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What drivers said after the Gander Outdoors 400 at Dover

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Chase Elliott gets to soak in his second victory of 2018 after winning the Gander Outdoors 400.

Chase Elliott — Winner: “I just feel like I’ve messed it up so many times. I was like,'Hey, here’s your opportunity to make it right and to do it right.’ I don’t know. Today just felt different. Like in those positions, I just felt more confident and just excited about the opportunity instead of unsure of what was going to happen. It’s just amazing, and I just love the opportunity that Mr. Hendrick has given me. I’m glad he was able to be here today for our second win of the year.”

Denny Hamlin — Finished 2nd: “I ran as hard as I could through 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. I just couldn’t get beside him. … We chipped away at it all day long, kept moving up through the field and got here. This is kind of where we deserved. Proud of this finish, and we’ll move on to the next race. … Glad to see me and Chase could finish 1-2 here in a playoff race and not have any controversy, so happy for those guys. "

Joey Logano — Finished 3rd: “When you hit an axle, that’s a big piece that can do some real, real damage. It could hurt the driver in all honesty, so I’m glad we got through that and fixed our damage and got a good finish. Right at the end there, the two-tire call was good, and on that restart, we were able to make so many passes, and then they crashed, so that set us up pretty good. I honestly thought I had a really good shot at winning it but just came up a little short. I didn’t think (Elliott) could possibly win that race on old tires like that, but I think that red flag really helped him cool them off.”

Erik Jones — Finished 4th: “We were about a ninth-place car all day. We had that big wreck and then were restarting fourth. The Craftsman Camry was gifted a couple of spots, but we’ll take that. We stayed in and fought hard all day. We ran the best we probably ran here at Dover. We’ll need to figure out what we need to do to get up there and battle for the win but definitely a few steps forward.”

Kurt Busch — Finished 5th: “It was a really good day for us with the stages. We were just a little bit tight most of the day and felt like it came to us towards the end. I was giving it all I had chasing down Almirola, and the yellow comes out and from there it just changed the course of everything. It’s not even a ripple effect, it’s a tidal wave of things that happen. Once one yellow comes out that goes against what everybody thought was gonna happen, so Almirola could have won, we could have finished second. We ended up fifth. We have nothing to complain about.”

Kevin Harvick — Finished 6th: “I don’t really care about points. I’d rather win.”

Kyle Busch — Finished 8th: “It worked in our favor a bit today with some other cars getting torn up. Which is unfortunate for them. Our day was not very good. Speeding on pit road took us out of the running for a top 10 and a solid finish. We got about what we deserved I guess.”

Ryan Blaney — Finished 11th: “I thought we were OK all day. We were a seventh-, eighth-, ninth-place car, and it was hard to pass. We lost some spots on that last pit stop, and that put us in a bad spot, and we got kind of wrecked there. It wasn’t very good, but I don’t know. There are a couple good tracks coming up for us, so hopefully we can do a little bit better there, but we survived it.”

Aric Almirola — Finished 13th: “We’ve had so many opportunities and been so close and had the car to win and been in position, and I don’t know, it just seems to not come through. I don’t know. I’m frustrated and mad and angry. I don’t know. I could have been conservative and probably finished third or fourth like Kurt. It’s just track position is so tough, and it’s so hard to pass here. On that restart, I tried to at least go where they weren’t to the top, and (Hamlin) moved up to kind of block me, and I just got really tight off of (Turn) 2, and I bounced off the fence and got into Brad and tore up a lot of race cars along the back straightaway. I hate that for everybody that was involved, but it kind of killed our day, too. I don’t know. I feel like we should be over there in victory lane celebrating, but we’re not.”

Brad Keselowski — Finished 14th: “I felt like we were gonna have a really great day for that, but we didn’t, so I feel really good about next week in Talladega. We’ll see what we can do there and see how it goes.”

Martin Truex Jr. — Finished 15th: “The 5-hour ENERGY Camry was good all day, but the pit road issue put us in a place we didn’t need to be. Then we got caught up in someone else’s mess at the end. Frustrating for sure but all we can do is look ahead to next week.”

Alex Bowman — Finished 28th: “The No. 2 (Brad Keselowski) kind of got tagged and started wrecking. I thought he was going to get to the bottom of the racetrack faster than he did. Dover is typically so self-cleaning, but he slid a little longer than I thought he would, and I kind of just center-punched him. Watching the replay there was really nowhere to go. I wish I would have at least tried to go left, but part of it. Greg (Ives, crew chief) did a good job getting the car better all day today. It’s a bummer. It could have been a really good day for us.”

Ty Dillon — Finished 29th: “Dover is a tough racetrack, there’s no doubt about it. Our GEICO Camaro ZL1 was just so much tighter in the race than it was in practice. The balance started to improve towards the end of Stage 2, but I just needed more overall grip. We battled through the day to finish the race. It wasn’t easy, but my team isn’t ever going to give up. We’ll move on to preparing for Talladega. We were incredibly fast there in the spring, so I’m looking forward to going back and hopefully ending the day in victory lane.”

Clint Bowyer — Finished 35th: “We broke, and I hit the wall. I’m just really disappointed. I’m frustrated with our day, obviously. We had a very fast race car. I got tore up passing a lapper and then all of a sudden we had a loose wheel. I think it was a loose wheel, and then we went back out and broke something in the front end, and it was two different things. When we pitted, it was something in the rear, obviously, the right-rear, the left-rear was loose, it was all out of control, and then all of a sudden we went back out it was fine, so I took back off and then I think something in the left-front broke. It just went straight, whether I ran over something, I don’t know. I’m just sick for Aric. He had that race won. It was his win and unfortunately his teammate had trouble and took him out of it.”