BURTON AND JONES CAPTURE TOP-10s AT TEXAS
Kyle Busch’s Win Disqualified After Failing Post-Race Inspection
FORT WORTH, Texas (July 18, 2020) – Harrison Burton (fourth) and Brandon Jones (seventh) claimed top-10 finishes in Saturday afternoon’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. Kyle Busch crossed the finish line first in the event, but was disqualified by NASCAR after failing height in post-race inspection.
Toyota Racing Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS)
Texas Motor Speedway
Race 16 of 33 – 300 miles, 200 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Austin Cindric*
2nd, Chase Briscoe*
3rd, Justin Allgaier *
4th, HARRISON BURTON*
5th, Michael Annett*
7th, BRANDON JONES
17th, TIMMY HILL
18th, STEFAN PARSONS
24th, CHAD FINCHUM
35th, STEPHEN LEICHT
36th, RILEY HERBST
37th, KYLE BUSCH
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
HARRISON BURTON, No. 20 DEX Imaging Toyota Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 4th
Talk about your day and bringing home a fifth-place finish?
“It was tough, it’s definitely a single lane race track again, which made it tough on the restarts and things like that. But we were really fast and I was proud of that. I think our team has taken the right steps, the results haven’t shown it the past few weeks, but it’s been going better and better. We fire off faster and we were probably the second-best car to Kyle (Busch) today and our results didn’t show it. We were right there with Kyle and felt like we had a shot at them at the end if we had a good restart. Just a tough day, but really, really proud of our guys, we were down our crew chief Ben (Beshore, crew chief) but we still trudged on through and made it happen. That was good for our team to get a little momentum going and move on to Kansas.”
How did it feel to have a strong run after the past few races?
“It felt good to finally have another good run. It’s not that we haven’t been capable of it. It’s just mistakes I’ve made and things that happen that take us out of the race and mistakes that we’ve made as a team, I feel like we’ve kind of learned from all of those and we’re starting to clean it up and hopefully go on another little run here and win some more races. I’m really excited, I think our whole organization has got speed, just need to put it together more often.”
How was it dealing with the heat in Texas today?
The heat was not as bad as I expected it to be, honestly. Which I was happy about. It was definitely warm in there and it was hard day’s of work for sure, but I feel like we’ve been racing really hot races recently — Homestead, double header in the heat. I think all of our workouts at TPC (Toyota Performance Center) in the heat room are helping us out. So normally, I’m not too too worried about it, because I feel really well prepared for it. This weekend was a really good test being it was 95-degrees or whatever it was and I felt in good shape by the end.”
BRANDON JONES, No. 19 Menards/Bali Toyota Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 7th
How was your race overall today?
“It started off honestly pretty good, pretty upbeat and I thought the car was really good. I was a little bit tight kind of in traffic and by myself, but nothing crazy. The longer the day went, the worse we got in traffic, the looser we kept getting to fire off. Track position didn’t even matter for me there kind of in the middle of the race. (We) had that green-flag stop and that was the turnaround for us I thought. We eventually got away from everybody and once we did that, we were running times fastest of the race. There was speed in the car, we just missed it in traffic for whatever reason. It was good to get back in a rhythm, good to get back finishing races in the top-10. I think all in all was a pretty positive day.
With a top-10 today, does it feel like things are swinging back in the right direction after the past several weeks?
“That was probably the highlight of the day, I know coming in that’s what we needed to do. We just needed to not do anything too crazy and get back to finishing races. Cause that’s how we learn, that’s how we get better is making all the laps and then we can dissect the car a little bit better and make it better. All that stuff leads to finishing better in these races.”
RILEY HERBST, No. 18 Monster Energy Toyota Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 36th
What happened between yourself and Noah Gragson that ended your race?
“Yeah, it really sucks honestly. I hate it for my guys we were just learning the track here at Texas, first time at this speedway and got absolutely drove through by the 9 (Noah Gragson) car. Just a little bit of lack of respect. So it’s a real big bummer because we came off two really strong runs at Kentucky and thought we could follow it up here at Texas with another strong run, and we get used up on lap five. So it’s a shame.”
Can you explain the situation between yourself and Noah Gragson?
“Honestly sucks, I hate it for guys at Joe Gibbs Racing. I think it was lap four or five, just kind of learning the racetrack here. First time for me at Texas Motor Speedway and the 9 (Noah Gragson) car decided to run through us, so a real shame and I hate it my guys, Monster Energy everybody. But he’s got a lot more to lose than I do, so we’ll see what happens.”
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