RYAN BLANEY – No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion – “That restart was pretty hectic from the beginning with the 78 getting loose and it kind of put everybody in a bad spot, and it wound up with us being in the middle of three-wide into three. It’s so hard to get into that corner all night with a car close to behind you and outside of you, and no one lifting either, and it’s just an unfortunate spot we got put in and I hate to see two really good cars tore up. We were both very fast tonight (24 and 21) and it’s just a really unfortunate deal, but we’ll try to get it fixed and get back out there and make some laps.”
CHRIS BUESCHER – No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford Fusion – “I was really happy with our Love’s Ford Fusion. Our fire-off speed was excellent and this was the best car we’ve had all year. The guys did a heck of a job. Unfortunately, the call was made to run practice during our qualifying time and we started by points. We’ve had three of these situations at superspeedways already this year and just didn’t put us in a good place for the start and the pit selection wasn’t good because of it, and we ended up in a bad spot because of it. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE TRACK TONIGHT? “They did a good job with the repave. The track is a lot of fun to drive. Everybody keeps begging for less and less downforce, and we keep seeing more and more incidents because of it. I think it has made better racing at a lot of racetracks, but it’s not easy to get into turn three here side-by-side.”
BRIAN SCOTT – No. 44 Medallion Bank Ford Fusion – “The 11 was pretty tight on my door and I had the 42 up my bumper there on that restart and these cars are pretty difficult to drive when you’re in that type of situation. I was expecting it and when it happened I thought I had it saved. I was just trying to gather it back up and lose the spots we were gonna lose but go on and then some cars barreled in pretty fast from behind and caused a pileup. It started with me. It’s a product of new paves. You just don’t have any room and everybody holds each other really tight, and it’s just difficult. This low downforce package is racing really well, but it doesn’t really matter what downforce package you have when you’ve got two cars really tight on you from behind and on the side, you just have no air on your car and there was nothing I could do.”