NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
DUCK COMMANDER 500
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE NOTES AND QUOTES
APRIL 9, 2016
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 2ND
ON HIS SECOND-PLACE FINISH:
“We got a little behind and got caught on pit road on that one caution. We had a fast car, probably good enough to win. Martin (Truex Jr.) probably had the best car, but the best car doesn’t always win. Kyle (Busch) did a great job on the outside on that last restart. Truss’s tires were worse than I thought. We finished up there where we should have. We need a win. We’d love a win; I know our fans want a win really bad. Trust me man, we’re all working really hard and running great every week. Hopefully that’s fun for everyone to watch. I had a blast inside the car – a lot of sliding around sideways and good, hard racing. We’ll go to the next one I guess and try again.”
COULD YOU HAVE CAUGHT KYLE BUSCH?
“I didn’t think Kyle was making any missteps up there. He was running some pretty competitive laps. I don’t think we could have caught him. Kyle just kind of got too far out there, and Kyle knows how to hammer down when it matters. We had a great car. We got caught out on pit road there one time with a crash and got the lucky dog. We were in the top-three all night. I’m really happy with the Nationwide Chevy. The guys did an amazing job putting a great racecar on the track. We’re fast every week. Wins are going to come. We just have to keep doing this and it’ll be our day one day.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 4TH
ON HIS NIGHT AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY:
“We overcame a lot today. On that first pit stop, everyone was checking up and I hammered the back of the 18. We had to fix damage on the nose, and it wasn’t pretty. There’s a big hole up front and that couldn’t have been helping us at all. There’s a lot of fight in this Lowe’s team today. I’m thankful for the great equipment and the fight that these guys have because with all the damage and adversity we went through tonight, to come home fourth is really good for this Lowe’s Chevrolet.”
WAS THE DAMAGE WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT?
“Chad (Knaus) did a nice job of selling on the radio. He said on the radio it wasn’t too bad. Looking at it, it’s really bad. So I’m really glad we finished as well as we did.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 NAPA AUTO PARTS CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 5TH
ON HIS TOP FIVE FINISH:
“Yeah, it was a step in the right direction. We’re definitely not satisfied running fifth. I feel like we have a group of guys that are capable of doing that. We’ll keep digging at it. We have a long way to go with a lot of racing to go in the season. We’ll keep working to get where we can roll with those guys.”
IF YOU HAD TO DO IT OVER AGAIN, WOULD YOU STILL HAVE DECIDED TO COME GET THOSE FOUR TIRES ON THE LAST STOP?
“I think so. Being on offense is good. With Alan’s decisions, I’m going to be all for whether they go good or bad. Whatever he says, I’m in for and we’ll make the most of it.”
KASEY KAHNE, NO. 5 QUICKEN LOANS CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 8TH
ON HIS NIGHT:
“We just battled. We got behind, got a lap down early again and we just had to fight back. The team did an awesome job to do that. We had great calls to get the car tightened up; I was so loose that I couldn’t go fast enough for a little while there. There at the end we were actually pretty competitive the last probably 250 laps, like really competitive. We were down a lap a lot of it, but we were really competitive. Once we got back up there I think we were definitely a top 10 car and we finished eighth. It was the best we have done in a long time. It feels nice.”
ON THE CONTACT WITH GREG BIFFLE:
“I just caught Greg to pass him and he kind of entered out, so I thought I was going to go under him. Then he started coming down because he wanted the bottom, obviously, and I was like kind of there and hit the brakes and just hit him. I felt really bad because we didn’t really need to do that. I had a hole on entry and then it kind of closed and I should have lifted sooner instead of being that close to him.”
KURT BUSCH, NO. 41 MONSTER ENERGY/HAAS AUTOMATION CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 9TH
ON HIS NIGHT:
“All through practice we fought loose conditions, all through the race we fought tight conditions. We’ve changed a ton of stuff to try to find the balance. We will keep trying to zero in on it. I was ready for the restarts and that is what helped us. The pit crew had a good stop on the last stop and then I had a good restart and is what gave us a top 10.”
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 4 JIMMY JOHN’S CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 10TH
TELL US ABOUT YOUR RACE
“It was miserable (laughs). Everything from top to bottom wasn’t good. We just battled the car all weekend and never really got it right…. A lot of things that everybody wanted to try that we don’t have to try anymore. So, chalk that one up to experience and we’ll move on to something else and keep trying to get better. That’s really what it was all about was trying to get better. But we definitely struggled with it all weekend.”
HOW WERE THE TRACK CONDITIONS AFTER THE RAIN EARLY THIS EVENING?
“We had car conditions. I don’t even really know that it’s fair for me to comment on the track, or anything, because it was so radical for us that we just couldn’t ever get a read on what we needed and where we needed to go and what we needed to do; and me speeding on pit road compounded the problem. We got back up about where we probably were 10th to 8th, somewhere in there; but it was just a rough night.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 DOW/FLEXSOLYT CHEVROLET SS – Finished 19th:
TALK ABOUT BEING INVOLVED IN THAT 13-CAR CRASH. WHAT DID YOU SEE?
“I haven’t seen (the replay) yet. We were on older tires and I was trying to get all I could there. It’s part of trying to win a race. We put ourselves in a position to be out front, thinking that two laps wouldn’t mean much, but it did. That’s part of it. The good Lord kept me safe tonight and gave me a good race car. You have to be gracious in defeat. We’ll come back next week with another fast car and hopefully we can do the same thing we did today, and that’s run up front.
“It tore up a bunch of race cars. We had a good car. I just wish we could re-do it. But heck, we’re learning. We had another fast race car. We’ll go on from here. I don’t know why they put us a lap down for a speeding penalty. Usually a speeding penalty is like the tail end of the longest line. So, that lost us some more spots there at the end. But, we’ll take it and go home.”
HOW ENCOURAGING IS IT THAT WEEK AFTER WEEK YOU GUYS HAVE TOP 10 RUNS GOING?
“It’s very encouraging. We’ve just got to keep fighting it and build fast race cars.”
BRIAN VICKERS, NO. 14 TAXACT MILITARY FILES FREE CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 36TH INVOLVED IN A MULTI-CAR CRASH ON LAP 290.
WHAT HAPPENED?
“It was a long day. That wreck just finally ended it for us. It’s unfortunate. I was really proud of the effort by the guys all weekend. We never really had the car we wanted. We fought hard for it. It was great having TaxAct Military Files Free on the car. We fought the handling. We thought we were good the first run. We kind of lost it after that. On that green flag stop coming in I got to pit road speed and then the No. 15 (Clint Bowyer) just stopped. I had them locked up, but I had nowhere to go. It was weird. He went to like half pit road speed and I just got into the back of him and locked it up. I just didn’t see that coming. That put us behind the rest of the night. We were just trying to recover from that. Honestly, if we had the fastest car on the race track I would probably be more frustrated about that incident than I already am. We just didn’t have it tonight. We worked hard on it. The guys kept making it a little better we just couldn’t get what we needed. It just wasn’t our night.”
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