Kyle Larson — Winner: “Ryan Blaney gave me a heck of a push. So, I’ve really got to thank him a ton. I knew the Penske cars took off good, so I was happy to see him behind me. For us to withstand a few restarts there with some tough competitors there was pretty important.”
Chase Elliott – Finished 2nd: “It was all just about how your push went. I am really proud of our effort today. I thought we really improved from where we were last year as far as those late-race restarts go and was able to hang with them and really just kind of rely on the guy behind you. Kyle (Busch) gave me a great push. I didn’t give him a very good push that time before. He went a little sooner than I thought he was going to. He gave me a good push and I think somebody pulled out on him. He had to go block them and it just ends up kind of disrupting the whole situation when that happens.”
Joey Logano — Finished 3rd: “You have no idea how good this feels. It’s been a struggle the last month-and-a-half and it’s nice to come here to Michigan, maybe our best race track and be able to overcome a lot. I’m not sure we had a third-place car today but the team executed like they needed to get the Shell-Pennzoil Ford into the top three. Proud of the effort. I wish I could have the last restart back. I think I could have gotten to second.”
Denny Hamlin — Finished 4th: “Really good car. You know, everything we needed to do we did. Had one little hiccup on pit road, but for the most part we ran really well all day, had good speed in our Camry and pretty happy. I knew I was going to have a tough time on the bottom. Everyone did have a tough time on the bottom, so I tried to do my best and that’s all I had.”
Jamie McMurray – Finished 5th: “We started off really loose. It almost seemed like the track was going through a weird transition at the beginning. You get two or three good laps and it almost was like you catch a gust of wind and have to hang on to the car. You would slide up the race track, but they did a really good job adjusting on it.”
MARTIN TRUEX JR — Finished 6th: “We had the best car out there without a doubt – just inside lane restarts at the end killed us, so just stinks when you have to race like that, you know? You get just in a bad spot and there’s nothing you can do about it. We seen it the last couple restarts, so just wrong place. Probably should have took two tires that last time we pitted – we took four. That killed us. Just wrong lane on the restart every single time all day long and couldn’t use the best car to win.”
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — Finished 8th: “We had a pit road penalty there for speeding late in the race. We worked hard all day. We have a good baseline to come back with in August here at Michigan.”
DALE EARNHARDT, JR. – Finished 9th: “We had a great car. Just had a hard time getting any track position and keeping it. Greg (Ives, crew chief) did a good job trying to get us that track position on one stop. We just got real loose on that run, about wrecked the car a couple of times and lost a lot of spots. Got lucky there at the end to restart on the outside in 18th and got a bunch of spots there the last few laps to finish in the top 10.”
Jimmie Johnson — Finished 10th: “Just getting inside the top 10 the cars are so equal on pace. It’s really a one-groove track still that it’s just hard to make anything happen. Unfortunately, we went to the back, I think if we would have started further forward it would have been a little better day for us. But, just racing at Michigan that is what it is.”
Erik Jones — Finished 13th: “Yeah, just a long day overall. Just never quite had the car to – I think we really needed – we were fighting just being free and as the day went on we never really fixed that issue and that loose wheel early kind of got us pinned in a strategy we didn’t want to be in. Had a lot of laps – I think we had 86 laps on our left side tires – and just couldn’t quite get it there at the end.”
Kevin Harvick — Finished 14th: “We were just too tight. Tight all day long and we could not get it loosened up enough to be able to challenge. It is too bad really. Just too tight.”
Brad Keselowski — Finished 16th: “We just weren’t really where we needed to be. We had a few bright spots but we couldn’t get it there at the end.”
Darrell Wallace Jr. — Finished 19th: “It was a lot better than last week for sure. I just didn’t get all of it on restarts and what I thought was aggressive. Going back to the Xfinity side, I am one of the aggressive ones, but you have to be 10 times more aggressive here at least. It is a learning curve. It was a solid run all day. I knew we would run a lot better than where we started, it was just a matter of getting around those guys, getting track position and clean air. The restarts were wild at the end.”
RYAN BLANEY — Finished 25th: “We held second for a while then four tires ate us up. We couldn’t restart on the bottom. That didn’t bode well for us. I went into (Turn) 1 and got super loose. I hate that it took a couple cars out off (Turn) 2. I got really free for some reason. It caught me off guard which made it look bad. We had a decent enough car to run up there once we got track position.”
Clint Bowyer — Finished 26th: “We were sitting there seventh with 20 laps to go reeling them in thinking this was our day, and then a debris caution forces a restart. Restarts are the only times you can pass, so everyone was racing hard, and I got into the wall. It killed our day.”
