Chase Elliott — Winner: “Yeah it was awesome. I just enjoy racing with (Kyle Busch). I obviously got lucky with Kevin (Harvick) having his penalty, I thought we were really, really equally matched there. I wish we could have raced him straight up obviously, but had a great car today. … It’s been a great couple of months so we’ve got to keep it rolling. This is the time of year that counts.”
Kyle Busch — Finished 2nd: “We got too tight there on that long run. I knew it was going to get tight, it was just a matter of whether or not I could get there and get by him (Chase Elliott) first. Running the top like that, it just inherently creates tight in the race car. The sooner you get up there, the longer you’re up there and it just gets that much tighter. Chase did a good job of having that big of a gap that he didn’t have to go up there so early and he had a little bit better tire there when I got to him and he was able to move down a little bit and keep rolling with the speed. I just couldn’t do it that way. We come home second today. That’s just kind of all there is it to it. I didn’t think we were going to have to a second place car. When we here at the test, the 9 (Chase Elliott) was actually right on line with us – maybe even a tick better at times during the test when we were here, so they’ve had a fast car here for a while.”
Kyle Larson — Finished 3rd: “Fought the balance a little bit early in the race, but we made it better and better throughout the race. I felt like the last run especially was our best run handling wise. Just needed the No. 18 (Kyle Busch) to catch the No. 9 (Chase Elliott) to maybe battle him some, but as he got closer he kind of lost the air on his nose. Just wish I could have stayed in second there after the green flag cycles and not let Kyle (Busch) get by. I felt like maybe if I could have been behind Chase there at the end with the line he was running maybe I could have done something with him. But, all in all a good effort today. We did everything we could just came up a couple of spots short”
Erik Jones — Finished 4th: “It was good. We had a really fast car. Our Craftsman Camry was I think a car that could have contended for the win. We just struggled on pit road. We lost a lot of spots and it just took a long time to get them back. That long green run helped us at the win and we were able to pick them up and get back towards the front, but not enough time. Good car. Just got to keep working and keep getting closer.”
Martin Truex Jr. — Finished 5th: “It was definitely a tough day – a blue collared day for sure. We worked hard. The guys never gave up on the car, they just kept working on it for me and I just kept trying to get all I could out of it. Pit crew really saved our butts today man, they were unbelievable. That’s definitely something you need going down the stretch here for a championship and we’ll regroup and go to Martinsville next week and try to go get a win.”
Brad Keselowski — Finished 6th: “I would say about the end of that first stage it was pretty obvious that we needed something after I saw some things on the other cars. We needed something to step up but it just wasn’t there. We just weren’t as good today as we were yesterday and I am not sure why. Everyone else seemed to find a little from practice and we were about the same, maybe a little worse than we were in practice. I am proud of what we did down the stretch of the year. We won three races and did all that. I feel like we can go win Martinsville next week so I am excited about that but of course the ultimate goal is to win a championship and we won’t have an opportunity to do that this year.”
Ryan Blaney — Finished 7th: “Obviously it was a mistake I made trying to work hard to catch those guys and I pushed too hard and got in the fence. It is all my fault. Whether it would have worked out for us or not, I don’t know. I don’t think we had the speed the 9 or 4 had. The 9 was super fast. I don’t know. I messed up and cost us a shot. I want to thank Wrangler and Menards and Ford for doing what they do. The whole 12 team deserves better than that. That was unfortunate on my part.”
Joey Logano — Finished 8th: “We did a great job this round with two top-fives and a top-10. A stage win here today and we finished third in the other stage. We were scoring points which is good enough to get you through these rounds but I feel like this next round we are going to have to get a win to get through. Maybe they will have enough issues that you can build up enough points but I think we need to win. It was a solid weekend with the pole and stage win, I am proud of that, we just have to focus hard on getting more.”
