NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
TOYOTA OWNER’S 400
RICHMOND INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE DRIVER PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
APRIL 24, 2016
JIMMIE JOHNSON LEADS TEAM CHEVY AT RICHMOND WITH THIRD PLACE FINISH
Four Chevy SS Drivers In Top 10
RICHMOND, Va. – (April 24, 2016) – Six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, Jimmie Johnson, piloting the No. 48 Lowe’s Pro Services Chevrolet SS, led the way for Team Chevy at Richmond International Raceway (RIR) with a third-place finish in Round 9 of the 2016 season. Johnson paced the field for 44 circuits early in the 400-lap contest. Traditionally held under the lights, but now a schedule day event, the race had eight different leaders and 23 lead changes, the most at RIR since 2007. The third-place effort is Johnson’s 12th top 10 finish in 29 races at the .75–mile Virginia short track, and his fourth top 3 finish of the year.
Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne recorded his best finish of the season thus far with a fourth-place effort in the No. 5 Mountain Dew Chevrolet SS.
Kevin Harvick, who led three times for a total of 63 laps, guided the No. 4 Busch Light Chevrolet SS to a fifth place finish. Harvick’s Stewart-Haas Racing teammate, Kurt Busch drove the No. 41 Monster Energy/Haas Automation Chevrolet SS to a 10th-place finish giving Team Chevy four of the top 10 positions in the final order.
Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner and driver of the No. 14 Mobil 1 Advanced Fuel Economy Chevrolet SS, Tony Stewart, returned to the cockpit this weekend after missing the first eight races of the 2016 campaign due to a back injury. Stewart overcame a flat left-rear tire to finish the race in the 19th position.
Carl Edwards (Toyota) was the race winner and Kyle Busch (Toyota) finished second to round out the top 5 finishers.
The series heads to Talladega Superspeedway next weekend on Sunday May 1.
KASEY KAHNE, NO. 5 MOUNTAIN DEW CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 4TH
POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
THE MODERATOR: We’ll roll into our post race press conference here at Richmond. We are joined by our fourth‑place finisher, Kasey Kahne.
Kasey, certainly that had to be an encouraging performance for you out there today. Just talk about it, how you think things went for the No. 5 team this weekend.
KASEY KAHNE: It was really encouraging. The performance of the team all weekend long, you know, practice, we didn’t get all of our practice in, but we got a lot of it in, then qualifying, didn’t get that. But I felt like we would have been great there, too.
It was a strong weekend for our team. Communications side with Keith and the engineers, just kind of what we worked on, the direction we went was really solid all weekend, similar to Bristol. We just finished it off today.
We had a strong car, the Mountain Dew Chevrolet. We had a great restart there at the end to get a couple spots and get a top five. That was good. We haven’t had a lot of these in the last year, two years. So it was nice to run up front, nice to be competitive, battle with the Gibbs cars a little bit, Jimmie a lot, Kevin some.
I could always see those guys, so it was nice to see the fastest cars in this particular race.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Kasey Kahne.
Q. Kasey, given how tough it looked to be racing out there today, cars slipping and sliding, how rewarding and motivating is it to know you got a got a top five finish?
KASEY KAHNE: I got into the wall a little bit early. I got, who was it, (Joey) Logano. I followed real close behind him around the top of three and four. We were getting pretty close to the wall. I just missed a little bit and slid, hit the wall. I thought I had wrecked my car pretty good, but it rubbed it. It was still really sharp the next corner and the corner after that. I knew we were okay at that point.
We just stayed after it all day. We had a little bit of struggles early in the run, the first 10 laps, and at the end of the race where we didn’t have that struggle at all. I thought that was the best we’ve taken off all day on a 40‑lap kind of dash there at the end. We needed that.
It was good. The adjustments were great. The pit stops on pit road, I was either even, or gaining spots all race long. My pit team is unreal right now, for sure.
Q. What was your vantage point of the last lap? Given Kyle’s reputation as a great blocker, were you surprised to see Carl get past him?
