Here is what drivers had to say after Sunday’s race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval:
Kyle Larson — First: “Yeah, it’s really the first time in my playoff career I’ve not been close to the cut line, so it was good to kind of have a little bit of stress-free of a weekend. And I think the first time I’ve been here without crashing besides the other time I won. Good weekend. Thanks to Chevrolet and GM, too. It’s known that I don’t really use the sim much and And I was in the sim this week. So huge thank you to you guys there. It really, really helped me get into a rhythm early on and help us kind of fine tune our car, too. So hats off to everybody there.”
“It was a great day, for sure. This place has not been easy on me. This is probably the most difficult track out of the road courses for me. I put in a lot of work this week; a lot of studying and a few hours in the sim. It’s cool to win here with Cliff’s (Daniels, crew chief) family and everybody’s family. Just a great day for the No. 5 Chevy team. Execution from start to finish was amazing. Honestly, there at the end, it wasn’t as easy as I was expecting. I felt like when (Christopher) Bell was behind me earlier….once we got to a certain point of the run, I could really pull away. Then there at the end, he was really matching me, and I was driving pretty hard. So, I was nervous that I was going to start fading some more and he was going to get better and get close to me. But thankfully, I could push a little bit and get some time back in other areas where I was good. We just had a great race car, a comfortable race car, which is what you need here. A lot more comfort than I have had in the past.”
Christopher Bell — Second: “It feels all right. It feels good. I’ll be honest. Happy for this team. We had a goal today to win the race, and that’s what we came here to do, and it was close. Me and (Kyle Larson) seemed like we were pretty evenly matched once we got out to our equal spacing. I would make a bad lap, and he would pull away, and he would make a bad lap, and I would close in. Hopefully, we get a redo in Phoenix.”
William Byron — Third: “It was an OK day for the No. 24 Chevy team. I feel like the whole day, we were just trying to find a little bit more pace. We could get better in some areas, and then other areas, we just struggled. It seemed like the back chicane, we just struggled changing direction there. It was kind of all we had. It was a good day, but we definitely wanted more. We just weren’t quite good enough. … I feel like in this next round, trying to continue to build more speed will be critical, and we’ll kind of see where we are from there.”
Austin Cindric — Fourth: “We had the speed and that is the encouraging thing and the exciting thing but today we needed it all. We had a great car. We had a great finish. My guys called a great strategy and we got points in both stages, all the things that are hard to do in a Cup race, but we did those things and were capable of doing those things in the two prior races. That is what this format is. It is difficult. I think for us, having a better regular season, having a bit better of a buffer would definitely help. I am proud of everyone. I feel like we are getting into a rhythm here. I am proud of the team and looking forward to trying to spoil some races and support our teammates the rest of the way.”
Chase Elliott — Fifth: ““Really, really proud of everybody at Hendrick Motorsports to have four of the last eight standing, I think, is an extremely amazing achievement. And I hope that everybody over there is really proud because you know that’s a hard thing to do you. Me personally, really proud of our group for fighting through. For us to have positioned ourselves where we did at the end of those stages and get back to fifth. I mean it’s not a win. Obviously I’d love to win the race but I was pretty proud of that that effort and that result after the day we had and just always we had to take the points. Totally understandable. But you put yourself in a bad spot and it’s an uphill battle. So this whole round has been an uphill battle, but it’s been been fun and glad to be moving on. I think you get to the Round of 8 and really it’s anybody’s ball game. So I’m ready to get going.”
A.J. Allmendinger — Sixth: “Really, really good day and weekend for out No. 16 team. Andrew [Dickeson] and the 16 crew did a great job preparing the car. We had good speed weekend. Didn’t quite have enough to be the No. 5 or No. 20 so we tried something different with strategy. We knew it would be an up hill battle from there but it was a lot of fun passing all those cars and bringing home a sixth-place finish.”
Shane van Gisbergen — Seventh: “”Well that wasn’t the day we were hoping for, but this track was really fun! My Chevrolet was fast, and we started there on the pole, which was really cool and even led most of the laps there in Stage 1. Wish we could’ve gotten a better result but proud of my Kaulig Racing team and all the hard work they put in to preparing for this weekend! Get to Cup race again next weekend in Las Vegas, so looking forward to that.”
Joey Logano — Eighth: “Yeah, we fought hard for sure. (Crew chief) Paul (Wolfe) and the guys did a good job executing the strategy of what we needed to do today. We just didn’t get quite enough at the end there. We fell off a little too much that last run. Honestly, the 45, Tyler, and those guys did a good job driving up through the field and scored more points. It is hard not to think about Richmond a little bit right now. The positive of it is that we are still in the owners championship, so we can confuse all the fans from here on out about drivers and owners championships. The money is in the owners, so we will keep fighting for the money. … I was just trying to maintain the best I could and honestly was praying for a caution because that was the only thing that could stir it up enough to where a lot of what-ifs can happen. Congrats to them. They fought hard, changing toe links and all that and were still able to make it. It just wasn’t meant to be. You can start looking back at different points in the season to gather four points pretty easily. One race in particular. Talladega we didn’t do a good enough job scoring Stage points and that is where a lot of it lies.”
