can tell you that. This is a fun place. I don’t know what to say. My guys did a great job. We probably made the wrong call to take four tires, but Bob (Osborne, crew chief) came up with a way to win that thing anyway; that was great.” – Carl Edwards

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“That Lucky Dog really played in our favor because we able to roll around there quite a few laps and come in later and top off, I conserved a little bit under yellow. When they said we were one lap short, I really wasn’t that worried. I was still letting off real early. It was a heck of a fight for us. Great, great strategy by Steve Letarte (crew chief). Second is like a win for me here at Texas. – Jeff Gordon

“Larry (Carter, crew chief) just made a great call to put two tires on with 70 laps to go and we ran that out and put two more tires on, but some of those guys were able to make it on fuel, but, overall, that was cool to get the lead that way and it’s pretty exciting to have the possibility to win, so the guys did a really good job in the pits all night.” – Jamie McMurray, finished third

“We were better in the heat of the day. Once it cooled off, we were hitting the splitter and the bumps were upsetting it off of [turn] 4 pretty bad. Kinda fought that throughout the whole race. But the Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet was good. Had a lot of fun out there. It was a good call by Gil (Martin, crew chief). Those guys had a little more guts than we did. Nonetheless a good run for us.” – Clint Bowyer, finished fourth

“It turned into a fuel-mileage race and it’s unfortunate. We had a pretty good car at the end and so did the No. 26 (McMurray), but fuel mileage won this thing and that was kind of unusual. I can’t quite figure out how my teammate can go eight laps more than I can, either, so we’ll just have to go back and do our homework and see what he’s got that we don’t have underneath the hood, I guess.” – Greg Biffle, finished fifth

“It was a good racecar, it was decent. Clean air was so important here and we had to get up front. We never really got there. We got there once but then it kind of got demoralized because of the pit stops that came there at the end of the race with the last caution-flag pit stop. It was the best we could do with the car we had.” – Kyle Busch, finished sixth

“It was a good day for the No. 1 Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Boats Chevrolet. We have had good starts here before but haven’t always been able to put together a good finish. We struggled with the car the first two-thirds of the race then Bono (Kevin Manion, crew chief) made a great call late when we took two tires and went a round up on the track bar, it got us a lot of track position on pit road.” – Martin Truex Jr., finished eighth

“I guess we’re a little less crappier than everyone else.” – Matt Kenseth on the radio early in the race

“It was a good start. I am very happy with that. I am real happy with everyone on the GoDaddy.com Chevrolet. A good day, I learned a lot. I drove over my head a couple and got myself in some trouble. It probably cost us a couple spots there at the end. All in all, still pretty happy with that. A good top-20 finish, the car has nicks and scratches but nothing we can’t fix up.” – Brad Keselowski, finished 19th

“My spotter said I was clear and I slid up in front of him and he ran in the back of me and then going down into turn 1 and 2 it was the same thing. Then I went up the track to let him go and just kind of misjudged my run coming down back across the track. It’s a shame we’ve got some tore-up racecars and we got parked.” – David Gilliland, finished 42nd after being parked by NASCAR

“He (Gilliland) put me into the wall. So I went into [turn] 1 and I punted him just a little bit to say, hey, you’re running like 50 laps behind. I hit him a little bit. If I had wanted to wreck him, I would have wrecked him. He just came out of the corner and just wrecked us. It’s people that want to try to prove a certain point somehow, and it’s disappointing. It’s just frustrating when idiots like that get in the way.” – Juan Pablo Montoya, finished 43rd

Special Projects Director at Frontstretch