NASCAR CUP SERIES
POCONO ORGANICS CBD 325
POCONO RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY POST-RACE NOTES & QUOTES
JUNE 26, 2021
TOP TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
1st ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1 1LE
3rd WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 AXALTA COLOR OF THE YEAR CAMARO ZL1 1LE
6th KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 MONSTER ENERGY CAMARO ZL1 1LE
9th KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM CAMARO ZL1 1LE
11th TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 KALAHARI RESORTS & CONVENTIONS CAMARO ZL1 1LE
TOP FIVE UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
1st Alex Bowman (Chevrolet)
2nd Kyle Busch (Toyota)
3rd William Byron (Chevrolet)
4th Denny Hamlin (Toyota)
5th Ryan Blaney (Ford)
The NASCAR Cup Series doubleheader race weekend at Pocono Raceway continues with the Explore the Pocono Mountains 350 tomorrow, June 27, at 3:30 p.m. ET. Live coverage can be found on NBCSN, the NBCSports Gold App, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
TEAM CHEVY POST-RACE NOTES AND QUOTES:
ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Race Winner
ALEX, WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION WHEN YOU SAW THE 5 GOING INTO THE WALL?
“Yeah, I hate to win one that way, but hell, yeah, I’ll take it.”
“Super proud of this Ally 48 team. Man, we kind of gave the lead away. Were on two tires, just got super tight. Tried to hold him off as long as I could. Can’t say enough about everybody at Team Hendrick right now, body shop, engine shop, chassis shop. Top to bottom, everybody is putting race cars on the racetrack.”
“Greg (Ives, Crew Chief) and all the guys did a really good job. We didn’t run that good all day, so I’m kind of in shock. I don’t know what to say to you guys. Hell, yeah, so cool to see all the fans out here. Always like to come to PA. It’s a cool place day, beautiful weather, great day for a race. Heck, yeah, I’ll take it.”
YOU APOLOGIZED TO YOUR GUYS. FOR ONCE, YOU HAD THE LUCK ON YOUR SIDE.
“Yeah, I don’t know what to think about that. “Bad Luck Bowman” had some luck there (smiling).
No, I mean, the 5 beat us. Their misfortune, it happens. That’s part of the sport. I’ll take it.”
YOU MENTIONED THESE FANS. HOW ABOUT WINNING IN FRONT OF THESE POCONO FANS?
“Cool. The place is packed. I went for a run in the infield. Typical Pocono, everybody called me William Byron (laughter).”
“Just enjoy it. So cool to see all the fans out, a bunch of fist pumps, high fives, running through the campground. I’m sure my trainer is going to make me run in the morning. So I’ll probably see some of you guys in the campground in the morning.”
WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 AXALTA COLOR OF THE YEAR CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 3rd
YOU GAINED THE MOST POINTS OF THE DAY. YOU SAID YOU WERE TOO TIGHT. WAS THAT ALL DAY OR AT THE END?
“The things we thought coming here, we wanted to be a little snug. So, we just kind of gained tight center off and it was hard to make the straightaways long with that, especially with the PJ1. It seems to make your car tighter. So, our Axalta Chevy was good, especially at the beginning; a little bit on the splitter. But we had the lead there and lost it. Just wasn’t quite able to pass the top two guys, I should say. So, it’s just part of it. Luckily, we get a chance to work on those things. It’s the first time for Rudy (Fugle, crew chief) and I here. It was a good run for us. We finished third and we’ll try to go win tomorrow.”
KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 9th
WE SAW YOU TAKE A MANDATORY RIDE OVER HERE, KYLE. ULTIMATELY NINTH. THAT DOES NOT TELL THE STORY OF THE DAY.
“I guess disbelief still. I don’t know, a little bit laughable just because I can’t believe it.”
“Hate that we didn’t get another win. Would have been cool to win five in a row. Just wasn’t meant to be I guess today. Yeah, I felt something like right in the middle of the tunnel. Wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. It finally kind of shredded halfway through the short chute there. Couldn’t turn.”
