MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
FEDERATED AUTO PARTS 400
RICHMOND RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPTS
SEPTEMBER 9, 2017
KYLE LARSON WINS AT RICHMOND IN REGULAR SEASON FINALE
Chevrolet Puts Seven Drivers Into 2017 Playoffs
RICHMOND, Va. (September 9, 2017) – In an exciting overtime restart of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond Raceway, Kyle Larson powered his No. 42 Target Chevrolet SS to the lead to capture his fourth win of the 2017 season, and fifth of his MENCS career. Larson led three times for 53 of the 404 laps, including the final five trips around the 0.75-mile track. A super-fast pit stop put him in front for the final overtime restart, and he was able to take the lead and collect the win.
“I’ve got the greatest team out here and definitely the best pit crew,” said Larson in Victory Lane. “That showed tonight. I can’t thank those guys enough. They were money all night long to gain spots. This win is a huge congrats to them. The Target Chevy was pretty good all night.”
Additionally, Larson’s win was the 775th in the MENCS for Chevrolet, and 38th at Richmond Raceway.
“Kyle Larson, Chad Johnston and the entire No. 42 Target Chip Ganassi Chevrolet SS race team never gave up throughout the entire race,” said Jim Campbell, Chevrolet U.S. Vice President of Performance Vehicles and Motorsports. “They did an incredible job to win this race. This a great way to go into the Playoffs.”
Ryan Newman finished third in his No. 31 Caterpillar Chevy SS and Jimmie Johnson, driver of the No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet SS finished eighth. Johnson’s teammate, Chase Elliott, was 10th in his No. 24 Mountain Dew Chevrolet SS to give Team Chevy four of the top 10 finishers overall.
Rounding out the top five finishing positions were Joey Logano (Ford) in second, Kurt Busch (Ford) was fourth, and Denny Hamlin (Toyota) was fifth.
The next stop on the 2017 circuit, and opening round of the 10-race championship Playoffs, is September 17th at Chicagoland Speedway. Seven Chevrolet drivers have earned coveted positions to vie for the 2017 MENCS championship, more than any other manufacturer. Those competitors are: Hendrick Motorsports drivers, Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne, and Chase Elliott; Chip Ganassi Racing drivers, Kyle Larson and Jamie McMurray; and Richard Childress Racing drivers, Ryan Newman and Austin Dillon.
“We are really proud of all seven Chevrolet drivers and teams that made the Playoffs, concluded Campbell. “We are looking forward to competing in the next ten races.”
POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS – RACE WINNER
THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by our race winner Kyle Larson, driver of the No. 42 Target Chevrolet. This is your fourth win of the season. You’ll have a total of 23 playoff points heading into Chicagoland next week. Talk a little bit about what this extra win means as you head into the playoffs.
KYLE LARSON: I should have more than 23, I think. I don’t know if we were second or third in the regular season playoffs, or Chase, or whatever, season. But yeah, I get some more bonus points there, too, so I think I should have 28 or 29 or more.
Yeah, good night for us to win at a short track. Feels amazing. But to have our pit crew perform like they did tonight makes me feel very proud for them and our whole organization. I’m not a very good short track racer, so for us to come here and challenge for the win and get the win, it feels great. Hopefully we can carry this momentum off into the playoffs and make it through the three rounds or whatever it is to make it to Homestead and go for the championship. I feel like I’d have a really good shot there this year.
Q. People will talk about ‑‑ comment that you stole the race because Truex was so dominant, but you ran up front all night. What does that say about your development as a driver if you’re not a good short track racer that you were up front all night tonight?
KYLE LARSON: Yeah, we definitely stole the win, I guess you could say, or our pit crew I felt like stole the win because they got me off as the leader. But yeah, Richmond and Martinsville are probably my worst racetracks, and you can throw Loudon in there, too. I know I’ve got some good finishes there and ran really strong there early in the year, but historically these styles of tracks don’t suit me.
I know everybody says I grew up short track racing, but this is way different than sprint car racing on a short track. This is really, really slow, heavy braking, off the throttle a lot, taking care of your tires, where sprint car on a quarter mile you’re still wide open a lot of times, depending on how the track is. This is different, and I’ve had to learn a lot. I feel like I’ve definitely gotten better at it. I can go really fast on the short runs and stuff at all these shorter flat tracks, but it seems like I struggle on the long run, which I did tonight, but it came down to a short run, and we got the win.
Q. Kyle, how gratifying is it to go into the playoffs with a win and to go into Chicagoland with all this momentum from tonight?
KYLE LARSON: Yeah, it’s great. You know, to get a win right before the playoffs start, I really hope it helps the momentum and the confidence, especially I know there’s confidence with our team. There always has been. We’ve just got to keep working hard throughout the playoffs, at the race shop and at the racetrack, make sure we’re improving our cars, which we have been all season long. I feel like we bring better and better cars every week. Just got to make no mistakes in these final races and hopefully we’ll give ourselves a shot at the championship.
Q. A lot of your fellow Chevy drivers and Ford drivers have complained about trying to find the speed to keep up with the Toyotas. You just seem to put your head down, mat the gas and do what you need to do. Is that probably the best philosophy to look at it rather than just dwell on what the other guys have?
