Kyle Busch – Winner: “That one was a lot harder. Man, Erik Jones put up a whale of a fight. That all I had. I was running with my tongue hanging. My arms were Jell-O and my throat hurts, but man that’s awesome. Can’t say enough about everybody on my Joe Gibbs Racing team. (Crew chief) Adam Stevens and the guys are phenomenal. Car might not have been perfect, but I’m never perfect. I never feel like we’re perfect, but this Caramel Camry was fast. So proud of these guys, so proud of my team, so proud of Joe Gibbs Racing.”
ERIK JONES – Finished 2nd: “This is one I had circled when we ‑ really all season, but especially when we got knocked out at New Hampshire with a flat tire. That was like, Okay, we need to win. What’s the tracks coming up that are our best shot? Bristol was definitely, you know, the one where I thought we were going to have the best shot to win. I felt like we had a really strong car in the spring. Felt like I could improve myself and improve what we had in the race car compared to what we had there. We did that. We qualified on the pole, you know, led a ton of laps. We just didn’t quite keep up with it. So, yeah, this was our best shot to win. Did I feel any pressure? No. I was just actually really calm this week. I really had a sense we were going to run really well. I had a really good feeling about it. I feel really confident every time I come to Bristol. And, you know, kind of felt like we were going to be running up front, but just didn’t have enough.’’
Denny Hamlin — Finished 3rd: “We caught them a little bit in that last run, but I restarted on the bottom so many times that it’s one of those weekends where I would love that cone rule where you can pick what lane you want to go in on restarts. I’d be willing to start 12th on the outside versus third on the inside. It’s just I got killed on restarts all day, but we did a really good job of bouncing back and good finish.”
Matt Kenseth – Finished 4th: “I guess there’s only two races left, so somebody is going to make it by points. I don’t know where we are. I don’t even look at it, to be honest with you. If you don’t get a win in the next two weeks, hopefully we get in. Obviously we’ll be really far behind. If we do get in, we’re running a lot better as of late. We’ve had some solid finishes. Last week wasn’t. But we’ve definitely been closer to being in contention for wins.
Kurt Busch – Finished 5th: “We’ve been struggling with the VHT on the bottom, so I just knew we needed to wait and wait and wait, and I was hopeful at lap 250 that it would come to us. I pushed it too hard then and got some right-front tire damage on the fender. We had to work through that, but I think at the end we got in position because Tony Gibson made a good call and put us on fresher tires than the competition and it was the old fun Bristol for me.”
Ryan Newman – Finished 6th: “I got too fast on pit road, which cost us, but guys did a good job in the pits, which is a nice change. Overall, I’m proud of the team effort. Fought hard and kind of got lucky there with the tires. I don’t know that we had a sixth-place car, but we did tonight.”
Trevor Bayne – Finished 7th: “I feel like the last month we had strategy, things went our way and we’ve gotten results from it. Here at Bristol, Roush Fenway always gives us good cars and we’ve had really good runs the last four or five races. Our Ford was fast tonight at the end when it mattered. At one point we blew a tire, hit the fence. I thought we were going to get lucky and get back on the lead lap. Got on the lead lap, got a caution and put new tires on it and started passing cars. We’ll keep working on it. Obviously we need to win. That’s what our goal is.”
Kevin Harvick – Finished 8th: “We had a good Busch Outdoors Ford, but we were just tighter than we needed to be on the next-to-last run. Then the tire strategy just didn’t go our way at the end. Who would have thought we would run all the way to the end under green? It was a good car.”
Kyle Larson – Finished 9th: “It was a good race up until the last stop. I felt like we had a shot to win and then something went on with the left rear (tire) maybe. I didn’t get a good stop and lost all of our track position and that was kind of all she wrote. Just got stuck behind and then guys had better tires than I did and it just is what it is.”
Ryan Blaney – Finished 10th: “We weren’t bad. We were probably a little better at the beginning and we had really good short run speed and really good long run speed, but that middle portion wasn’t the best. It’s something to be proud of. I wish those guys at the end with tires didn’t get us, but I didn’t think they were going to run all those green flag laps.”
Jimmie Johnson – Finished 11th: “We had a really good race. I got stuck on the inside on a lot of restarts, which kind of affected our progress. But we would drive up to the top three, top five and at the end there something happened with the back of the car, and I lost it going into Turn 1 and hit the wall with like 30 to go. Somehow still finished 11th. The car is destroyed. The tail is moved over like two feet, right front is pushed in, I’m surprised I didn’t get a flat. So, I got really lucky to finish, but a strong effort, very good race car. Just unfortunately, I had a little issue getting into Turn 1. I don’t know if it was brake related or something went wrong with the back of the car, but the back just started wheel hopping really bad that final 30 laps and it was a handful to drive.”