Alex Bowman — Finished 9th: “We had to fix damage throughout the day. I’m a little frustrated. We had a better car than that. I don’t know that we had a race-winning car. I thought the No. 9 (Chase Elliott) was super good on long runs. We were, I thought, much better than him on the short runs. But on the long runs he just ate us up. Congrats to him. We’ll move on to next week.”
Aric Almirola — Finished 10th: “I will take it, another top-10 finish today. Really proud of my team. We had another fast Ford and the guys did a good job too. Now we advance on to the next round and at this point I just feel like we have nothing to lose almost. I feel like we are playing with house money. We are relaxed and looking forward to these next three weeks, they should be fun for us.”
Austin Dillon — Finished 11th: “I’ll be honest. I didn’t feel like we had a very good Dow Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 all weekend, so I am proud of this team and our 11th-place finish at Kansas Speedway today. It was hard-fought. We weren’t very fast from the time we unloaded from the hauler on Friday, so we will have to work on that going forward. We started off Sunday’s race with a tight-handling condition, but the Dow Racing Team worked hard on adjustments all race long. By Stage 2, we had solid lap times, and by Stage 3, we were able to enter the top 10. I’m proud of this team’s hard work all weekend.”
Kevin Harvick — Finished 12th: “Today wasn’t great from my standpoint. Our Busch Lite Ford was really fast and leading the race there and I got a speeding penalty. That was my fault. I tried to get a little too much and wound up going too fast. We will take it one week at a time. We have had fast cars and whether it is speeding on pit road or flat tires or valve stems or fuel, we haven’t put together a full day except for Richmond. Hopefully we have gotten all that out of our system and we can go to Martinsville and start off good.”
Clint Bowyer — Finished 13th: “It was enough, barely. We were lucky really. It was ugly. I wanted to be better than that. I don’t know. I don’t know what I am missing here. It isn’t my guys. They are giving me good cars. They are fast. I just can’t figure out how to get around this damn place. I definitely have to be better than that. I knew this was going to be the one and we were lucky enough to get through Talladega and get some points going into this with a little bit of insurance and I am damn glad we did.”
Ryan Newman — Finished 15th: “All weekend long our Caterpillar Chevrolet favored long green-flag runs. Our balance was pretty good, but for whatever reason we just lacked take-off and overall speed. Our biggest issue was in traffic. Our car just plowed but we kept up with it as the track changed throughout the race. We ran as high as 10th and as low as 16th. crew chief Luke Lambert did a great job keeping up with the track. We just needed a little more speed to be a force to contend with the top-10 cars consistently. There’s four more to go so we’ll keep doing our best to close out the season.”
Kurt Busch — Finished 18th: “I am really happy. It is exciting for us. It is our goal to win the championship. We are an elite eight team when we started Daytona and here we are, we did it. It was a rough day in the pits and on the track but we had enough points from the Roval and our stage races. It was a rough day and we need to put it quickly behind us. We are back on even ground. We are in the top-8 and Martinsville is the path to the championship down in Homestead.”
Jimmie Johnson — Finished 22nd: “I just ran too close to the wall, I guess, in (Turns) 1 and 2 and it just brushed the wall and it sucked me in. That was it. I didn’t think I did anything different than other laps. I’d been running really close to it. I just did something wrong on that lap and hit on the right side and ended our good run.”
Ty Dillon — Finished 25th: “This was a benchmark race for our Geico Camaro ZL1 team. We didn’t have the performance that we wanted here at Kansas Speedway back in the spring. Our cars have evolved a lot since then, and we’ve been working hard on our intermediate program. We came back here this weekend wanting show improvements from where we were in May, and we did that. There’s still more work to be done, but little gains will become big gains as this team keeps grinding. We have four more races left this season, and we are working as hard as we can to get everything out of them.”
William Byron — Finished 38th: “That was the best car we’ve had. Usually, that seems like how it works. But we were making pretty good ground. We came out after our green flag stop, in a decent spot. We were kind of mired between the two guys we were before, so overall the car was good and the motor just blew-up. But, there’s nothing you can do but look forward to the next race.”