KYLE LARSON: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if it’s like politics or what, or why ‑‑ I complain about it, too, I guess, a little bit that the 78 in particular is just way faster. I mean, everybody can see it. I’ve got the same number of wins as him, but he should have probably had like 10 or 12 wins if things would go his way more often. But he’s been the class of the field all year, and the Toyotas in general have been really strong here the last few months. But I look at it as we all just have to work harder. Chevy is an amazing manufacturer that we work really hard, and Hendrick on the engines, they work really hard. But at our race shop, we build all of our own chassis and bodies, and all we get supplied is engines and transmissions from Hendrick.
It’s cool to be the next best, I would say, to Toyota right now, or really the 78 car. So, we’ve just got to work hard and get to where they’re at. Toyota and TRD, they’ve done a really good job, and we all have some catching up to do.
Q. Four wins this season. I know it’s been a breakthrough year for you and to come back here in the fall and in the regular season with a win, when you look back at 2017 before heading into the post‑season, what do you think was your biggest attribute that led to this breakthrough and all the success?
KYLE LARSON: Well, yeah, I think what I can point to for this being a breakout season is just better race cars. In the past up until this season, we never start the year off good. We get fast and contend for wins, but it takes ‑‑ we’re always behind kind of fighting before we get to around this time of year, and this year we started off really good. I knew if we could start off a season as good as what we’d ended, we’d have a shot at wins, and we were able to do that and actually be better I feel like than where we ended last year to start this year. So, it’s really helped our season, and our team is just working really well together, Chad and Phil and Jeremy, everybody, all the engineers, really just everybody at the race shop works so hard and brought great race cars to the track, and that’s really what it takes.
CHAD JOHNSTON, CREW CHIEF, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS:
THE MODERATOR: We are joined by our race‑winning crew chief Chad Johnston, crew chief for the No. 42 Target Chevrolet. You’re going in the race off of pit road there at the end, and Kyle beat Martin on that restart. Take us through that last restart from your view on the pit box.
CHAD JOHNSTON: Yeah, we had a pretty solid car all weekend long. We felt like going into the race, we were a third‑ to fourth‑place car. I think that’s pretty much what we had for the night. The 78 definitely was faster than us and probably was the class of the field once he got 10 or 15 laps into a run. We knew our best chance was when that caution come out to be the leader off of pit road, so we put four tires and no fuel in it, which played to our handling there earlier in the race a little bit, and were able to win it off pit road. So, the pit crew guys won that race for us.
Kyle did an awesome job on his restart. That’s the second one, win in a row that we’ve got on a late‑race restart, so really proud of him and really proud of the job that he did all day long keeping the tires on the car. We felt coming into this that Richmond is kind of one of our worst tracks, to to come here and to be competitive all weekend long and to go home with a week going into Chicago is pretty special.
Q. We’ve seen probably since the middle of the summer that in a lot of cases NASCAR hasn’t thrown as many debris cautions so there’s been a lot longer stretches of racing. As you go into the playoffs, how do you start factoring that in, and how much does it not matter what history is at what tracks in the past because of this new way of doing things?
CHAD JOHNSTON: I think the format with the different segments makes it a little bit easier because you know obviously when two of the cautions are going to come out. But as far as the debris cautions, it’s definitely been a lot less this year. The one here tonight obviously wasn’t a debris caution, so I think you just play it off of past history. You definitely look at it, but I don’t think that you live by it. You look at what the characteristics are. Even if you go back the last five, six years, it’s pretty hard to draw a distinct conclusion that a caution ‑‑ you look at the percentages and it’s a 50, 60 percent chance. It’s not like it’s a high likelihood. But you definitely play it different based off of the racetrack that you go to and what the tire falloff is and what the probability of the caution coming out at a certain point is and what gives you your best chance to make it work in your favor and not get caught by a caution.
Q. Does short pitting become a bigger factor in these races?
CHAD JOHNSTON: Yeah, I think you see it at the places that have a lot of tire falloff or tire degradation. This place is pretty bad, you get about two seconds of falloff, so if you come in you’re making up two seconds on the guys that haven’t pitted. Darlington is similar; I think Chicago is going to be the same way. The repaves and stuff you don’t see near the falloff. Dover you don’t see a lot of falloff. But you definitely ‑‑ at the places where you get a lot of tire falloff, short pitting will definitely play a factor in it, and you’re just going to have to pay attention to who you’re racing to get into the next spot in the Chase and play your hand the best you can to try to finish in front of them and make points on them every week.
Q. Chad, you said that you didn’t add fuel on that final stop. Without the weight being added to the car, did that help make it looser or tighter?
CHAD JOHNSTON: It helps with additional nose weight, which will tighten it up on a short run. We use nose weight as far as percent of weight that’s on the front tires to tighten it, so the more weight that’s on the front tires, the tighter it’ll be. We pumped the air up on them, too, to try to get them to come in a little bit quicker and take off a little bit better for the green‑white‑checkered, so it was to tighten it up.
Q. How was that playing into his driving style tonight?
CHAD JOHNSTON: We were a little bit too free on the short runs, so I think that helped. We’re typically loose in, tight in the middle, loose off, which is typical Richmond for us, but we didn’t fight the entry balance as much today, but on the short run it allows him to be a little bit more aggressive taking off.
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