CHEVY NCS AT RICHMOND: Post-Race Notes and Quotes

TEAM CHEVY POST-RACE NOTES AND QUOTES: - ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Race Winner Quote
LAST WEEK, ALEX BOWMAN WAS ONE OF THE FASTEST CARS AND IT ENDED IN HEARTBREAK FOR YOU GUYS. YOU COME BACK AND YOU SEAL THE DEAL TODAY, AFTER OVERCOMING A PIT ROAD PENALTY. HOW DID YOU GUYS OVERCOME THAT? -“We just had a great race car; it’s as simple as that. Greg Ives (Crew Chief) and all the guys, they have to deal with me at short tracks and I drive these places really wrong. We kind of instead of trying to make me figure it out, we went to work on getting the race car where I needed it to be. Greg has done such an amazing job at making that happen.”
“First and foremost, got to thank Ally and Chevrolet; everyone at Hendrick Motorsports. This one is for Rowdy and his family. Miss him and Blakley every day. Just means the world to be able to win for Ally. It’s definitely emotional, obviously, with how hard the off-season was on us. Appreciative for the opportunity and we have more races to win this year.”

HE’S TALKING ABOUT HIS PIT CREW MEMBER THAT LOST HIS LIFE IN THE OFF-SEASON. LET’S GO BACK TO THE END OF THIS RACE. YOU’RE BATTLING TWO GUYS THAT, COMBINED, HAVE WON IT FIVE TIMES. WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND AT THAT MOMENT?
“To be honest with you, we were terrible on short runs. We restarted third and I’m like man, if we get out of here with a solid top-five, we’ll be good. We’ve overcome a lot today. I don’t know if Greg pumped the pressures way up or what he did, but that’s more grip than I’ve ever had in a race car at Richmond and it worked out really well. Getting to race a guy like Denny (Hamlin) at a place that this is really cool. I feel like we raced each other really clean, so I’m appreciative of that. It means a lot.”

WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 LIBERTY UNIVERSITY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 7th
“It was a good day for us. We ran in the top-10 all day; sometimes top-five. Definitely were searching for more there at the end, but to come home seventh at a track that I’ve struggled at is good for us. We definitely know what we need to work on to get better. This is not a race that we had circled to do well, so it’s good to finish top-10 again and keep that streak alive.”

“Congrats to Alex (Bowman) and the No. 48 team. They did a great job there at the end of the race to get their car to take off. That was pretty awesome. We’ll go onto Talladega (Superspeedway) and try to win that one.”

AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 CHEVROLET CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 10th
“Solid day for our No. 3 Chevrolet team. I thought we had something taking off today. I felt like we were pretty good; drove up into sixth or seventh. We never really were as good as we were the last time we were here. Just couldn’t get that adjustment that really would make us go any better than we were before; just kind of a top-10 place car all day. At one point, we were way worse than that. Justin (Alexander, Crew Chief) did a good job making adjustments and the guys in the pits were solid. Can’t thank all the team at RCR and the No. 3 guys enough; working hard and putting in the effort. Tenth, for a battle, was good. We wanted more, but we’ll take a top-10.”

ERIK JONES, NO. 43 MEDALLION BANK CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 19th
“It was an up-and-down day for the No. 43 Medallion Bank Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE. We started too tight and could not really do what we needed to do with our Chevrolet Camaro. We got it better as the day went, especially towards the end of the race. We started to really get some good speed and gain some track position. Just got too far behind, got caught on pit road when the caution flag came out, lost a lap early and could not get it back where we needed it to be. We will take a top-20 finish. We got some good notes and we will move on.”

TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 CAT #WHATPOWERSYOU CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 20th
“We tried a lot of different things with our No. 8 Cat #WhatPowersYou Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE today to try to get the handling to where it needed to be and made some small gains throughout the race. It just seemed like we were a tiny bit off from what we had last year during our one visit to Richmond Raceway, so we’ll definitely be studying this one closely to be better when we come back in the fall. I was just a little too tight almost all day and then too loose in the final stage, which didn’t let me charge through the corners like I wanted. Richmond Raceway is a tough place to figure out in a Cup car, especially with it being just my second Cup start here, but I learned a lot. We’ll be ready when we come back here in September.”

Ron Fleshman

RIS NASCAR Editor.  Has been with RIS since the middle 90's. Writes on each of the three main series of NASCAR.

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Volume 2021, Issue 4, Posted 8:08 PM, 04.18.2021