NASCAR CUP SERIES
VERIZON 200 AT THE BRICKYARD
INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY RACE NOTES & QUOTES
AUGUST 15, 2021
TOP TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
1st AJ ALLMENDINGER, NO. 16 HYPERICE CAMARO ZL1 1LE
3rd KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM CAMARO ZL1 1LE
4th CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 HOOTERS CAMARO ZL1 1LE
6th KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 MONSTER ENERGY CAMARO ZL1 1LE
7th ERIK JONES, NO. 43 PETTY’S GARAGE CAMARO ZL1 1LE
TOP FIVE UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
1st AJ Allmendinger (Chevrolet)
2nd Ryan Blaney (Ford
3rd Kyle Larson (Chevrolet)
4th Chase Elliott (Chevrolet)
5th Matt DiBenedetto (Ford)
The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series continues with the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway on Sunday, August 22. NBCSN will telecast the event at 3pm ET. Live coverage can also be found on MRN and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
TEAM CHEVY NOTES AND QUOTES:
AJ ALLMINDINGER, NO. 16 HYPERICE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Race Winner:
Q. When you think about what this moment means for AJ Allmendinger, he’s going to take a moment to soak it in. An open wheel driver for much of his career, he came here, almost won the Indy 500 for Roger Penske. That fell short, but today he finally gets his Brickyard win. Probably had no idea it would come in a Cup race on the road course, but he’ll take it. The fans know his history with open wheel at this racetrack, and I would argue knowing AJ there’s no racetrack that means more to him than this one. AJ, could there be a more significant place for you to get a win?
A.J. ALLMENDINGER: No. Oh, my gosh, I was so mad yesterday. I wanted to win so bad. I mean, this is unbelievable. In my wildest dreams I could never imagine the way that just played out.
Matt Kaulig, I don’t even know what he’s doing right now. He can’t — he’s almost in tears. Chris Rice, the Hyperice Chevy was so good. We had to fight hard. Robin Miller, I saw him this morning, this one is for you, baby. We love you, Robin, everything that you do. In memory of Bob Jenkins. Baby, I love you so much. Mom and Dad, all my friends and family, oh, my God. We just won at Indy.
Hey, Shank, I just wanted to be like you, baby. I just wanted to be like you.
Q. His good friend Michael Shank won the Indy 500 this year with Helio Castroneves. Is there a way to describe the chaotic race that was today?
A.J. ALLMENDINGER: No, I mean, it was survival of the fittest. We probably had like an eighth-, tenth-place car, sped on pit road. I thought we were going to finish 12th to 15th, and then those restarts were just insane. It’s great when you have a car owner that just says, Go get me trophies. He doesn’t care if that thing is torn up. Chevy, ECR horsepower, RCR, everybody that allows us to do that, all of our sponsors on the Xfinity side of it, we just won at Indy. What’s up! Thank you everybody for coming out. Let’s go!
KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 3rd
Q. How would you begin to describe the racing today, Kyle?
KYLE LARSON: It was wild there at the end. My car was extremely good. Really proud of everybody on our Hendrickcars.com team. We had the best car for sure throughout the second and third stage, and then just we had the caution there with like 10 to go or something and then we had to come down, put tires on, and some guys gambled and stayed out, and that kind of just got us in the mess a little bit. Was able to find my way to the front row and then just got shoved around and put in the grass. Kind of ended my shot to win there.
But able to salvage a third, so happy about that, and a good points day.
Q. How different was the track once they pulled those curbs out of 5 and 6?
KYLE LARSON: I don’t know, we didn’t really get enough time. We were kind of all battling there, and the track was really dirty at that point, too.
Yeah, the curbs, I feel like we need the curb there, but I don’t know if they can just make it out of concrete or something just because that leading edge of the lip seems to pull up and destroy race cars. I’m sure they’ll figure it out for next time.
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 HOOTERS CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 4th
THAT WAS A CRAZY FINISH. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE DAY?
