Matt Tifft Earns Career-Best Second Place Finish After Starting From the Pole at Road America
“We had a great No. 2 Dragon Alliance Chevrolet Camaro all weekend long at Road America. It handled well during our practice session, just needed a couple adjustments done to it. It was awesome to get our first pole of the year at a road course. I really thought I had messed up my lap, but it turned out to be the fastest one, which seems to happen a lot at road courses. We dominated the first stage of the race, earning our first stage win of the season. I got shuffled back a little bit toward the end of the race on the restart, but with the handling and speed of my Camaro I was able to climb back to third and then into second. I wish we could have gotten up there to challenge Justin Allgaier for the win, but we just ran out of time. It was a great weekend overall for our No. 2 team at Richard Childress Racing. If we keep performing like this, we’ll get the top spot soon enough.”
-Matt Tifft
Brendan Gaughan Leads Laps, Late-Race Contact Ends Potential Top-10 Run
“We played the strategy right with our No. 3 South Point Chevrolet Camaro, even when we got into the oil in Turn 3 while leading. The oil cost us a few positions but it didn’t hurt our overall plan. Near the end of the race, things got heated on the track and I over-drove a few corners. I have to apologize to Daniel Hemric and the No. 21 team. I’m so glad they were able to recover and have a good finish after we made some contact. I want to thank everyone at RCR and ECR Engines, they gave me a great car today, just wish we could have had a better finish to go along with it.”
-Brendan Gaughan
Daniel Hemric Leads Laps, Wins Stage 2 and Rallies Back from Late-Race Contact to Earn Third-Place Finish at Road America
“I put our team in a little bit of a hole today in qualifying by getting off course in the final round. We got our No. 21 South Point Hotel & Casino Chevrolet here in third place despite not having great track position to start the race. Slowly but surely we made progress all day. We got inside the top five and pitted under the first caution of the day. We found ourselves in position to inherit the lead after Stage 1 and were able to hold those guys off and win Stage 2. I thought we were doing the right things to position ourselves to have the best possible track position with the best tires and the most fuel. For whatever reason anytime I got next to my sponsor and teammate Brendan Gaughan we kept getting into it and I kept getting run off the racetrack, but finally he pointed me by when I got to him in the closing laps. We can laugh about it at this time and we talked about it with a smile, but it was definitely frustrating at times. I am glad I was able to come out smiling and we were able to prevail and fight our way back through the field and bring home a top-three finish. I am proud of the effort we made today to come back from 18th with 10 laps to go and finish third. It is a huge statement for this race team. We have had a really tough month with up-and-down finishes, but it feels great to cap it off with a third-place finish at Road America. I am looking forward to carrying that momentum into one of the best racetracks, Darlington Raceway, next week.”
-Daniel Hemric