KASEY KAHNE: So, I didn’t even see it. I had heard they had a good battle. I knew they were up there. I knew where they were. I just wasn’t watching them at the end. My car was getting a little loose, so I worried, made sure I came across the line, didn’t screw anything up after a strong 399 laps. I didn’t want to mess it up.
I didn’t watch. Wish I would have. Sounded like a great battle.
Q. Kasey, what was different about today that maybe hasn’t been there over the last several races for you this season?
KASEY KAHNE: Well, I would say it kind of starts at the beginning of the weekend, starts early in the week as kind of our preparation, what we’re looking at to do to the car. It just starts with the attitudes of everybody, from myself to the team, how we all appreciate each other, work together, know that each particular person is there for a reason and are really good at what each one of us do.
I think it’s more being together, being a group, a solid team. As we do that, we’ve been getting better each week. To me, that started three, four weeks ago. Each week it seems to get better from the previous week.
We’re going to keep heading in that direction, I know that, and hopefully the performance stays the same.
Q. Talk about the advantages you found on using the outside lane instead of the inside lane.
KASEY KAHNE: Usually the night races you run right on that white line. A little bit of extra grip there. Even though the tires are worn out, you run right on the line. It grips up. That’s kind of the spot you need to be.
Today you could find grip across the entire track, use some of the bumps to load, unload, turn. Up by the wall, it was just a cleaner area. The higher you went, the track was a little bit cleaner, a little less rubber, which created a little bit of turn.
When you have a tire and a racetrack that gives you those capabilities, it makes for an exciting, fun, you know, great race. I enjoyed every bit of it today. I enjoyed this car, the package we have this year. It’s the best it’s been in a long, long time. The track today was awesome.
Richmond, this was one of my better racetracks today. I feel good about it.
Q. Kasey, second top‑10 finish in three weeks. Last week at Bristol you also had a fast car. You said over the radio the communication is getting better. Have you been able to pinpoint where that is getting better? What is your outlook moving forward?
KASEY KAHNE: I think there’s a lot of things that create good communication. It’s not just talking face‑to‑face. I think a lot of things go into that. It started weeks ago. I think the closer you get as a group, the closer you get with your crew chief, your engineers, the guys on pit road, the car chief, the guys building the racecar, all of that is communication to me. All of that kind of makes the whole race on Sunday better when you are better in those areas.
That’s basically all we’ve been doing. Feel like I want every guy on my team, I want them to be on my team. I think they’re the best at what they do. I feel like we can really do a lot together. I feel like they’re really starting to feel the same about me that I’m the driver they want, we can do a lot together as a team.
When you have each other’s backs, you work together as a team, you keep getting better. That’s where we’ve been. That’s where we’ve been excelling at. Mr. H (Hendrick) gives us great racecars. He has for a long time. We haven’t performed near where we should have in a lot of those weekends. It’s not the car. It’s a lot of other things. It all comes with being a strong team.
Q. Do you feel like you have turned a corner? There’s some consistency now. Talk about that.
KASEY KAHNE: Right. I think there’s kind of consistency on the whole weekend, too. There’s more times I look at the scoring pylon, I’m at the top half rather than the bottom half, whether it’s any one of the practices, qualifying, race, all those things.
Yeah, I think it’s a slow process really. We were so far gone there for a little while, it takes time to start getting back to where we need to be. We’re heading that direction now, so it’s really nice.
Q. I’m sure nobody has been more frustrated about your performance than you have. Early in the season, you had a lot of optimism going into the year. Did it surprise you the way the season started and do you feel different now?
KASEY KAHNE: That’s the good thing about sports in general, and definitely racing. You have two, three months off. During those months off, you prepare and think you’re the best driver, think your team’s the best. You go into each season saying, I’m excited for this year, I’m excited ’cause we’re going to be good, it’s going to be a strong year.
Then we started and we weren’t. We weren’t and we were. There were some bright spots at times, but not nearly what we wanted. Yeah, I was a little surprised there. I knew at that point we really needed to go to work or I needed to find something different to do because it was getting as discouraging as it could be. It’s nice to have three solid weekends and we’ll keep building from here.
THE MODERATOR: Kasey, we hope you certainly do that.
KASEY KAHNE: Thank you, guys.
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