“Hate that we didn’t get the win. Cool that Alex still did, a Hendrick car with another win. Cool to keep Mr. H’s streak going. Yeah, hate we didn’t get HendrickCars.com into Victory Lane, but we’ll try to start another streak tomorrow.”
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE ALL THE MOVES YOU HAD TO TRY ON HIM, ULTIMATELY GETTING HIM? DO YOU THINK THEY ABUSED THE TIRE AT ALL?
“No, I mean, I don’t think there were any tire issues all day. I must have just ran something over, I guess. I was having to work really hard to get by him. I was honestly happy to see him get to the lead because I had pulled away from him so much, that run up before the caution. But then he was really fast out front. Just fast enough I could never get to his inside. He was running low enough, I was a little bit choked down.”
“He was starting to get really tight through one. I was able to kind of use that to my advantage, fake him low a little bit, mess his angle up, get him tighter off of one. Was finally able to get by him. Thought we were going to get the win, but we didn’t.”
HOW ANXIOUS ARE YOU TO RE-CRANK THE HEATER AND GET THAT GOING FOR TOMORROW AFTERNOON?
“I guess that’s one thing that’s probably keeping me excited and not depressed, is that we get to go back again tomorrow. I’m sure our backup car will be just as good as that one. Feel like we learned a lot about our car today. The track came to us a lot. I think we should be good tomorrow.”
KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 MONSTER ENERGY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 6th
“I thought it was a solid day. It was one of those days where we stuck to our strategy. We were going to pit twice; use that track position from our finish last week at Nashville (Superspeedway). That helped us stay up front; helped us stay in rhythm. I battled every lap with loose conditions. The car wanted to just keep getting loose with the rear. We just had to stay out. We just didn’t want to sacrifice our track position. Good calls by Matt McCall (crew chief) – utilized the speed of the track and the car together to keep that track position and to have a solid points day.”
“We won a stage; we were up front. But we have to find a little more pizazz – get that rear stuck and that way I can be more on offense on restarts. Solid day for the No. 1 Monster Energy Chevy.”
TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 KALAHARI RESORTS & CONVENTIONS CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 11th
“My No. 8 Kalahari Resorts and Conventions team did a great job today coming up with a strategy that helped get us a good finish for the first race of the Pocono Raceway doubleheader weekend. I fired off a bit too tight, but we were able to make the right adjustments to loosen up our car closer to where it needed to be throughout the race. Dirty air definitely played a huge role in handling today. It was like a light switch sometimes when the car would snap from loose to tight, so that’s good to be aware of for tomorrow’s race, especially with how hard it was to pass today. We still need to do some work to figure out how to get over the bumps better since that was my other big issue today. But overall, my team did a good job figuring out a pit strategy that got us up into a good spot when it mattered at the end. I’m looking forward to getting another shot at this track tomorrow and seeing how much better we can make our Kalahari Resorts and Conventions Chevy.”
DANIEL SUAREZ, NO. 99 COMMSCOPE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 13th
“It was OK. I feel like the car was fast.”
“It’s a gamble. You have to gamble and you have to stick with it; and unfortunately, it didn’t work out for us today, but hopefully it does tomorrow. We had, what I felt like, a top-10 car, sometimes even a top-five. We ended up 13th. We have to make a couple of adjustments to be a little bit better for tomorrow.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 WORKRISE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 21st
“Workrise is for the people who get hard work done, and that’s definitely what the 3 Workrise Chevrolet team did today at Pocono Raceway. We battled with a tight-handling condition for most of the race, but Justin Alexander and the team never gave up. The pit crew was fast all day today as well. We earned Stage points at the end of Stage 1, then got caught with a caution after a pit stop and lost some track position. The whole time, our team used pit stops to make chassis adjustments to our Chevy. By the final Stage, our handling was okay everywhere except for Turn 1, where we were plowing on exit. It was a chore to earn track position, especially after we were issued a penalty for speeding on pit road during a green-flag stop. I’m glad that this weekend is a double-header and we have another shot at getting Workrise a win on Sunday. We’ll go back to the drawing board for tomorrow.”
Team Chevy high-resolution racing photos are available for editorial use.
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