Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

What drivers said after Watkins Glen race

Ps_9YoCsyqq8
Brad Keselowski talks about pitting late with the lead and breaks down the collision with Kyle Busch earlier in the race at Watkins Glen.

MARTIN TRUEX JR. — WINNER: “It means a lot to be in victory lane here at this race track. I’ve been coming here a long time and feel like we’ve been close and had a few slip away from us, but really excited. I just kept listening to (crew chief Cole Pearn). He said, ‘We need to slow down more. We need to slow down more.’ It’s the hardest thing in the world to do to slow down and let those guys pass you for the lead thinking that when you figure out that you have enough fuel to make it you can try to step up your pace again and they’re just going to do the same. You never know what strategy everybody is on. You don’t know how much gas they have or are saving. It’s so tough. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do just to slow down that much and watch those guys drive away. But, just Cole Pearn man, that’s his job and I trust him and everything he says.”

MATT KENSETH — Finished 2nd: “I’m second happiest. Martin is the happiest. We really needed the win. Honestly, I don’t even think about the playoffs. I more think about coming here for however many, 15, 17, 18 years, whatever it’s been, and not really having a win or an opportunity to win and never even really been that great here. I felt like we had a top-five car. Obviously we had good fortune there at the end with our track position and our fuel mileage and all that to stay in it and have a shot at it, but man, when it’s that close and you see him saving and you’re saving and then you go after him there on that last lap, it’s disappointing not to get it. Especially when I saw him miss Turn 6. I was like, ‘man, I’m going to have a shot,’ and he was so fast I still couldn’t get to him getting into (Turn) 7.’’

DANIEL SUAREZ — Finished 3rd: “I feel like it was a good weekend. You know, we made a lot of progress from the first practice to second practice to qualifying and then to the race. You know, I’m very happy for the third-place (finish) and for the result and for the overall race, but very hard to finish third when you can see the leader right there and you are just cruising to try to save fuel because you don’t really know how much fuel you have left.’’

DENNY HAMLIN — Finished 4th: “Yeah it was a great run for our FedEx Freight team. The Camrys were fast, all of them were today and just had to milk the fuel as much as we could there at the end and make it on fuel. Great run for us. Another fourth-place finish – I don’t know how many that is this year but definitely been ringing them off.”

CLINT BOWYER — Finished 5th:“Yeah, that’s that hard thing. When you have them there at arm’s reach you want to go for it. That’s the win that will put you into the (playoffs) right there in front of you. But if you run out of gas that’s the dagger that will knock you out for good. It’s the right thing. We just have to keep knocking on the door.”

KURT BUSCH — Finished 6th: “We ran hard on every single lap today and hit every turn flawlessly. We did a great job.”

RYAN BLANEY — Finished 8th: “I stumbled down the back coming to two to go, so we wouldn’t have made it. It stinks. I wish I would have saved earlier like (Truex) did. I pushed hard and thought we were better to go on gas than they were. They did a good job saving. I could have done better. If I would have started saving sooner I think we would have made it. You never know. I am pretty proud of the effort. We got up front at the beginning of the day and stayed there pretty much all day. I thought our strategy was right and we had a good race car. Things just didn’t work out for us. That is just the way it goes sometimes.”

AJ ALLMENDINGER — Finished 9th: “Of course you always want more when you come here, at least I do. We had a tough weekend, and we fought hard. The car wasn’t very good on the first run, and we made some better changes. Got it better. Got it pretty competitive there. I just really struggled in traffic. I got behind Jimmie (Johnson), and tore up the tires. Once I got by him it was actually not too bad. From there it was just fuel saving. Don’t really know how much you have. I tried to save, I felt like I saved a lot. Maybe a little too much.”

ERIK JONES — Finished 10th: “It was okay. I had brake issues all day long and it was kind of the biggest fight for us. Just could never quite get in the corner like we needed to so kind of fought that. The car was good. I thought we had a top-10 car, maybe a top-five car had circumstances played out. I had a bad stop and got boxed in behind (Aric Almirola), so it just didn’t quite get the finish that we wanted.”

