Toyota Racing Post-Race Recap
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Martinsville Speedway
Race 33 of 36 – 263 miles, 500 laps
October 28, 2018
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Joey Logano*
2nd, DENNY HAMLIN
3rd, MARTIN TRUEX JR
4th, KYLE BUSCH
5th, Brad Keselowski*
9th, DANIEL SUÁREZ
26th, ERIK JONES
27th, DJ KENNINGTON
31st, JJ YELEY
38th, TIMMY HILL
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA DRIVER POINT STANDINGS**
1st, KYLE BUSCH 4104 points
2nd, MARTIN TRUEX JR 4083 points
11th, DENNY HAMLIN 2213 points
15th, ERIK JONES 2159 points
18th, DANIEL SUÁREZ 655 points
**unofficial point standings
· Camry drivers took three of the top-four spots in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series event at Martinsville Speedway with Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch finishing second through fourth, respectively.
· Truex led 18 laps (of 500), including the penultimate lap before an on-track incident resulted in a third-place finish.
· Toyota drivers led a combined 149 laps, including Truex (18 laps), Hamlin (31) and Busch (100).
· Daniel Suárez also finished in the top-10, scoring a ninth-place finish.
· Busch and Truex are first and second in the point standings, respectively, with two races left in the Round of 8.
TOYOTA QUOTES
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 2nd
Describe what you were working with here today.
“Great long run car. Mike (Wheeler, crew chief) and the team just did a great job of giving me a car that was exceptional on the long run. Obviously, with the track cleaning up and it getting cooler and the short runs, it just didn’t suit our car well, but we made a great adjustment the last couple of stops and just got shuffled on some restarts trying to let our teammates in. That hurt our track position. We just needed to be a tenth of a second closer to the lead. It just took too long to get around the 18 (Kyle Busch) and 2 (Brad Keselowski) there with about 10 to go. We just couldn’t capitalize on those guys getting into each other.”
What’d you see the last lap coming to the line?
“I knew they were going to get into each other. They were leaning on each other pretty good there for a couple laps. It seemed like whoever was on the outside could kind of pinch the inside guy off. I knew it was coming, but I just hoped it would be a little more dramatic.”
What did you make of the battle ahead of you and getting in position for this runner-up finish?
“Hats off to my FedEx team, (crew chief Mike) Wheeler and the whole team gave me a great car and one that could win. We needed long runs on short runs. It was obvious we had such a good long run car that was coming there at the end, but those guys were leaning on each other and it looked like a fun battle. I just wish I was a little closer to kind of be able to capitalize on it, but I just got held up there by the 2 (Brad Keselowski) and the 18 (Kyle Busch) a little bit, but those guys were racing. The 18 especially for a big prize, so I had to be patient around him. It just took a little bit too long.”
How badly did you want the win here?
“Bad. I mean it’s as bad as I’ve wanted anything. We’ll look ahead. We’ve got three good race tracks ahead of us and we’ll see if we can get it done.”
MARTIN TRUEX JR, No. 78 Bass Pro Shops / 5-hour ENERGY Toyota Camry, Furniture Row Racing
Finishing Position: 3rd
What’s your thoughts on the move Joey Logano made there at the end?
“They won the battle, but he didn’t win the damn war.”
How do you retaliate?
“I’m just not going to let him win it. I’m going to win it.”
You’re going to make it the Championship 4?
“That’s the plan right now.”
Anything you want to say to all these fans out here that have come out and seen this show?
“I appreciate them being here. They’re awesome man. This place is great. We should be in victory lane right now, but it’s just the way it went today. It didn’t work out. Proud of my guys. Proud of our team. Everybody said we were out, said we couldn’t run good at Martinsville, we don’t run good at short tracks, our team’s shutting down so we can’t make it to the Championship 4. Yeah. I’m going to show everybody.”
Would you have done the same to Joey in the same position?
“I was next to him for six laps. I never knocked him out of the way. We were going to race hard for it in my book. I cleared him fair and square. We weren’t even banging doors for me to pass him. He just drove into the back of me and knocked me out of the way. That’s short track racing, but what goes around comes around.”
From your driver’s seat, walk us through the last couple of laps.
“I just took a cheap shot at the end there. Had an awesome race car all day long and did what we had to do to put ourselves into position to win our first time here at Martinsville, our first short track. Honestly just proud of my team, proud of all our guys. This is the kind of day we had to come here and have. I really wanted to win that race and feel like we definitely deserved it. We raced him (Joey Logano) all clean. We passed him clean all day long and just out ran him in the long run. I pretty much had the feeling going to the backstretch that that was going to happen and there was nothing I could do about it. It sucks, but that’s the way it goes. I can promise you I won’t forget what he did.”
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M’s Halloween Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 4th
What more did you need out of the 18?
“We just weren’t turning the center, you know. We tried to do everything we could to get it to rotate to the center of the corner and get the drive off and every time we tried to help the drive off, we just made it tighter and then we tried to come back on that adjustment and then we just made it looser on exit. It’s like nothing we did was helping us. We went one way on our adjustments, which took us backwards, we went another backwards on adjustments which took us backwards, so it was just a matter of we had what we had. I thought the M&M’s Camry was faster than that, better than that yesterday in practice and stuff. We made improvements to it for qualifying, but it just didn’t hold serve when the rubber was going down and so that’s kind of where we just missed it today.”
Talk about the closing laps with every spot being intensely fought.
“I think that hopefully it was covered well. Everybody – there was a battle for the lead, battle for second, battle for fifth, fourth, third and everywhere. We fought hard for what we had. We were racing (Martin) Truex there obviously. I saw the front two kind of get at it. It wouldn’t surprise me that teammates wreck each other, so we were hoping that that would happen so we could get up there and have a shot to race for the win, so I kind of held Truex a little bit up more than maybe I should have.”
How much did the track change and force the chassis to change?
“We made adjustments to our race car all day long and I’m not sure one of them was right. I don’t know what else we could have done. We tried going one way and then coming back the other and it was like neither, nothing was ever really helping us so we were just kind of stuck with what we had most of the day. We made a big change there the start of the third stage and that absolutely made us horrible, but somehow we were able to rebound so I think we finished better than we should have. We certainly wanted to get more out of here and wish we could have won.”
