Here is what drivers said after Sunday’s Cup race at Pocono Raceway. Results have been updated after the cars of Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch were disqualified for failing post-race inspection:
Chase Elliott — Winner: “Yeah, definitely a bit of a battle for our NAPA team today. I’m pretty happy with third after that. I didn’t think we were all that good through the mid-portion of the race and I was struggling in traffic trying to get back up through there. We had some restarts go our way there towards the end and was able to get some spots back, which was nice. It was good to get a top-five, but certainly could be a little better.”
Tyler Reddick — Finished 2nd: “I think we only struggled a little bit at times in the race just with track position. It may look that way, but honestly our team did a good job and got better the further we went. If the cautions would have played out differently, I think we could have been in position at the end of the race. All-in-all, we passed a lot of cars today and we did that well on the race track and on pit road. It was a great day for our team.”
Daniel Suarez — Finished 3rd: “I thought we had a top-five, top-10 car all day long. At the beginning, I thought we had a winning car. We made the right adjustments and all-in-all, it was a solid day all around for our team.”
Kyle Larson — Finished 5th: “I had one bad restart where I lost a bunch of positions and then you had to works s hard to get each position back.”
Michael McDowell — Finished 6th: “It was a good day. I had a couple good restarts that got us track position, then I had one really bad one where we got hit in the left rear and about spun out and went back to last. That hurt us really bad. My guys called a good race and we tried some different strategies to try to get track position. We stayed out on old tires but I felt like if I got a good restart and got into the top 10 I could hold on. We restarted 16th with no tires and drove up to eighth so I am really proud of that finish. It is still not the day you want. You don’t want to be eighth, you want to win the race, but we are doing a great job and I feel like we are getting close.”
Erik Jones — Finished 9th: “The mid-part of the race we were really good and I was really happy with it. Just got tight at the end of the race. It cooled down a lot and we probably didn’t stay ahead of that enough. The FOCUS Factor Chevy was good. Frustrated. We had the speed, kind of all weekend, and then hacked up qualifying a little bit, had to start at the back and found our way back to the front and then just got behind. A good weekend in the fact we did have good speed. It’s been a minute since we’ve had that kind of speed and I was happy with that. It’s frustrating that we came home 11th. You want to come home better than that with a car like that. Just got behind.”
Ty Gibbs — Finished 16th: “(On what he learned in his Cup debut) Just the dirty air and how bad that affects you. Just being able to make sure I was getting out far enough. I was a little bit tight all day, so just trying to get front turn and trying to get more center turn which would help me. It was a learning day. I felt like I learned a lot. I’m very thankful. It was close to almost a top 15. It was fun racing with Brad (Keselowski). Never thought I’d race with these guys. It was just cool being next to them on the track. So, to 10-year-old Ty that means a lot. I don’t think I would ever expect that.”
Ross Chastain — Finished 32nd: “It was something that has been owed to me for a few months now. I’m proud of the effort by Trackhouse Racing and everybody on this No. 1 Worldwide Express Chevy. It’s week in and week out that we keep bringing fast Chevy Camaro’s.”
Ryan Blaney — Finished 33rd: “I just got loose. It was one of those things. You get loose off three and think you can save it but you can’t. I just couldn’t save it. Gosh, I hate it for everyone on the 12 group. We finally got the car decent and we were running top five there and had a flat tire and had to come in and then I just tried too hard and it stepped away from me. I hate it for Menards and Ford and everybody. That was my mistake. We will go at it again next week.”
Denny Hamlin — Finished 35th: “It’s the team. They just were able to come back with a great strategy there to get us back up front from the mistake I made.”
Kyle Busch — Finished 36th: “The second-to-last run there where we had the 1 (Ross Chastain) car there trailing us, he was a little better than us. It’s hard to pass, but having the car trending loose on me, we made an adjustment for that with as many laps as there was going to be to go with that last pit stop, but we just over did it I guess and missed it on that last run unfortunately. I was just way too tight and didn’t have the roll speed that I needed through the corners. The guys did a great job and bust their tails for me every week and do a really great job for me on this M&M’s Camry. Appreciate all of them and their support and what they do. Obviously, wish we had a little bit more today and of course with the M&M’s Fan Appreciation 400 race, it would have been nice to honor all the associates that were here in attendance to give them something to celebrate with us in victory lane. Just one spot short in qualifying and one spot short in the race. “
