NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
GEICO 500
TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE DRIVER PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
MAY 1, 2016
AUSTIN DILLON LEADS TEAM CHEVY WITH THIRD-PLACE FINISH AT TALLADEGA
Caution Filled Race Ends with Six Chevrolet SS Drivers in Top 10
TALLADEGA, Al. (May 1, 2016) – Austin Dillon guided the iconic No. 3 Dow – Energy & Water/Intellifresh Chevrolet SS to give Team Chevy a third-place finish in a crash-laden GEICO 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway, the 10th round in the 2016 season. The third place finish did not come easy. Dillon was involved a multi-car accident on lap 97, but the No. 3 team never gave up and made 16 trips to pit road to fix crash damage. In the waning laps, the 26-year-old driver used the draft to inch his way closer to the lead spot and gave his team a shot at the victory. Dillon led the parade of six Chevrolet SS drivers to a 3-4-5-6-7-8 finish.
Jamie McMurray, No. 1 McDonald’s Chevrolet SS, earned his best finish of the season by taking the checkered flag in fourth place. He was followed by Rookie of the Year contender and GEICO 500 pole sitter, Chase Elliott, who led the 188-lap contest three times for 27 laps; the most he has led in a single Cup Series race thus far in his young Cup Series career.
Ty Dillon, subbing for the injured Tony Stewart, brought the No. 14 Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet SS home in sixth-place. Dillon took over the driving duties for Stewart under the first caution period on lap 51.
Clint Bowyer drove the No. 15 Accudoc Solutions Chevrolet SS to a seventh-place position, his best finish of the year so far. Kurt Busch, No. 41 Monster Energy Chevrolet SS rounded out the Chevy power in the top 10 by recording an eighth-place finish.
Brad Keselowski (Ford) was the race winner and Kyle Busch (Toyota) was second in the top five finishers.
Next weekend the series heads to Kansas Speedway for 267-laps under the lights on Saturday May 7.
POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 DOW ENERGY & WATER/INTELLIFRESH CHEVROLET SS – Finished 3rd
THE MODERATOR: We’re joined by our third‑place finisher, Austin Dillon. Austin, talk to us a little bit about your run out there today.
AUSTIN DILLON: Well, there was a little bit of everything. It started out pretty good, running up front, moving around, chasing guys. Man, we had a fast car.
We got in that early wreck, when we were four‑wide there with Jamie. Didn’t work out.
So I’m just proud of my guys. Their shirts are probably working perfect today. Intellifresh is supposed to keep you smelling good and they worked their butts off. They had 15 stops. I’m sure that Intellifresh is still smelling fresh on those guys. They had 15 stops. They fixed the damage, never panicked.
That’s something we struggled with this year, kind of panicking when something goes wrong. We’ve been meeting about it the last couple weeks. We can’t lose our minds because sometimes it’s just not your day.
When you think back, halfway through this race, you’re not thinking it’s your day. All of a sudden when it comes down to it, we kept our minds in it, kept working on the car, came home with a third‑place finish.
Amazing to be part of a group of guys that work their tails off for me. I’m so proud of them. Man, fun day.
THE MODERATOR: We’ll take questions for Austin.
Q. It could be argued that some bullets were dodged today with cars flying around everywhere. We have roof flaps and other things. Is there anything else that can keep these cars down that should be tried?
AUSTIN DILLON: I’ve been asked a couple times already what I think they should do. I’m not an aero guy. But I know with the smart people we have in NASCAR, all the companies, that we can probably do something to figure it out. We need to.
I went flying last year at Daytona, and that’s not fun. For guys that haven’t done it, it’s just not a fun thing to be a part of. I don’t know how to fix it personally. I know NASCAR will put their efforts towards fixing it. I know they will. They’ve made the car safer. That’s the reason why we’re walking away from these crashes. I think as a group, all of us want it to be where we’re not leaving the ground.
We’ll get some smart people on it. I have total faith in NASCAR that they’ll do their job and work on that. But, man, wild day.
Q. You mentioned you’ve been in wrecks like this. Are you able to enjoy your third‑place finish or are you glad it’s over with?
AUSTIN DILLON: Truthfully I don’t know everything that happened yet, so I am really excited about my third‑place finish because I know what our team went through today.
I did see a video of Allmendinger getting out, and looked pretty shook up. I hope everybody is all right from all these crashes. I haven’t got a chance to look at all of them. I pray they’re all all right.
I think we’ll make some adjustments moving forward, like I said, to hopefully even safen [sic] up even more. For me, I’m proud of our team. If you guys can see the car, if you go look at it, you would never expect it to get to third. I actually think with it being so draggy and beat up, the 1 car hooked to us at the end and he just pushed me all the way through three and four, gave me a heck of a run.
Once I left that air, thought, there wasn’t much I was going to be able to do once that happened. It was my one shot off of Turn 4, I tried it. It was fun to be up front there at the end.
Q. You said it was wild and fun. There were two cars that were upside down at times today. How can it be both wild and fun?
AUSTIN DILLON: I’ve been on the wild side, if you remember my wreck last year. I know what it is. Today it didn’t happen to me.
For us, fun was just watching my team work in the pits. I had guys climbing on the hood, beating the hood down. I had guys putting screws everywhere in the car to keep it together. It worked out for us.
I agree, I don’t like those wrecks. I mean, I promise you, I have to put myself in a situation I don’t want to be in to get into a good situation. You have to put yourself in bad situations that you wouldn’t normally do to figure out how to get to the front.
That’s where it all comes from. I don’t know personally how to fix it. The only thing I can do is I know they’ve got new innovations they want to do to the cars to make them safer, like the foot box they’ve been working on.
As far as aero‑wise, if we need to put something on the back of the car to keep them on the ground, I’m all for it. I’m all four keeping all four tires on the ground.
Hopefully we can have a solution by July. I think a lot of drivers will be, I guess, a lot more feeling better about it when we get there, if we can do something to keep the tires on the ground.
You’ll have guys liking speedway racing more than we do. We all have to do it. I don’t know how many really love it. But I know our moms and wives and girlfriends, they don’t like it because they got to watch their loved ones put themselves in situations they don’t like.
It’s part of the game, speedway racing, always has been. Hopefully we can figure something out to help keep them on the ground.
Q. Is it fun if you don’t wreck?
AUSTIN DILLON: If I don’t wreck? Yeah. I thank the Lord every time I don’t wreck. If it’s fun that I don’t wreck? I made it through it. I’m thankful really. Fun, like I said, was watching the guys put the work in on a damaged car.
We started 17th with three laps to go and finished third. So from 17th to third, that was pretty cool. One guy came up to me in the suite, said Dale’s last win here, he came from 15th to first. Maybe if we started 15th, we could have got there.
Q. Is it ever galling for a driver that the amount and the spectacular nature of some of these crashes is part of the entertainment value for some fans?
AUSTIN DILLON: I try not to think of it that way. I’ve grown up in racing, watched a lot of bad crashes. I don’t think they’re true fans if they like the excitement. I think it’s more of a, you know, person that doesn’t really know what goes on.
We don’t like to be a part of crashes. It’s not what our job is, is to crash. Our job is to compete and have fun out there and put on a show.
Putting on a show, in that crashes happen. I don’t think of it that way. I think people, if they’re cheering for crashes, man, it’s not a good thing.
THE MODERATOR: Austin, thanks, congratulations on the run today.
AUSTIN DILLON: Thanks, guys.
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