Bubba Wallace — Ninth: “What a good day. What a good weekend really. Just a solid day. We showed up with a lot of speed. I look at the track record here, and we run pretty decent here. It is just execution, hard work put in. All-in-all good day for our Camry. Just have to keep it going.”
Ryan Blaney — 10th: “I thought our car was fast, we just were in the Stage points game all day and we had to restart 30th every run to get back up to where we finished in 10th. To be honest, I wasn’t as aggressive on some of the restarts there in the back to weave our way through because we knew our objective today. I am proud of the effort of all the 12 boys to come out here and forget last week and focus on this week which really mattered. I feel like we are in a pretty decent spot. I was really happy with our speed at Kansas and I thought that was huge at a place we have struggled at. We hadn’t been the best there the last few years but to go there and have race winning pace was really impressive for our group. Hopefully we can carry that over to Vegas and Homestead and learn from the spring at Martinsville. I think we are in a good spot. We just have to go perform. It is a new week next week and I am looking forward to getting started. I definitely think we have been lucky to have a good group behind me, and each Round of 8 has kind of been with a whole different group of people. First it was Todd Gordon and then Jeremy Bullins, and now Jonathan Hassler and I have been able to win races with those guys and get to the Round of 8 to get a shot at Phoenix. It was nice to do it last year to just get there and then to perform well. It is all about the hard work from the fellas on the 12 group and I am lucky to work with really good people and I am excited. I hate it though that Austin and Joey didn’t advance. I guess the 22 is in on owners points but I would have loved to have all three of us still in it, but we will keep fighting.”
Tyler Reddick — 11th: “Yeah, I thought I was going to flip, but I think I was behind (Martin Truex Jr.) trying to work the move to the inside. I got clear of him. I saw (Austin Dillon) spun, and everyone on the binders coming to a stop, and of course, me and my boss (Denny Hamlin) get together. It was like I was going to do a front flip. I mean, this thing was absolutely destroyed. Huge props to everyone on this Camry. This thing couldn’t go within 4 seconds of what the pace was, and we just kept working on it. We were a lot better in Stage 3. This is how this place can be sometimes, but it is really nice to pull this off. It is tough. You just have to stay calm. You just have to stay focused. In those moments, it is so easy to lose control. Either way, I was going to drive the car as fast as I could. It just worked out for us that this thing was able to get back through the field and get us to the good side of the cut line.”
Denny Hamlin — 14th: “Seven is the same as 100. It is such a tough spot to be in, when you are up like we were because the only thing that can hurt you is a really detrimental day, so you can’t be as aggressive as you really want to, but you can’t bleed a bunch of track position either. Great job by this whole team. Chris Gabehart (crew chief) and the team did an awesome job of keeping us in it, and luckily, we were able to come away with a top-15 there. “Really, the biggest thing (the contact with Reddick) just messed up the alignment and bent the toe link or something in the rear. We lost some car speed there with that, but glad it didn’t lead to a detrimental day, and now these tracks coming up – now we race.”
Alex Bowman — 18th: “It’s hard to be pumped after running 18th at, what I would say, is one of my better or best racetracks. But at the same time, it feels really good to have all four Hendrick Motorsports Chevy’s make the Round of Eight. It’s really cool for Ally to get them this far. We’re going to keep on digging.”
Daniel Hemric — 25th: “Not the finish we wanted today. We had a really good No. 31 Chevrolet, on top of a solid strategy by [crew chief] Trent Owens. Unfortunately, we got spun and never caught a caution to get new tires.”
Daniel Suarez — 31st: ““Honestly, the fact that we’re out of the playoffs, that hurts a little bit. But for me personally, it hurts way more the way we got eliminated. This entire No. 99 Chevy team works really hard to bring really fast race cars to the track each weekend. This weekend, we just didn’t have it. I feel like we were going to make a little headway and we were right there and then we had brake issues. It’s just painful. It’s painful to be out of the playoffs this way. That’s the part that’s more painful than anything. If we would have finished fifth, and I was out of the playoffs, I would be happy. We worked really hard, but for some reason it didn’t show today.”
Chase Briscoe — 37th: “It is tough to have all the momentum that we had and to have it come to an end like it did is unfortunate. I wish we could have kept going for it. I am sure all the guys that get eliminated wish they could keep going for it. As a team, if we could get through this round, we could get to the final four, but we weren’t able to get through this round. It is unfortunate. We still have a lot to race for. We can still go win four more race,s and that is what we will try to do. It is four really good tracks for us so I feel really good about it. I wish we were racing for a championship still. It is just one of those days. Honestly, kind of one of those weeks with everything that has happened. I am ready for Monday. … It stings. Not even really for myself, just all the employees at Stewart-Haas. They were all kind of living through the 14 car, and the environment we have had these last few weeks has been really exciting to be a part of. I hate that it is coming to an end. I know what that means for Stewart-Haas not to be racing for a championship anymore. That was keeping a lot of people, honestly, in the building. Hopefully, the repercussions aren’t too bad, but we have four races left, and we are going to give it everything we’ve got.”
