JOE GIBBS RACING SHOWS STRENGTH IN LAS VEGAS
All four JGR Camrys finish inside the top-eight
LAS VEGAS (March 7, 2021) – Kyle Busch (third), Denny Hamlin (fourth), Martin Truex Jr. (sixth) and Christopher Bell (seventh) all drove to top-10 finishes in their Toyota Camrys in the Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon.
Toyota Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Cup Series (NCS)
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Race 4 of 36 – 400.5 miles, 267 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Kyle Larson*
2nd, Brad Keselowski*
3rd, KYLE BUSCH
4th, DENNY HAMLIN
5th, Ryan Blaney*
6th, MARTIN TRUEX JR.
7th, CHRISTOPHER BELL
28th, BUBBA WALLACE
36th, TIMMY HILL
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Ethel M Chocolates Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 3rd
What were you able to learn about your mile-and-a-half program today?
“We fought hard obviously. We were a little behind the eight ball at the start of the green flag and just were super, super tight all day long. Ben (Beshore, crew chief) and the guys made awesome adjustments to and I was trying to give the best feedback I can to give them good information that they can base that off of and make the good adjustments. We improved each time. I don’t know where we missed it so far from the simulator, but that’s two weeks in a row where we’re not apples to apples. Just can’t say enough about Ethel M Chocolates, thank you guys. It’s a pleasure to have them on board here for the first time ever in anything. I remember being there as a kid, a little bit anyways, I was five so it’s a little shady. Certainly, my grandmother is smiling from above so it was really special to have that on our Camry today and say thanks to Interstate Batteries, Rowdy Energy. Ready to keep working on it and keep improving. We were just a little off on pace, overall pace, overall lap time from the fast guys.”
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Ground Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 4th
How would you like to move forward on the mile-and-a-half program after today’s race?
“We’re close. We just have to fine tune it. We’re gathering up information right now to figure out how we can make our FedEx Camry better in the fall. This is a good start.”
Fourth-place run for Denny Hamlin here at Vegas. How was your run?
“We got it in the short rounds but not enough long run speed. I thought it was a great start for the FedEx Camry team, gathering data trying to figure out what we can do to be better when we come back here when it really counts. Overall, good start. We will see, gather all the data and I will figure out this week what we have to do.”
MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 6th
How was your race today?
“Overall, pretty solid day all in all for the Bass Pro Shops Camry. Ran top-five or 10 pretty much all day long. Just never could quite get the balance perfect over the short and the long run. There were a few times where we were probably a third or fourth-place car at best and then towards the end, feeling pretty good. We were running fourth there after the last pit stop and then lost the balance again on the last run and dropped to sixth. Not a perfect day by any means, but decent speed and good execution and good adjustments all day for the most part. Just didn’t quite have enough to be better than we were.”
How much improvement did you feel in this race for JGR overall and what does this say about the intermediate program moving forward?
“These tracks are really tough, it’s a real big guessing game on what cars to bring and what kind of approach to take. You kind of get guessing on a lot of different things – the weather, the wind and all this kind of stuff. Overall, I think our cars were decent. We definitely have to find some more speed to run with some of those guys. I would say for us, we were probably a little bit off from where we were last weekend. Definitely some stuff to build on for all of us across the board. We’ll obviously talk about it all and figure out what we need to do to be better.”
CHRISTOPHER BELL, No. 20 Craftsman Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 7th
Solid top-10 finish. How was your race today?
“It was definitely a good week to build on. I’m really happy with the turn around from last week at Homestead, another mile-and-a-half. We were significantly better this time. It’s something to build on for sure. I felt like my Craftsman Camry drove really well. We just need to dial a little bit of speed in it.”
How much improvement did you see at Vegas from your first run there in a Cup car?
“I just feel like our cars are a lot better than last year, whenever we went there, our company was just a little bit off going to Vegas and it showed. We were a lot more competitive today.”
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