NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
MYAFIBRISK.COM 400
CHICAGOLAND SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVE RACE NOTES AND QUOTES
September 20, 2015
KURT BUSCH LEADS TEAM CHEVY AT CHICAGO WITH THIRD PLACE FINISH
JOLIET, IL – September 20, 2015 – When a right rear tire went down early in the 267-lap MYAFIBRISK.COM400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) race, Kurt Busch battled back in his No. 41 Haas Automation Chevrolet SS to score a third place finish at Chicagoland Speedway. It marked his ninth top-10 in 15 races at the 1.5-mile speedway, and was the first of 10 rounds in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
Finishing close behind in fourth place was Ryan Newman in his No. 31 Caterpillar Chevy SS, giving Team Chevy two of the top-5 in the 400-mile race. Both are Team Chevy Chase contenders in the 10-race playoff.
Kyle Larson was seventh in his No. 42 Clorox Chevrolet SS.
‘Overall, I’m really proud of this team and everybody at Haas Automation and Stewart Haas Racing,” said Busch. “This Chevy was fast. It was fast enough to win. When the caution came out there at the end, I thought we had the right strategy, but we didn’t. But this is a point’s day. This is a long journey through these next 10 weeks”.
Other Chevy Chasers finished as follows:
11th: Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Chevrolet SS
12th: Dale Earnhardt Jr., No. 88 Diet Mountain Dew Chevy SS
13th: Martin Truex Jr., No. 78 Furniture Row/Visser Precision Chevrolet SS
14th: Jeff Gordon, No. 24 Axalta Chevy SS
16th: Jamie McMurray, No. 1 McDonalds/Cessna Chevrolet SS
17th: Paul Menard, No. 27 Pittsburgh Paints/Menards Chevy SS
42nd: Kevin Harvick, No. 4 Jimmy John’s/Budweiser Chevy SS
Harvick, the defending NSCS champion, had a tire issue from on-track contact on lap 138 with Johnson, and spent 57 laps in the garage before returning to competition.
Denny Hamlin (Toyota) was the race winner. Carl Edwards (Toyota) finished second and Matt Kenseth (Toyota) was fifth at the checkered.
The series moves to Loudon, New Hampshire on Sunday, September 27, 2015.
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER POST RACE QUOTES:
KURT BUSCH, NO. 41 HAAS AUTOMATION CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 3RD:
YOU BATTLED THROUGH ADVERSITY. THE RIGHT REAR TIRE WENT DOWN EARLY, BUT YOU CAME BACK AND WAS RIGHT THERE IN THE MIX TO WIN, BUT IT SEEMED LIKE THAT CAUTION WITH 10 LAPS TO GO REALLY CHANGED THINGS
“Yeah, it did. It was the difference-maker today. But overall, I’m really proud of this team and everybody at Haas Automation and Stewart Haas Racing. This Chevy was fast. It was fast enough to win. When the caution came out there at the end, I thought we had the right strategy, but we didn’t. But this is a point’s day. This is a long journey through these next 10 weeks. We weren’t given a hall pass now, through Loudon and through Dover. We’ve just got to work hard as a team and saddle-up. This isn’t just a win and take a couple of weeks off, but we had a winning car today. It’s kind of a shame. We had a good run at Fontana earlier this year and it kind of ended up the same way.”
RYAN NEWMAN, NO. 31 CATERPILLAR CHEVROLET SS, FINISHED 4TH: ON TODAY’S FINISH 4TH: “Proud of these guys, they never gave up. Luke (Lambert, crew chief) did a good job making the four-tire call. I was thinking that two-tires was going to be the way to go. When those guys stayed out, we got a good restart and four tires paid off for us. The last five laps felt like 10 laps, but it was a good team effort for the Caterpillar Chevrolet team. Very proud of the guys. We’ve been working hard to get back to this condition. We ran near the front most of the day. Had one bad run there on a bad restart. Proud of the team effort.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO.48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS, FINISHED 11TH: DID KEVIN (HARVICK) TRY TO BLOCK YOU OUT THERE? DID HE INITIATE THAT? “He didn’t leave me any space. He was pinning me down, and I had to get back up on the track. I wouldn’t say that what he did was any different than other situations I’ve been in like that. When you are in his position, you want to get the inside car in a bad angle so they have to lift. I was fine with lifting, but I had to get back on the race track, so I worked my way back up on the track.”
IT IS HARD FOR US TO SEE, BUT YOUR FRONT BUMPER DID NOT HIT HIS REAR BUMPER AFTER YOU GOT HIT BY (JOEY) LOGANO? “Nope. I pulled down inside of him and we were door-to-door. Then as I moved back up on the racing grove is when we touched door-to-door. Tire-to-tire.”
WHEN KEVIN CAME BACK OUT ON THE TRACK, HE TOLD HIS SPOTTER TO LET HIM KNOW WHEN THE NO. 48 IS NEAR ME ON THE TRACK. DID YOU FEEL BAD AROUND HIM? “No. I assume he would try to find it is my fault. I just simply needed the lane to get back on the race track. By no means was I trying to do anything different. I’ve seen him on the flat working his way back up looking for a racing lane. That is what I was doing. I was on the bottom trying to get back up on the racing surface, and he was trying to pin me down and I had to get back up or else it would have been a hell of a mess.”
HOW WERE RESTARTS TODAY? “Crazy. Whenever you have that big flat apron like that on the bottom, it really creates a lot of craziness.”
