RICHMOND, Va. — What drivers had to say after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway:
Kyle Larson — Winner: “It’s really cool. We’ve been close to winning a couple. William (Byron) has been extremely good this year. It was going to be between probably him, the 19, us, and the 20 was really good. So just things worked out. My pit crew had a great stop. So shout-out to Brandon Johnson. He is our jackman. He just turned 30 today. Our spotter, Tyler Monn, he turned 30 today. Great day for them guys. What an awesome Hendrickcars.com Chevy. Can’t say enough about it. I got into the 99 (Suarez) on pit road there sometime in the second stage, and we were awful after that. I was hoping the damage was the reason why, but they had to calm me down a little bit and get refocused and was able to get it done. Thanks to everyone on this team, (crew chief) Cliff Daniels, for everything he does to prepare the team to be as strong as we are without him on the box. So good to get a win, and hopefully many more. … So when I was going backwards in the second stage and mad, I just needed a caution to take a break and then tell myself just to not overreact and just we still have 170-something laps left or whatever it was. It’s plenty of time to get back to the front. So our car was good enough to do that, too. Just a great day all around for Hendrick Motorsports. Great week, especially. So, yeah, a lot of significance to this week, and I’ll probably remember it now for a long time.”
MORE: Richmond Cup results, driver points
Josh Berry — Finished 2nd: “Man, this is really cool. I have to give all the credit to this NAPA team. Tom (Grey, interim crew chief), Alan (Gustafson, full-time crew chief) remotely, of course, and everybody at Hendrick Motorsports. When we got some clean track, we weren’t running bad lap times. I’m so glad they tried something different to get us there at the end. Felt like we were decent the whole time. Just getting in cleaner air. We were free to run with Kyle. Man, what a huge day. You know, to come here and start in the back, no practice, qualifying, get spun out, work through the field like that, just second place, it’s pretty cool.”
Ross Chastain — Finished 3rd: “We definitely needed more to fight for the lead. For our Jockey Chevy, it was probably more about clean air. There were better cars throughout the race that got cycled back on strategy. For our group – the 5, the 9, the 20 was probably a little better – but out of the Chevys I thought that in clean air that any of us – the 5, 9 or us – could lead. Hats off to the 5 team, Kyle, and everyone at HMS. Chevrolet keeps locking down these wins with the Bowtie. We’re proud to be part of it.”
Christopher Bell — Finished 4th: “For us, we needed it to stay green. It didn’t work out today. It was pretty disappointing. I felt like we had enough speed in our Rheem Camry to be up there all day, but I had a couple of restarts that put us in the back. We would lose spots when the yellow flags would come out, so it was just an uphill battle all day. (On the wreck with William Byron): It was a pretty standard restart with the 1 (Ross Chastain) behind you. I tried to protect from him going to the inside, and he still made it three-wide there at the last minute and there wasn’t enough room.”
Kevin Harvick — Finished 5th: “We didn’t have a very smooth day and the car didn’t really do anything that I wanted it to do to have a shot at winning, but we fought hard all day. We were definitely expecting to be a little bit better, but that’s the way it goes. … I think we definitely handled a little bit worse than we did at the last race here, but there was a lot different on the car, too.”
Michael McDowell — Finished 6th: “I think the strategy was a good call. A lot of that was our car was really good on the long run, and I think we were gonna be 15th or 16th, so you might as well go for it and see if you can’t come up with something good and it worked out. I thought it was a great call by Travis Peterson. The Love’s Ford Mustang was pretty good all day. We needed a little bit more speed on the front end and not lose so much track position early on, but the long-run speed was great. Had a couple of those runs gone a little longer, I think we would have actually been a little bit better yet, so I’m proud of everybody. Phoenix was a good race for us and this obviously being a good race, so I feel like our short track program is turning the corner, at least I hope so. I’m optimistic about that.”
Joey Logano — Finished 7th: “We had a really good car. Our Mustang was fast, maybe definitely could have won. It felt pretty good. That loose wheel set us back, but it was so early in the race we thought we could recover. We started to recover and did recover, and then we were trying to split it halfway and get the track position, but we had two untimely cautions that just didn’t work out for us. Typical Richmond it does work out, but more cautions today than typical. I thought it was a fun race. I had fun. It’s a tricky track. It’s fun. It’s one of my favorite tracks, probably my favorite track to run and manage your tires and when you run hard and all that it’s really fun for the driver. It’s probably the most fun track for the driver.”
Ty Gibbs — Finished 9th: “It has been a pretty solid start for us. The biggest thing is just minimizing mistakes. I think my team is the best and only going to get better. My pit crew did a great job today. I’m happy. My Monster Energy Toyota Camry was fast today, and I’m excited to be up there racing with those guys.”
Chase Briscoe — Finished 12th: “We were just like a 12th-place car all day. The whole day we ran between 10th and 15th and just kind of depended on restarts and pit road. That kind of determined where we would fall out. The long-run speed wasn’t probably as good as what we needed it to be, and our short-run speed was kind of just OK to kind of hang on, so for how our season has been going this was honestly a good day – just to kind of run 10th to 15th all day long and not have anything crazy happen. I’m looking forward to next week going to the dirt track, for sure.”
Aric Almirola — Finished 13th: “We struggled a little bit. I feel like this is one of my better places, and I just thought we were a little bit off of where we needed to be. We’ve got some work to do before we come back, but proud to finally get out of a race with a decent day where we didn’t have anything catastrophic happen. We didn’t have everything go perfectly, but we were able to get out of here with a race car that’s still in one piece and go forward from here. Hopefully, this is the start to turning our season around.”
Kyle Busch — Finished 14th: “We were a little bit off the mark today, but overall it was a decent day for our 3CHI Chevrolet team at Richmond Raceway. At the beginning of the race, we were just too loose and needed more grip. Randall Burnett and the guys on our team made a ton of adjustments to our car throughout the race but it was challenging to keep up with the track. Our pit crew did a great job all race so that was certainly a highlight for us today. I think we gained a few spots on each stop. We’ll rebound next week at Bristol.”
Ryan Preece — Finished 18th: “We got a top 20, but our team definitely deserved a top-10 finish. We were in it all day, and my guys made great adjustments on our stops. That final caution at the end of the race threw everything off. We only had scuffs at the end, and we were just off the pace. We lost a few spots in those final laps and were able to finish off the day 18th. Moving in the right direction and looking forward to Bristol dirt next week.”
William Byron — Finished 24th: “It looked like the 1 was inside the 20 and the 20 just overcooked the corner and had the fronts locked up and nailed us in the left rear. So I was just kind of restarting fourth there and trying to stay tight to the 9 and get a good restart. I just got tagged in the left rear. So, yeah, just a dive bomb move on the inside on his part and it is what it is. I had a great race car. The Raptor Chevrolet was awesome all day and we will just keep bringing fast race cars like that and we will get a lot more wins. It was looking like it could be another win before the caution. That’s the way it goes.”
Austin Dillon — Finished 25th: “Richmond Raceway is statistically one of my best tracks, so I wish we could have capitalized with a solid finish. … We just never got a feel for the handling of our Chevy. We started deep in the field after practice and qualifying were canceled due to inclement weather on Saturday and that put us in a hole. We made plenty of adjustments to the balance of our car during pit stops, but never got it where it needed to be, and then had a slow stop under green. We’ll do some homework before the fall race to make ourselves better. Bring on the Bristol Motor Speedway dirt race.”