“It was a wild day, but I finished fourth. It could have been worse.”
KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 MONSTER ENERGY CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 6th
“I swear I saw a hole on the outside down the front straightaway to go to the outside of (Kyle) Larson, who blocked us a little bit. We rubbed the fence and got a little hole here but had a shot on the front row with old tires. We did all we could to battle. I put us in a hole by flat-spotting a right front early in the race with the Monster Energy Chevy. But the track has so many slow areas, there’s so much time for trouble. But all in all, we’ll take this. It’s a 6th place finish. We had a couple shots at winning but we were really just trying to navigate the day after we were one set of tires less after I made a mistake early on. But, thanks to my guys, we’ll keep digging and learn from this and find what we need to do better on some of these right-handers.”
ERIK JONES, NO. 43 PETTY’S GARAGE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 7th
“It was a major day of attrition for us in the Petty’s Garage Chevy. We didn’t really have the car we needed but kind of stuck with it all day and things played out for us, and guys were getting into wrecks and into trouble and making a lot of crazy moves. We just stuck through it and stayed on the straight and narrow and kept our car fairly clean and came home with a 7th. We’ll take a Top 10 any day and hopefully it’ll be a good stretch for us coming up with some good tracks for me and some good tracks for Richard Petty Motorsports and keep this string of good runs going.”
TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 BETMGM CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 21st
“We had a fast No. 8 BetMGM Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE this weekend, just ended up needing a little more luck. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course is a lot of fun, really flat and tricky at first. I really started to get the hang of it during the race and was able to attack more and more during the turns as the race went on. It’s great that we were able to capture two Stage wins during today’s race. That will help with our Playoff situation and hopefully gained us some points to close the gap on the No. 4 car. I’m disappointed we got that damage in the closing laps of the race, since killed the momentum we had after a great pit stop and cost us a shot at a top-10 finish. The positive is that we were one of the teams able to continue on to the end. Every single point matters, and I know this team will continue to fight as the Playoffs approach.”
ROSS CHASTAIN, NO. 42 CLOVER CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 29th
“I have no words. That’s one of the craziest races I’ve been in. It ripped the paint off one of those times the curbs came up and started losing oil at the end, so I pulled off. I don’t know. But we were okay. We were pretty fast. The Clover Chevy was okay. We were probably a 10th place car and yeah, on to Michigan.”
WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 AXALTA CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Sidelined in multi-car accident on Lap 77 – Finished 33rd
“It was so weird. I’ve never had that experience. Like, I come through that corner the same every single lap. We were running fourth there behind (Kyle) Larson, and he gets over the curb in the same spot and something, like after he hit with his right rear, it like peeled up. And as soon as I got there I hit something and it just threw me completely off line. It tore the front end right off of it. Yeah, I wasn’t offline at all. I was actually safe because I saw what happened to him and it looked like he jumped in the air with his right rear. And so I was like, man, let me try to get a little bit further left and I obviously nailed something that came up off the track. Just a bummer. This Axalta Chevrolet was really fast. We weren’t as fast as the No. 5 car (Kyle Larson), but we were a second-place car and made a couple of mistakes early that cost me some track position that we got back. I think we were poised to finish in the Top 5 there. It’s definitely a bummer.”
DANIEL SUAREZ, NO. 99 COMMSCOPE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Sidelined in multi-car accident on Lap 77 – Finished 37th
“Somebody wrecked the lap before. I didn’t know who it was. But the lap before, I went through fine. I was on my line. I was making sure I was on the right line because I wanted to keep that car on the right side. I was on the regular race track and I hit something almost like the curb was on the race track. I have no idea. I haven’t seen the replay really, I just know that the curb came apart.”
So, in your opinion, you were on the safe part of the race track and whatever you hit came apart on the race track? “Yes.”
Team Chevy high-resolution racing photos are available for editorial use.
About Chevrolet
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