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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: FORD ECOBOOST 400

November 18, 2016

Homestead, Florida

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by Kyle Busch, driver of the No.18 M&M's Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing, and Carl Edwards, driver of the No.19 Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing. Let's go ahead and open it straight to questions.

Q. Joe Gibbs was in here earlier today, was asked about your situation and talked about it. You guys as teams aren't sharing as much information on your own as normal for this title. How did it come to that, and how is that kind of working?
CARL EDWARDS: Did you know we weren't sharing?
KYLE BUSCH: No.
CARL EDWARDS: No, me neither.
KYLE BUSCH: Joe is not in our meetings. Don't listen to Joe. We're not sharing with him. (Laughter.)
Everything right now is all the same, open notebook. I've been looking at Carl's stuff all day, Carl has probably been looking at everybody else, as well as I have, the 11, the 78, 19, 20. I've been looking at everybody's stuff all day long, reading some notes and going through some of that stuff and seeing what all is going on within our organization to try to help make ourselves better.
I mean, that's what we do, and I think we do that all the way to race time. You know, that's sort of the game plan, I think, as to what has been said to me anyways from my crew chief. What about you, Carl?
CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, we haven't even talked about it. It's just business as usual. Yeah.

Q. I wanted to ask you your thoughts on all four of you starting pretty tightly together, what you think about that. No one really separated one way or another.
CARL EDWARDS: I don't think any of us really want to start that far back. We probably had a lot better hopes than that. It is what it is. Pit stall selection will be pretty even, I guess. I haven't looked at all the openings. But yeah, I don't know what to think of it, really.
KYLE BUSCH: Yeah, it wasn't certainly the run that we were looking for. We were wanting to see a little bit better than that, but we were just too free during qualifying. We just kind of missed the balance a little bit and didn't quite have the confidence that I needed within the car to get more out of it.
But it was a decent qualifying effort, I guess, if you consider the big picture of where we're all at. We are all pretty tight. Throw a blanket over each other, we're all right there. At least one camera can probably catch us all when we turn off into Turn 1.

Q. Carl, Jimmie came up to you before the final round. Was he asking and you were telling? Were you asking and he was telling? What was kind of‑‑ without obviously word for word, but what was the exchange there?
CARL EDWARDS: We were talking about Kyle, but I can't tell you what he said because he's here. No, we were just‑‑ nothing really. Just‑‑ yeah. He went on a bike ride today, and I thought I saw him, and I just asked if that was him on his bike. That was really it. That was it, yeah.
KYLE BUSCH: He went for a run this morning, too.
CARL EDWARDS: He did?
KYLE BUSCH: Yeah.

Q. 10 miles.
KYLE BUSCH: You know how far I went? 10 feet.
CARL EDWARDS: An M&M for every mile. (Laughter.) I don't see how he does that. That's unbelievable.

Q. You guys are pretty loose and joking with one another. Are you guys feeling the pressure at all?
CARL EDWARDS: I was feeling a little bit of pressure out there for qualifying. You know how important it is and you want to do well, and then‑‑ yeah, so I think‑‑ but yeah, that's over with, and now we just get ready to go racing. But I mean, we're having fun with it. Dave is really having‑‑ I felt bad for driving‑‑ I probably drove a little hard and got on the splitter a little. I was a little frustrated when I got out of the car, but he slapped me on the back and said, forget it, we'll go get the car better, so everybody on our team is pretty loose. I can't speak for everyone else.
KYLE BUSCH: No, I'm all good. I think last year's experience through all this was really good for me and learning and taking it all in, experiencing it was a good thing and ultimately being able to win it the way that we did with feeling the way that everything felt that weekend. Try to mimic that and get on through this weekend and have some good success on Sunday.

Q. Both you guys, with so many non‑Chasers in front of you, we always hear how hard it is to pass guys at the front of the field. Will they give you any more room or show you a little bit more courtesy that you're racing for a championship?
KYLE BUSCH: I think they do, especially earlier in the race. You know, I think you'll get a little bit more respect out of those guys. When to comes down towards the end and you're going for a win, those guys are racing for a win just as much as you are or a good finish let's say. But I think overall from the experience that I had last year, you know, guys were running hard, but they were also just kind of minding their business around you a little bit more instead of coming off the corner and only cutting you an inch, they might give you four. It's still a pretty good time of hard racing out there and being able to push it all the way to the max but yet making sure that you're aware of your surroundings.
CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, and I have to say the thing to me that was notable was just the average qualifying of our four cars with everything that we've put into this race of 11 and a half or something, I mean, that shows you how tough the competition is. I think we're going to have to race not just ourselves. I guess all week, for me, I'm been thinking of racing these guys, and as I sat out there and watched that qualifying, I thought, man, this is going to be a race really between a bunch of guys, so it'll be interesting.

Q. Carl, you mentioned going shopping; I presume you got a nice pair of pants, as well.
CARL EDWARDS: Yes, I did.

Q. Can you talk about what the experience of the last 24 hours has been like? Are you sleeping in your own bed tonight, and has it been discombobulating to not have your motor home?
CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, I don't know if I can tell the entire shopping story. The shopping was a lot of fun.
Can I tell it, Randy?
No, all right.
No, so we went shopping, and I didn't have any‑‑ I don't have any clothes because my motor home broke down, so they drove us over there to I think it was Macy's or something, in downtown Miami.
KURT BUSCH: Samantha is not impressed.
CARL EDWARDS: With my outfit?
KURT BUSCH: With Macy's she would not be impressed.
CARL EDWARDS: Oh. Well, from where I come from, it's a pretty nice place. (Laughter.)
KYLE BUSCH: She can get you some smoking deals, I'll tell you.
CARL EDWARDS: So literally, they had a police escort over there‑‑

Q. You got a police escort to Macy's?
CARL EDWARDS: It was awesome. So drive up, and I'm like wearing this short ‑‑ my standard Carl outfit, like shorts, dumb shirt, black shoes. I run in there, and Brenda helped me, and I said, man I'm panicked, I've got to be on a yacht in like 15 minutes, I need something nice to wear. So while I'm trying everything on, shirts, pants, Randy is doing‑‑ Randy's deal is he's standing over there looking at his watch, yeah, whatever, that's fine, that looks great. Guy walks up and said, sir, can we help you, and Randy said, no, I'm with him. The guy said, all riiigghhht. (Laughter.)
So anyway, I was dressed well for the boat. Randy was like, I'm not sure what just happened there. So it was pretty exciting. I didn't even get a salmon jacket. But yeah, that really happened.
So we didn't get my motor home back. Man, I'm killing the resale value right now if I tell you how bad it is, but it blew a tire. I've have a rental motor home, which is the second one. They got a rental and it didn't work, so they had to take it back, so I'm on the third motor home this week.
THE MODERATOR: I really don't know where we're going to be able to go from there, so I'll congratulate you on a good qualifying run and good luck on Sunday.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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