Sheldon Creed and the No. 2 Whelen Chevrolet Team Show Long-Run Speed at Auto Club Speedway Before Late-Race Incident
Finish: 32nd
Start: 8th
Points: 16th
“The No. 2 Whelen Chevrolet was bad fast today at Auto Club Speedway. We started the race with a loose-handling machine, but we knew we would be good if we could get the handling right. Crew chief Jeff Stankiewicz and all of the guys never gave up. They did a great job making adjustments all race long, and our pit crew had fast stops today, too. By the time we got to Stage 3, our Whelen Chevrolet really came to life. We fired off fast on a restart with 74 laps remaining, and that allowed us to work our way into the top 10. I felt like our car was definitely best up high against the wall. Everywhere else our Chevy was sideways. Our biggest issue was that we weren’t great on the short run. It took a good 10, 15 or 20 laps to get going and then once it got going it was really fast, but then you’re in traffic. So those late-race restarts really didn’t help us much. Unfortunately, we had a lot of those. It just wasn’t our day, because another car hammered us during one of the restarts and we ended up with major right-side damage that ended our day. The unfortunate thing is we now have to pull another car out, and we didn’t want to do that. I certainly didn’t want to make it harder on our guys. I’m learning a lot about how these NASCAR Xfinity Series cars race and what their limits are, and it can be so frustrating at times but it’s been fun to race with all of the support of RCR and ECR. We have speed. We just need to get a little short-run speed and I think we’ll be strong. Our Whelen team will bounce back next week and hopefully we’ll have speed with our backup.” -Sheldon Creed
Austin Hill and the No. 21 Bennett Transportation & Logistics Chevrolet Team Showcase Never-Give-Up Attitude Following Early Race Incident at Auto Club Speedway
Finish: 27th
Start: 9th
Points: 11th
“We thought we were going to have a pretty good Bennett Transportation and Logistics Chevrolet today. Our car was good, even with the damage that we had throughout the day from another car deciding to stuff us into the wall on lap two of the race. We had to pit for repairs and ended up four laps down. I thought that we could still run up there and run within the top-12, and who knows we easily could have had a top-10 out of the day if we could have ever gotten back on the lead lap. Finishing 27th is not ideal or what we expected, but we never gave up and that just shows the whole fight this No. 21 team has. We never quit, so I can’t thank my crew chief, Andy Street, and all of the guys enough for everything they did. We’ll get them next week.” – Austin Hill
