NASCAR CUP SERIES
DOVER MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES
JULY 19, 2025
With precipitation forcing the cancellation of the NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying session at Dover Motor Speedway, the starting lineup for tomorrow’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 will be set by the rulebook, putting Chase Elliott and the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet team on the pole.
Media Availability Quotes:
Chase, what does starting on the front row mean for you and the team?
“It’s definitely a different pole than normal. Saturday has definitely not been a strong suit, so we had to blaze a little different trail to get a pole. At the end of the day, it’s a testament of hard work throughout the year and a good stretch of races, right? It earns you the metric that puts you in a position if it were to rain.
It’s a little different vibe, but we’ll take it. We’ll try to take advantage of that first pit stall tomorrow. It’s always a big deal. It’s not something we have a whole bunch, so we’d like to get in the habit of getting that more often. Hopefully, we’ll have a good day.”
Obviously a new tire for this weekend. What’s the feeling of not having any laps from that tire before the green flag?
“At the moment, I don’t really know because I haven’t spent any time on it.
I think all we can really do at this point is just try and dissect any similarities that the tire this weekend might have to a change that we’ve maybe already seen throughout the year. Really just make your best guess off of the information that you have in front of you with that. I feel like that stuff is always a little bit of an educated guess when you’re coming to these places for the first time.
Hopefully, we hit that right and can have a good day and get going. I’m sure the track being fresh like it is right now and the Xfinity drivers fixing to go run — I’m not sure if we’re expecting any more rain overnight or not, but hopefully there’ll be some rubber down before we start tomorrow. I think that would certainly help concerns as the race gets going, but we’ll see. Last year, we were cording tires within just a handful of laps in practice. It could be an interesting day. We’ll find out.”
Do you feel maybe like the guinea pig being on the pole without practicing qualifying with this? Not to the extreme of the Bristol fiasco where everybody was losing tires so quickly, but do you feel like you’re sort of like it’s a lab rat waiting to feel the green with this? How does the debriefing conversations take place when you’re on the pole like this?
“We didn’t get on track, so I don’t really know that we have anything to debrief, honestly, unless we want to talk about our travel getting up here (laughs). But outside of that, I don’t really think we had a whole bunch going on. I don’t really know other than I just was talking about maybe thinking back to some other races that we’ve had a similar tire; try and take an educated guess on something that we’ve already seen or hope pieces of the puzzle are looking at us somewhere that we can try and pick apart. But outside that, I do feel like it is a little bit of a risk kind of being out front. If you are able to get through one and two well and get clear when you have clean air like that, you’re kind of in the best position to make the most lap time, right? And a lot of times when you’re running fast on a green track on a fresh tire, that typically can lead to issues. So we’ll just have to see… see what this race is like today and how much rubber is left over before we start tomorrow. Kind of eyeball that before we start the race and find a silver lining in there somewhere. Hopefully I’ll be the first one back around to the rubber when everybody gets done running through it one time, so we’ll look at it that way.”
Here at Dover, you’ve had 14 starts and 10 of those you’ve had top-fives. What is it about this place that you like so much? And what is it about this track that you just tend to find that piece of consistency from start to finish in races?
“Yeah, that’s been a popular question throughout the day. I honestly don’t know why the track has suited me throughout my career. Kind of right from the rip, I enjoy coming up here. I ran a truck race here early on in my career, and a few Xfinity races when we raced up here twice a year at that time. So yeah, all those races were just enjoyable. The track is challenging. It’s one of those places that can certainly reach out and get you if you don’t watch it. I’ve always just tried to respect this place as best as I know how and hope that it shows me some respect back, and that’s kind of always been my approach.”
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but 24 straight races here, the pol sitter hasn’t gone on to win. I’m just wondering, does that give you any expectations?
“Thanks a lot… I really appreciate that (laughs).
I mean, no. I guess just hope it’s not 25. That’s about all I can do right now. We’ll try to try to break the streak.
We obviously haven’t put rubber down here since spring of last year, and with the rain and stuff now, are you worried that these conditions are going to make the track a lot different from what you’re used to and kind of shake out your groove?
“I mean, it’s certainly a concern, I think, as you start the race. When you just have unknowns with the tire, I think kind of to expand on some of the earlier questions — yes, I think that there’s definitely an element of concern and just the fact that you don’t have those answers, right? And I think as a race team, you always want to try to have all the answers you can get in front of you before you start the race.
Unfortunately, this is just a circumstance where we’re just simply not going to have that before tomorrow. So it’ll be a little bit of a trial-and-error run throughout the race, and hopefully the error is not too large that we can’t overcome if there is one. Be smart, take advantage of that first pit stall, try to go to work and put together a full race.”
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