Jamie McMurray – Finished 12th: “We struggled at the beginning did a really good job adjusting our car. (Crew chief Matt McCall) made some really good calls there. I had good track position at the end. We were just kind of at the end of the cars that didn’t put tires on and tires meant a little more than we expected. He (Matt McCall) was just telling me that he thought we got outran by all the guys that put tires on, but overall, we had a really good car.”
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. – Finished 14th: “It was a really tough night. We battled back from a blown right-front and then that last stop they said I was a little too fast speeding, so we had to make up a lot of ground. The car was really good and it’s just a bummer. I feel like we didn’t get an opportunity to go race for a win there with the speeding penalty, but the guys gave me a good car, so you’ve got to be happy about that.”
Paul Menard – Finished 16th: “Tonight was a battle for everyone on this Knauf/Menards Chevrolet. We got the free pass a couple of times, Matt Borland and the guys kept adjusting on the car throughout the night. We used pit strategy to get inside the top 10 late in Stage 2. I was able to hold off a lot of those guys with fresher tires to pick up some stage points, which was big for this team. We took the wave around in the final stage and the car really came to life. The car worked well on the bottom on the last run, but it just got too tight at the end.”
David Ragan – Finished 17th: “That’s a solid day for the Front Row Motorsports team. I feel like we had a little better car for the first half of the race and we made great adjustments, but I don’t know if the VHT wore off or the track cooled off, but we lost a little bit of the handle over the last 150 laps. We wanted a little better, but it was a great race. We ran in the top 20 all night and we’re happy with that.”
Chase Elliott – Finished 18th: “Yeah that was just a racing incident with Kevin (Harvick). I tried to… we were just working lap traffic and he and I had been racing really hard back and forth with each other and I kind of go to his inside and he was setting up to pass the guy on exit. He has been running the top and he just didn’t know I was down there. I had a really good Turn 1 and 2. He just didn’t know. I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in there, I guess.”
AJ Allmendinger – Finished 22nd: “That was just a long night. We didn’t start off very good, but kept fighting, kept staying on the lead lap and got hit by the No. 38 and I went to turn back behind him and Chris (Buescher) had gotten there and he hit me in the left-rear. It’s not his fault. I overreacted about Chris hitting me. So, it wasn’t his fault and then it just had a bad tire rub, so we had to pit and we could never get those two laps back and I think we weren’t fantastic, but we were fighting. At times, we had a pretty good car and then we would try something else and we would lose a little bit, but I thought we could have ran top 15 to top 18 which would have been okay. It’s just a long night.”
Dale Earnhardt Jr. – Finished 23rd: “We struggled. We had a real fast car for like 10-15 laps and then we would just real, real tight, so we struggled all day trying to figure it out. We weren’t good, and we weren’t going to fix it on pit road either. We’ve got a lot of tools on pit road to really get after it, but the problems we had we couldn’t fix with wedge or trackbar.
Danica Patrick – Finished 25th: “It was a long, tough battle here at Bristol, and I wish we could have run better. We just didn’t have it this weekend, but we’ll move on. Thanks to all of the guys for working hard on my One Cure Ford Fusion this weekend.”
Landon Cassill – Finished 35th: “It’s just close quarters. Bristol is a tough race track and I was sliding up and I thought maybe there was a little room, but he just clipped me. It’s tough racing at Bristol.”
Ty Dillon – Finished 36th: “It really felt like we had some raw speed in our GEICO Chevrolet. We had a couple pit road penalties and ended up three laps down. We earned one back and felt like we were fast enough to get more laps back. We got into the wall a little earlier on and probably weakened the ball joint a little bit. We hit the wall again and the car is done. It was a really rough night but we did seem to have good speed in our car tonight.”
Aric Almirola – Finished 37th: “We had an oil line on the motor that had a hole in it and it started smoking real bad and caught on fire, so that’s the end of our night. We blew like four or five right-front tires. It was just a long night for our Smithfield team. We’ll have to regroup and go on to the next race.”
Austin Dillon — Finished 39th: “From my perspective, we were running really good and all of a sudden the left rear (tire) went flat. I don’t know what happened, if we had contact on that restart or our trackbar broke. My car chief said the letters on the Goodyear were rubbed off and about two laps later we broke. I was just moving forward. I passed like four cars and then it busted a tire. It never works out when you break when you are running bad, but we were running good and it broke. Bummer, our battery was going dead too, so it probably wasn’t going to be much longer we were going to be out of the race either way, but just a bummer I really love this track and was having a blast tonight. It sucks it had to end this way.”