ASSESS THE AFTERNOON. IT SEEMED LIKE AT TIMES YOU HAD SPEED. AND THE LAST RESTART, I’M NOT SURE WHERE THAT LEFT YOU
‘Yeah, the last restart, some guys got loose and everything kind of went to the top and unfortunately that was the lane I was in and got choked in pretty bad. I was one car away from clearing that lane on the top and would have been motoring into top 5 contention. At the middle part of the race, maybe two-thirds, we lost what we had going on. It was some tire pressure stuff from what I gather and heard on the radio. We got that back and at the end, we were really fast. Just off for one segment there, and it hurt us pretty bad.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE THAT’S WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU JUST HAD TO MANAGE THE DAY WITH POINTS
“Yeah, managing points was certainly part of it. Restarts were wild and crazy. So, we’re just trying to be smart. But at the same time, we had such a good car from the start, then we were off, and then we were back on. I wanted to be up there racing for the win or at least for the top two or three.”
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 DIET MOUNTAIN DEW CHEVROLET SS, finished 12th: ON LATE YELLOW: “When you have a late yellow, it takes all the damn work you did all day out of it. A little frustrated, but we were only running ninth or 10th. We’ll move on to the next one. You can run 12th or 10th, 11th and make it to the next round. I know we have to get better. But we didn’t kill ourselves today; we didn’t kick ourselves out of it.”
WERE YOU FRUSTRATED WITH ALL THE DEBRIS CAUTIONS THERE TOWARD THE END? “Yes. I don’t like debris cautions, especially those kind.”
NOT A GREAT RESTART, BUT NOT THE WORST: “Well, there weren’t too many cars behind us that could pass us for position. I didn’t choose the right direction to go. I thought we would all jump to the top and go around those guys, and we’d be good. But Jeff (Gordon) slid up in front of us and we all had to stop and everybody was going by us on the bottom. Those late restarts with those guys up there on used tires are just going to be bad. You just have to get lucky and we didn’t get lucky. Not anything there about skill, it is all luck. Wish we wouldn’t have had those late yellows. Wish it would have stayed green. We had a good day going and worked real hard. Late cautions throw all that work out the window.”
MARTIN TRUEX JR. NO. 78 FURNITURE ROW/DENVER MATTRESS CHEVROLET SS, FINISHED 13TH: ON HIS RACE: “As I kept on saying you can’t win the Chase in the first race but you can sure lose it. We didn’t lose it today but finishing 13th after running solidly in the top-10 for almost the entire race is very disappointing. Before the last caution came out with a few laps to go we were running solidly in sixth place. We came in for two right-side tires, and when the race restarted, we didn’t have the speed to get back up there. We didn’t have a great race car today, but it was sure better than 13th. We’ll regroup and go after it in New Hampshire next week.”
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 AXALTA CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 14TH
TALK ABOUT THAT LAST RESTART
“Yeah, I knew we were going to have a tough time not spinning the tires. On old tires like that, it’s pretty easy to spin the tires, especially when you’re on the front row. So, I was just trying to hold pace with Kurt (Busch). I knew that I had Denny (Hamlin) behind me on older tires as well, so I was somewhat encouraged by that. He got a good run on me. I blocked him. He was pushing me down and we were on the apron. I felt like I did a good job, but I just came up off the apron a little bit too early and he was able to just motor right on by me on the inside. And once I got three-wide, we were done. It was over at that point; just try to save this awesome race car. That thing was fantastic. I’m very encouraged about how the Axalta Chevrolet was today, the whole team, and that’s what we’ll be bringing every single week. Hopefully we won’t have to worry about some of these late cautions ruining our day like that.”
YOU LED A LOT OF LAPS TODAY. YOU SHOWED QUITE A BIT OF SPEED. HOW MUCH DOES THAT ENCOURAGE YOU AS WE GET INTO THE FINAL NINE RACES?
“Oh, I’m very encouraged by that. I like this race track. I thought the team brought an excellent race car. They work extremely hard. Everybody at Hendrick Motorsports has been collectively working together and I think it showed with our No. 24 car today.”
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 4 JIMMY JOHN’S/BUDWEISER CHEVROLET SS – Crashed in Turn 3 on Lap 138 with a cut left rear tire after the No. 48 of Jimmie Johnson got into him. Sidelined for 57 laps during repairs. FINISHED 42ND:
“Yeah, I got a fairly good restart. I just had a little tire buzz at the end and shifted into third gear and I saw those guys coming on the apron. They must have gotten together and had a good run up. But I just held my ground and he just slammed into the side of the door like I wasn’t even there. So, the spotter was telling me four-wide and I guess he just figured that he’d come up the race track. But, I’m just really proud of everybody on our Jimmy John’s/Budweiser team for not giving up and doing all the things they had to do to get the car back on the track and we’ve just got to go win one of these races.”
HOW DO YOU RECOVER FOR THE NEXT TWO RACES?
“Win.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 AMERICAN ETHANOL CHEVROLET SS, made contact with outside wall on lap 130. He returned to competition on lap 200 (267) FINISHED 43RD: ON WHAT HAPPENED WITH A GOOD RUN GOING: “Yea, we really did. It is a part failure in the left front. I don’t know what caused it; we’ll get it back to the shop and fix it. The good thing is we can take some positives from this which is we had a really fast car. I just wish we could have taken this to a few more mile-and-a-half tracks this year because she is pretty hurt. Slugger (Labbe, crew chief) and the guys did a good job all weekend. I thought we had a shot to win here. I think we did. We just didn’t get to the end of the race to have that shot.”
Team Chevy racing photos are available at:
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