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What drivers said after Dover Cup race

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Kevin Harvick speaks at victory lane at Dover, explaining how he was able to narrowly defeat his teammate and friend Clint Boyer by seven seconds.

KEVIN HARVICK — Winner: “I felt like we had a really good car from the time we unloaded, and I think you could tell that from when we qualified. That’s usually not my strong point, qualifying up here, and to be able to qualify on the front row, we had three great practices and everything just kind of fell into place, and when they dropped the green flag, it was definitely still good. It was just one of those weekends where the car was spot‑on from the time we got here, and the guys are just doing a great job. Everybody is just so detail oriented right now, and I feel like we’re playoff racing on a weekly basis, and if you’re going to win a bunch of races, that’s what you have to do.’’

CLINT BOWYER Finished 2nd: “We had a really good car all weekend long, and I would say speed‑wise, sheer speed‑wise, Kevin was a little bit better. That’s a pretty good man to have happy right there, know what I mean? But I mean, it just ‑‑ I needed a run in clean air to work on my car. That was the first time that we took off on stickers in that clean air, and the cars just drive way better, way different. You can carry momentum and do things that you can’t do mired back there in traffic. Battled through a lot of adversity today, having that bad pit stop and having to come back in and go to the back and battle back up through them. This is a fun racetrack. This is a challenging racetrack, a very competitive racetrack, one of the most competitive and challenging tracks I think we go to. The balance of your car is just so important, balancing those front tires to the rear. You’ve got to enjoy places like this.’’

DANIEL SUAREZ — Finished 3rd: “My pit crew did an amazing job right there in the last stop picking - I don’t know, four, five spots. They did it right when it counts, so very proud of those guys. The team actually did great adjustments to help me in the short run when we were struggling a little bit and we were able to keep the third-place, which is good for us. In the beginning of the season, we had some struggles and now finally it seems like we’re going in the right direction.”

MARTIN TRUEX JR. — Finished 4th: “It was up and down, you know? We – I thought we were pretty good at the beginning of the race and lost that lap and had to come from the back. Just really hard to pass here today. Our car was fast in clean air, but I couldn’t pass anybody – especially those last 200 laps once we got somewhere up towards the front, so it was all about where we come off pit road and how we restarted and it’s frustrating, but we just couldn’t seem to make the car turn off the corner all day long. It was tight from the get go and that really hindered me in traffic.”

KURT BUSCH — Finished 5th: “It’s all about the team effort. Good day for us. The way that the pit stops went, we had to come back from a penalty. Restarts went fair the early part of the race and went good in the latter part. Those restarts are close quarters and you need to grab spots then. These cars are really aero-sensitive. Thanks to Haas Automation and Ford we had a top-five day.”

BRAD KESELOWSKI — Finished 6th: “We led some laps which was good. We kind of fell apart on the last two runs. We’ll just keep working on it.”

JIMMIE JOHNSON – Finished 9th: “All in all, it’s been a really good day for our Lowe’s for Pros Chevy. We had a couple of restarts being in the wrong lane. We pitted and we expected a lot more (cars) to come but they didn’t, so we had to start in the teens and start all over again. It’s a good driving car. I’m was really happy with it. It’s amazing how much faster I was when I was up in third and fourth; just had a half a second of speed on our side just due to the cleaner air.”

KYLE LARSON – Finished 10th: “It was a hard-fought top 10 for sure. We were three laps down at one point. I guess happy about the top 10. I was hoping we could pick off some cars there that last run once we finally got on the lead lap, but it was just so hard to pass. Everybody was the same speed until the very end of the run and then you could kind of move around. Found a little bit of time and was catching a few of them in front of me, but just ran out of time.”

WILLIAM BYRON – Finished 14th: “It was hard for us to get track position. We had a couple of times we had to go to the back, but overall once we got up there it felt like we were a 10th to 15th kind of day. We kept making the car better, we just kind of needed to end on a short run there on the last run and also have some rubber in the race track. Long race, it was good to get all 400 laps in and hopefully we can definitely come back stronger here in the fall. I think we have a lot of ideas on what to work on, so looking forward to that.”

RICKY STENHOUSE JR. — Finished 15th: “I feel like we’ve had a top-15 to top-10 car throughout the race. We decided to stay out on that caution not to use up another set of tires. We had a great restart. I tried to gap myself as much as I could knowing that the guys on four tires were going to be coming. I wish it would have rained really bad when I was leading (laughs). All in all, we gained a lot of track position making that strategy call. It’s been a decent day for us. A decent weekend.”

TREVOR BAYNE — Finished 19th: “We just didn’t have any grip when the track rubbered up. Every time the track cleaned up for a few laps we would be OK, but the more rubber got down the worse our performance was. We just couldn’t get the car to turn in the middle like we needed it to and every time we tried to make it turn better we just took the back end out and got it too loose in and never fixed the center. I fought being on the splitter early in the run all race long and that hurt us, so we finished 19th.That’s not the day we wanted for sure, but we also gave it everything we had.”

CHRIS BUESCHER – Finished 20th: “It wasn’t a bad day for us, but I wish it could have been better. Just got a little off on the last run of the day as you would have it. Unfortunately, we lost rear grip there. During the weekend, we made some good progress from practice and qualified good. There’s a lot of positives, but still a lot to work on yet.”

AJ ALLMENDINGER – Finished 21st: “Thanks to my guys for always working hard. It was a tough day overall for us. We started off comparable to where we had been all weekend. Then the end of the second stage the car got really loose. It jumped sideways on me so quick I thought something broke. I don’t know what happened there, but I killed the right side of the car. It was just really loose and it took the side force we had away from it. Chris (Buescher) and I were pretty comparable during the race. We would kind of go back and forth. We still have got to keep working on stuff. I didn’t help us at the last half of the race. It was just survival at that point and we got what we could.”

ALEX BOWMAN — Finished 23rd: “Just got off on pit sequence there and there was no coming back from it. I feel like we had a solid top 10 race car, but you just can’t make up two laps without some help. There weren’t very many cautions today and it’s a bummer because we had a decent race car. Proud of my guys. We were really bad yesterday in practice and we made a lot of gains, but it’s just part of it.”

TY DILLON – Finished 24th: “Today was a challenge for our GEICO Racing team. Dover is such a tough track to get a handle on, and we struggled with overall grip and speed throughout the weekend. Our GEICO Camaro ZL1 certainly wasn’t perfect, but we kept working at it and made the most of what he had. This Germain Racing team has been gaining momentum over the past few weeks, and this weekend will not get us down. We are always building and improving our program so that we can keep growing as a team each and every week.”

KYLE BUSCH — Finished 35th: “We started the race with (a vibration) unfortunately and it just kept getting worse and worse as the day was going. I don’t know why we started the race with it – we hadn’t had anything like that in a long, long time. I know what it was, but not sure why we had the problem to begin with, so, you know, we had a really fast Pedigree Camry. I thought we were going to be top-three car for sure – no question about that – but then what was going to happen with the guys in front of us. I felt like if we could have jumped them In track position, maybe we could have done something better about keeping the clean air and keeping the lead and stuff like that, but it just got so bad there that last run vibrating it even blew the shifter ball off the shifter and when it finally broke, I couldn’t even grab the shifter in order to knock it out of gear so I could just push the clutch in, so I had to nurse it back and get out of everybody’s way.”

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