Here is what drivers had to say after Sunday’s playoff race at Homestead-Miami Speedway:
Tyler Reddick — Winner: “We were backed in a corner, man. We had no other choice. I know we were on a tire deficit. Here at Homestead-Miami Speedway, that’s a death sentence. I don’t care. We did what it took to win this race. We’re fighting for a championship. I couldn’t believe it. I just knew I needed to get to even with (Ryan Blaney) on his right-side door. I didn’t care what he did. He raced me clean. I appreciate it. It would mean the world (to win a championship for Michael Jordan). We thankfully can take off for Martinsville a little bit, get ready for Phoenix. But we’re pumped.”
Ryan Blaney — Second: “Obviously disappointed. Yeah, I had a great shot to win. Didn’t have a very good last lap. Man, I thought I got into three hard. (Reddick) just blitzed off in there. It stuck for him, which is pretty impressive. Yeah, I hate to give one away there like that. I don’t know if we gave it away. I mean, we got the lead back after losing on the restart. Yeah, just last bit didn’t really play out for us. Definitely stinks. Appreciate everybody on the 12 team for bringing a really fast race car. Had a great shot to go to Phoenix. Still got one more chance. Look forward to that. … I’ll be thinking through it all night, what I should have done different probably. That’s just the way it goes. Overall really proud of the effort. Hopefully we can bring it to them next week. It will suck for the night, then we’ll look forward to Martinsville tomorrow morning. We try to forget things quick. I’ve tried to do that more and more as I’ve gotten older, move on to the next thing, good, bad or indifferent, focus on the task. This team will do it. Yeah, I can’t say how proud I am of them coming in and understanding what we needed to do. Just a shame it didn’t work out.”
Denny Hamlin — Third: “Tried to cover all lanes, but just couldn’t quite get off the corner as good as I needed to there on that short run. Short run wasn’t my specialty all day, obviously. Either way, controlling the race with two to go, you got to try to find a way to finish it. Just didn’t. I want to be faster on the shorter run. A lot of it is what we built into the car, things like that. (Crew chief) Chris (Gabehart) gave me everything I needed there to try to race ’em. Just didn’t get it done. (Martinsville is) another opportunity. Certainly you’re not out of it till they throw the checkered flag at Martinsville.”
Christopher Bell — Fourth: “There were runs in race today where I felt really good, but just after restarts, I couldn’t keep up with them. This is so, so intense and we knew coming into the Round of 8 with these drivers, we were going to have winners, winners and winners. Coming to Homestead, you look at the guys who run well here and you’re expecting a winner from the bottom half of the grid, and I think the same thing will happen in Martinsville. So, yeah, I’m glad we’ve been able to maximize our points and in order for us to transfer (to the Championship 4), we’re still going to have to be running for the win in Martinsville. I guess I’m out of here with a top-five and getting points is really good. You have to win races in the Round of 8, and we haven’t done that yet. I feel confident about where we’re at in Martinsville. (It) has been a good track for us in the past and I think we can build on that. Overall, I’m happy, just disappointed that we weren’t a little bit better contending for the win.”
Chase Elliott — Fifth: “I just got tighter and tighter as the day went on. I was just trying to manage that on the front side of a run, and ultimately I just didn’t do a great job of managing it. When the pace got quicker and everyone started pushing, I didn’t really have anything left to push. It was a really solid couple of weeks for the No. 9 Chevy team, from a pace perspective. That’s encouraging as you move along in the playoffs.”
William Byron — Sixth: “We kind of had what we had today. We weren’t good enough, and we were just trying to get all we could. I feel like a sixth-place finish is good. If it had gone green there, we were going to end up top-five. I don’t know how that changes the points, but we just have to go to Martinsville Speedway and compete for a win.”
A.J. Allmendinger — Eighth: “Overall, really good day. We had to come from the back several times. (Crew chief) Andrew (Dickeson) and the whole No. 16 group did a great job. Pit stops were good, strategy was good. We probably needed just a little bit more front turn to go run with the leader. I was really happy; I felt like we had really good pace. Proud of our group and the effort today.”
Ryan Preece — 10th: “We had a good car and got a top 10 out of it. That one bad restart in Stage 3 kind of screwed us, but yeah, we had a top 10 car and that is where we were able to finish, which is where we should have been. We finished where we should have, we just had to fight for it.”
Josh Berry — 11th: “Yeah, it was fun. I thought we did really well on the restarts. Just didn’t quite have the long run speed early in the race, I guess, to kind of hang up there. But all in all, it was a fun day and everybody at Stewart-Haas brought some good cars. So it was a lot of fun racing with all of us up there and got two more.”
Kyle Larson — 13th: “You’re making split-second decisions. Austin (Dillon) did nothing wrong. I was just hoping that he would see me coming as (Ryan Blaney) got to his inside, and maybe he’d run a lane off the wall just to give me some clean air. He continued to run his line. I had a little bit of a hole and I was trying to shoot the gap to get in front of the No. 3 and get to the wall quickly to either hopefully stay on the outside of the No. 12 or build a run to have a shot at him in (turns) one and two. But yeah, it just didn’t work out. I was going as hard as I could. The No. 5 Chevy team did a great job rebounding after the flat tire. … Yeah, we’ve been strong at Martinsville (Speedway) at times, so we’ll see. It’s not my best track, but I’ve been a lot better there since I joined Hendrick Motorsports. We just need to qualify well and give it our best shot.”
Chase Briscoe — 15th: “This car was decent from a speed standpoint. Definitely not good enough to win, to be honest, just not very good on the short run. We were just horrendous on the short run. I could never get it to turn. It would take us 35 laps to get the car where it needed to be. And on the long run, we were really good. We just gave up 10 seconds on the short run and could never get it back.”
Daniel Suarez — 16th: “It was an OK day for the No. 99 Chevy team. It was a little bit difficult when you have top-15 speed. We had a couple things that didn’t go our way; a slow stop and then the strategy right there at the end. We finished close to what we deserved, so we’ll take it and move onto Martinsville (Speedway).”
Austin Dillon —25th: “Our No. 3 Chevrolet team fought hard today at Homestead-Miami Speedway. At the start of the race, we picked up 14 positions in the first 20 laps. We had speed in our Chevy even though we lacked forward drive. During our first pit stop, we got boxed in by the car in front of us, and that cost us a lot of positions on the track. We were able to race our way into the top 20, but we fought a tight balance for the rest of the race and also continued to be hindered by our pit box location. We raced in dirty air all day, which didn’t help our handling issues. It’s not the day we had hoped for, but our Richard Childress Racing team will go back to work and come back stronger here next year.”
Kaz Grala — 27th: “It was just a tough day for us overall. We’ve got two more races and I feel like we’ll be able to finish the season strong.”
Daniel Hemric — 29th: “We started the weekend with so much speed and our best qualifying spot of the year. Unfortunately not being able to run the top was our biggest challenge. Trent [Owens] made some positive changes that helped get some movability in the No. 31 Cirkul Chevy and get us moving in the right direction towards the end.”
Kyle Busch — 31st: “I wish we could have come away with a better finish in the Chevrolet at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but not much went our way today. The positive is that we led a few laps today. At the start of the race we were loose in, tight in the middle and loose off. Crew chief Randall Burnett and all the guys on the team made a ton of changes throughout the race but we never hit on a setup that worked. It’s frustrating to race in dirty air, but that’s how it goes some days. This team is determined and we have two more races left to get a win before the season is over.”
