Austin Dillon — qualified 1st: “Well, a lot of the cars wanted to follow us, they knew we had the car to beat. So trying to get us to go was probably a part of that. And then, when the No. 18 (Kyle Busch) made a little bit of a move there, I was going to follow him to have one car to beat. I didn’t have to make it back around. Then the No. 12 (Ryan Blaney) came through the grass, I thought he demolished his car. It looked like he left the ground over there, I don’t know what he hit, but it was pretty wild. At that point, my spotter said you can bring it around here, I knew we had gotten the pole. God never ceases to amaze me, Man. It is awesome to see the blessings that have been bestowed on me. It is special.”
Kevin Harvick — qualified 2nd: (On what happened in the final round): “I think the crowd booing tells the story.”
Aric Almirola — qualified 3rd: “That is the product of the environment we are in. We are all very dependent on posting a good lap based on the draft that you get. You are in that box and it is really stressful trying to figure out when to leave pit road and what position to put yourself in and you can’t be the lead car. The lead car is at such a disadvantage. You just play all the games and if you are going to be the lead car you try to drag it out until you are the only car that makes the line. If you misjudge a little bit you get what we just saw.”
Kyle Busch — qualified 4th: (Any solutions?) “They fixed it in trucks, right? Made single-car qualifying. … You can’t be the leader. If you’re the leader, you don’t qualify up front. … In a perfect world, you try to leave pit road with the exact amount of time that it takes to come back around for you to be able to take the green flag and everybody else’s time to be disallowed, but we all missed that.”
Joey Logano — qualified 5th: “We blew it, but at least we all did. The answer is to go sooner but nobody wants to be the first one out there. I don’t know really what to say. We have something to talk about now I guess. I don’t know what to tell you. That is the game. It is just part of it.”
Denny Hamlin — qualified 6th: “No, it’s not a mind game but you don’t want to be first. When you don’t want to be first, you wait until someone goes in front of you. … I knew I had a drop-down time on my dash (on when to leave pit road). But I was boxed in where I couldn’t go. Once everyone left pit road, they then checked up and slowed down. I knew we weren’t going to make it.”
Ryan Newman — qualified 7th: “I don’t think that was a very successful use of TV time for our sponsors. I told you all back in Vegas that I am still a big fan of single-car qualifying. That is all I need to say, really. That is the way qualifying should be. The gamesmanship that goes on, the lack of 100 percent, it is not what qualifying is all about. That is the program that NASCAR set forth and the rules they laid down and the box they put us in. Shame on us for not getting a lap in.”
Chase Elliott — qualified 8th: “Well, I don’t know. Obviously nobody wants to be the first guy so it’s unfortunate. I don’t know what the fix is. I feel like it’s entertaining with us going out there and drafting and trying to set-up that gap to do it right. It’s just tough because nobody wants to be the first one. And obviously you’re not going to go if you’re going to be first.”
Clint Bowyer — qualified 9th: “You know, I have seen it in other sports but never seen it in ours. We just got booed and it is disappointing. It is disappointing for everybody involved. I don’t know. I saw this coming three weeks ago. I think we all did. Unfortunately we are going to have to be reactive to it instead of proactive. It is just a learning process. The whole package is. Everybody knows that going in and everybody has been patience but I am a little out of patience with Friday’s. There is so much hard work and dedication on so many teams behalves to go out there and have the fastest car known to mankind that you are literally capable of building in the walls of your organization and it just doesn’t matter. That is not racing. I feel like we are capable as an industry of putting on a better show than that. I know they will make the right provisions to make that correction but unfortunately it is going to take something like that to make that adjustment.”
Ryan Blaney — qualified 10th: “It is just the way it is. It is such a big place and you don’t want to be the first person to go because you are going to qualify last in the round. We got close to the time we needed to go and we just didn’t make it. We had the truck deal three or four years ago and they went away from it and now we are back to doing it and running into the same problems. That is just how it is.”
Jimmie Johnson — qualified 11th: “I understand why we’re in this box. Single car qualifying isn’t all that entertaining. So, I guess we’ll just have to see what the opinion is from this and go with the lesser of the two evils in the end.”
Brad Keselowski — qualified 13th: “I don’t’ know. The race is going to be so much different than qualifying, so I don’t think there is a whole lot you can really take away from today. This was pretty much the same at Vegas. Kind of in between Vegas and Atlanta.”
Chris Buescher — qualified 14th: “We should have been a little bit better based on practice, but I love this race track. And, it’s a fun race. It’s just been a lot of fun to race everywhere this year. I’m glad the qualifying portion is over and we can get into the race and have some fun.”
Kyle Larson — qualified 15th: “I was the lead car for that big draft there. We ended up 15th. After last week you don’t want to mess up and not get a lap again. So, just trying to be as patient as you can be but still not be the lead car. But we wanted to leave ourselves some time. So we were just the lead car and were hoping that other people wouldn’t make it to the line in time.”
Ty Dillon — qualified 16th — “That’s a massive improvement over last year’s results. And we’ve been really succeeding in this style of qualifying. It’s different, for sure, but we also we’re all out there trying to do the same thing and be the fastest car. So, I’m proud of our effort and proud of what we’re doing as a team and we’re definitely embracing this style of qualifying.”
Daniel Hemric — qualified 17th: “We just kind of found ourselves on the back end of a draft that put us side-by-side racing cars and that’s not ideal when you’re trying to run a fast lap. We’ll roll off in 17th and it’s good to see a Bowtie on the front row there with (teammate) Austin Dillon getting the pole and it’s really cool for RCR. Those guys are putting in a lot of effort and Chevrolet and ECR and all our partners are doing a lot of good things to give us speed and it’s good to pay off. We thought we should have had two or three poles by now so it’s good for one of us at RCR to finally get one.”
Daniel Suarez — qualified 20th: “If you qualify well, it is fun. If you don’t qualify well, it is a little frustrating at times. It was a little frustrating for me because things didn’t work out the way that we were planning.”
Matt DiBenedetto — qualified 24th: “Just frustration, not at our guys. Our guys do nothing but work their tails off and give me a good Toyota Camry. That’s fun, but I have to say thanks to everybody here at Procore and all the folks that give me this opportunity, but the situation – I don’t love losing my mind every week in qualifying.”
Martin Truex Jr. — qualified 27th: “It was just that he (Cody Ware) ran the bottom in three and four, which is where I wanted to be. Since he was just leaving the pits, he ran high to get his momentum up like normal and just missed the bottom there and that obviously hurt our speed there off three and four. It’s unfortunate, we missed it today off the hauler. We were pretty tight in practice and then we were way too loose there. We were just on both sides of it. We’ve been struggling a little bit on Fridays, but I know we’ll be right tomorrow and we’ll have some cars to pass Sunday, but I know we can do it.”
Bubba Wallace — qualified 28th: “Been disappointed for a while. (What are you lacking?) Money. It’s where we’re lacking. We need money to make more speed.”
Cody Ware – qualified 34th: “Apologies on my part (for getting in Martin Truex Jr.’s way in qualifying). I’m just, obviously, not normally looking behind … in qualifying. I’m listening to what my spotter has to say. Apologies to Truex if I may have impeded his lap in any way.”