CHRIS BUESCHER — Finished 11th: “Really proud of this Scott Products Chevrolet team. They worked really hard and put us in the right position with good strategy. We had good speed at times, our early run speed, I was really happy with it. It fell off a little bit harder than we would like, but to come home P11 here at The Glen it was pretty good!”

BRAD KESELOWSKI — Finished 15th: “I was going into the corner and I had the 47 (Allmendinger) behind me and when I got into the corner the 18 (Kyle Busch) next to me. My spotter called it but we were already in the corner. It was too much for me to avoid. We got into each other and that hurt everybody. All I know is I went in the corner and the 47 was the car behind me and I got to the corner and somewhere the 18 came up and he was behind the 47. I don’t know how he got there or what all transpired. I was already to the corner and unable to do anything by then.”

PAUL MENARD — Finished 18th: “Our day was full of hurdles, but we were able to overcome thanks to all the guys on this Dutch Boy / Menards team. We found a fluid leak in qualifying and had to change the rear gear before the race, which meant we had to start from the rear of the field. The car had speed, but we had a lug nut guard that cut the valve stem on the right rear and led to a flat tire. The guys were able to get it fixed, but there was a bit of a vibration in the rear for the rest of the race. We had solid fuel mileage all day, I was able to save some over that last run and we were able to make it to the end without stopping.”

TY DILLON — Finished 19th: “Our day definitely improved from where we started. We had some brake and power steering issues at the very start, but I was able to keep it underneath me until we could bring our GEICO Chevy in during the first stage break. By the time we got to the final stage, we had the car handling exactly how I needed it. Fuel mileage games are always tricky, but everyone has to do their part. The engineers have to do the math, I have to back down my entries and the spotters have to tell me who I’m racing in fuel-saving mode and who is packed full coming up behind me. It’s a team effort, and we all did our jobs today to get it home with fuel in the tank and a top-20 finish.”

JOEY LOGANO — Finished 24th: “Best-case scenario we were going to finish top 10, which does nothing for us. A top xfive or a win is the only thing that is going to help us, so we went for it by pitting and putting four tires on and hoping to get a caution and maybe cycle ahead of cars with new tires. Unfortunately, it went green all the way and we didn’t get a good finish. We need to win the next few races here.”

RYAN NEWMAN — Finished 25th: “Overall, we had a pretty solid handling Caterpillar Chevrolet. We just lacked track position and it kept us from making a serious run to the front. With that said, we adapted our strategy and (crew chief Luke Lambert) said we were a lap to the good on fuel. Saving here is pretty hard to do but we felt confident we were going to make it. I ran out with three laps to go. We’re scratching our heads right now trying to figure out where we came up short. The guys were going back to the garage to measure everything. It’s really unfortunate. I can’t really say we were good or bad today. Things didn’t go our way.”

AUSTIN DILLON — Finished 26th: “We just didn’t have the speed we needed in our No. 3 Dow STEM Chevrolet today. Our handling was a little off throughout the day today. I was too loose in essess and had trouble getting through the bus stop. We gambled on our fuel strategy when we pitted under that final caution, knowing we’d have to save to avoid being one lap short. I saved as much as I could by doing things like short-shifting, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough this time and we ran out with just two laps to go. We’ll learn from this though and be better next time.”

DALE EARNHARDT, JR. — Finished 37th: “We had a problem with the valve train and we can’t fix it. It’s been a really difficult week. We’ve been way down on speed and we had a pretty good car at Sonoma, so I was kind of looking forward to coming here. But, the guys worked really hard. We changed this car inside and out twice this weekend. And, we had made it better and we were kind of hanging in there. I think we had a shot at maybe a top 20 at best. But man, we showed up and we were about four seconds off.”

Follow @dustinlong and on Facebook