CHEVY NCS AT RICHMOND: Post-Race Notes and Quotes

CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 KELLEY BLUE BOOK CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 4thYOU SAID ON THE RADIO THIS WAS THE BEST CAR YOU’VE HAD HERE. TO REBOUND THE WAY YOU DID HOW WOULD YOU EVALUATE THE DAY?--“Yeah, tough. I’m super proud of our effort. Our entire Kelley Blue Book team did a great job preparing for this week and then coming and executing a really fast car. I’m really proud of that. I hate our incident on pit road happened. I don’t know what I would have done any different. I guess let him go is a safe thing, but it’s so close and always hard to tell kind of when they’re going to get done on the left side. I hate that. I thought I was long in the box and backed up out of a precautionary measure, but yeah, I hate that. I know that Kyle and Martin were really fast there at the end. I’m not sure if we would have had anything for them, but I sure would have liked to have found out.”

AS ROUGH AS DARLINGTON WAS LAST WEEK, HOW IMPORTANT WAS JUST COMING HERE AND JUST HAVING A GOOD FINISH AND A GOOD DAY? YOU GUYS REALLY WORKED HARD FOR THIS.
“Yeah, for sure. A nice rebound after last week. Everything about Darlington was miserable. Everything about last weekend was miserable, aside from our foundation efforts. But it was nice to come here and just put together a solid night. I felt like we performed at a really high level that I know we are capable of every week. If we perform like that the rest of the season, I think we’ll be just fine.”

KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 6th
ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR FINISH TONIGHT?
“Yeah, it’s a lot better than we were here at Richmond earlier in the year. At the beginning of the race, I thought I was going to have a really good shot to win, but we kind of lost the balance there and got it back a little bit there at the end. So, we probably finished where we deserved. The No. 18 (Kyle Busch) kind of had his problems, so maybe we finished one spot better. Not a bad day. To go to Bristol and know that we’re locked in is nice. We’ll try to be aggressive and get a win this week.”

IS IMPROVING THE ONLY GOAL OUT OF THE EVENING?
“Yeah, as bad as we were the last time we were here, I think to have a win in your expectations would be difficult to do. I think we exceeded what I thought we would do here. I thought it would be a good day to run around tenth. I feel like I ran from fourth to kind of seventh, once I got there, all race. So it was a good day for our HendrickCars.com Chevy and I’m looking forward to Bristol now.”

ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 12th
“We struggled to start. We were really good at the end of Stage Two. We didn’t make any adjustments and we were really bad at the beginning of Stage Three. We just had a set of tires that didn’t agree with our racecar and got a lap down there. It’s hard to overcome that. Bummer for all of our guys. I feel like we did a good job throughout the course of the race at getting our car better from where we started. We just didn’t end where we needed to end. On the bubble going into Bristol, but just have to go do my job and hopefully we have a fast Ally Camaro there and go get the job done.”

ARE YOU SURPRISED AFTER THESE LAST TWO RACES?
“Tonight, I don’t really feel like we did anything bad. We had an OK night, especially for us at Richmond. We’ve had way worse nights; all except for really two races here. It could have been way worse for us. But Darlington is just on me. I tried to let the 8 (Tyler Reddick) go and I drove it straight into the fence instead on lap seven. When you put yourself in a hole like that, it’s tough to overcome. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a night capable of overcoming that tonight and we’re going to have to go do that next week.”
“Yeah, it’s a bummer. It puts us in a really tough spot. But when you have these three round deals, that’s what happens.”

TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 CHILDRESS VINEYARDS CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 15th
“We just didn’t have the opportunities to fix our car and not pay the penalty for it with the green flag runs. We didn’t get it fixed until it was too late and the rest of the race ran green. It’s nice knowing that we can make the right adjustments, but we didn’t make them in time to make anything out of it.”

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS HEADING INTO BRISTOL?
“I feel good about going to Bristol because there’s been shining moments of hope that we can do it. There’s just going to be no room for error from the drop of the green flag to lap 500. We’re just going to have to have it together. We’re just going to have to be right from the start, score the points that we’re going to need and be running up front in the position to make it into the Round of 12.”

DANIEL SUAREZ, NO. 99 GOOD SAM CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 17th
HOW WAS YOUR EVENING?
“It was okay. We’ve got some work to do. I think we were better than that, towards the end with the speed that we had. We were struggling a lot with the rear of the car. We will keep working to keep getting better.”

WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 LIBERTY UNIVERSITY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 19th
“We were just really bad. We finished seventh here in the spring and felt like we had something decent. We tweaked some stuff to try and get a little better. I think the best we got was we got to eleventh one time.”

“We just had a lack of grip. Some runs I could run with the 2 (Brad Keselowski) and the 12 (Ryan Blaney). Some runs I was way off the pace. I don’t know. I fought both; tight center at the start of the race. I thought we got some more drive in the car. I thought that was kind of making us faster, but that kind of ran out too.”

HOW DO YOU APPROACH BRISTOL?
“Just try to race hard and see if we can win it. That’s pretty much what we probably have to do.”

“Bristol is an OK track for me. I feel like we’ll have a much better car there. We just have to get there and race as hard as we can.”

DO YOU HAVE TO GO IN WITH THE MINDSET THAT YOU HAVE TO WIN?
“We just have to race as hard as we can, try to get as many stage points and see where we’re at.”

ERIK JONES, NO. 43 PETTY’S GARAGE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 21st
“Decent day for us with the 43 Chevy. Cool to have the special 9/11 remembrance scheme on the car today. Lost the balance in the middle part of the race and just got a bit behind and couldn’t make it up from there. Looking forward to Bristol next week, my favorite place to go.”

KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 MONSTER ENERGY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Sidelined with left rear tire issue on Lap 40; Finished 37th.
KURT IS ALRIGHT AFTER THAT HARD HIT. DID YOU HAVE ANY WARNING THAT THE LEFT REAR TIRE WAS COMING OFF THE CAR BASICALLY?
“I was just impressed with our speed and the way we unloaded and (the speed) we had in that first 30-lap run. After the pit stop, something in the left rear wasn’t right. The guys said they got the tire tight. They made an adjustment and there was no rub and the left rear let go. I just radioed to them how loose the car was. Something happened with that left rear. It let go. It let go of our points and it let go of our whole season right now. I don’t know what we’re going to have to do at Bristol other than win.”

“Hats off to everybody at Ganassi. Family, I’m alright. But that left rear took off on me and now we’ve got to dig out of this hole and give it our best. Thanks to Monster. Thanks to Chevy and Ganassi. It kind of sucks.