MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
OVERTON’S 301
NEW HAMPSHIRE MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE NOTES AND QUOTES
JULY 16, 2017
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS – Finished 2nd
IS IT BEGINNING TO GET FRUSTRATING HAVING TO WORK FROM THE BACK TO THE FRONT ONLY TO NOT BE ABLE TO PASS THE LAST ONE?
“It’s a little frustrating what we have had to go through the last couple of weeks, but it’s pretty awesome to be able to run as fast as we have and finish second the last two weeks from dead last. I’m proud of our team, proud of everybody at our race shop. I can’t thank my sponsors Target, Credit One Bank and all of our other supporters enough for what they do for our team. It’s been a lot of fun these last couple of weeks to be as fast as we have been, so keep working hard at it and maybe we can get some more wins.”
DID YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAD A SHOT AT HAMLIN?
“Yeah, catching him. I thought I was catching him at a good pace, but once I would get closer to him, I would get in his dirty air a little bit and get tight. But, I felt like if I had maybe five, eight more laps I could have gotten to his back bumper and maybe did something. He is probably the best short track racer there is out here. Especially, when it comes to short, flat tracks, but for me to get beat by him is not a cool thing, but I’m proud of that because Denny Hamlin, like I said is really good at this stuff.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – Finished 10th
WHAT HAPPENED WITH THAT PENALTY AT THE START OF THE RACE?
“I forgot all about that. I guess I just got it wrong at the start. I went off the flag and forgot that the pole sitter has to be the first one to the stripe; so I’ll take the responsibility on that one. And then, we had an okay finish. We had decent short run speed. We would just fall off too hard. I really thought we were going to be in a position for a top 5 but we ended up 10th.”
HOW HARD IS IT TO REBOUND ONCE YOU GET BACK ON A TRACK LIKE THIS?
“It’s almost impossible unless you’re the No. 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) or the No. 42 (Kyle Larson).”
ON THE DAY OVERALL:
“It was a decent day. We got a top 10 and we’ll take that. We’ve had a couple not so good lately, so it’s nice to get a respectful finish.”
DID THE VHT COMPOUND WORK WELL FOR YOU?
“That’s a tough question to answer. It was different and I enjoy different. It wore off as the day wore on. An early opinion of it and making it work for you was a bit of a distraction once you got deeper into the race and the adjustments you needed to make on your car. I didn’t see any negatives from it so I think there’s a positive to it and I’ll definitely be interested to hear what the fans have to say about it.”
DID THE PENALTY AT THE START OF THE RACE SHOCK YOU?
‘It did. It’s been so long since I’ve been on the front (row) that I just got it wrong (laughs). I went off the green flag, so I know I didn’t jump, but I guess the number 2 car can’t be the number 1 car. Now that I say that out loud, I remember hearing this in the drivers meetings for all these years. It was just my mistake and we rebounded back from that. It didn’t help us, but we certainly got track position back and then unfortunately faded a little bit on the longer runs.”
DID YOU LEARN SOME THINGS FOR THE NEXT RACE HERE, OR EXPERIMENT A LITTLE BIT TODAY?
“It just depends on what they put down on the surface. The cars require a much different set-up with that VHT down. So, it depends on what they do when we come back. But, we had a decent day. It was a good day for the Lowe’s Chevrolet. We had great stops on pit road. All in all, we had a lot of good takeaways from the weekend.”
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 18th
“We were 13th and 18th in practice. Didn’t have good speed all weekend. The best we were going to run was 10th probably, ended up 18th. That is kind of risk we’ve got to take. We were hoping at the No. 2 (Brad Keselowski) and a couple of other guys that were kind of on the same strategy would stay out behind us. But, I knew when nobody stayed out that as fast as that front four or five were it was impossible to hold them off. We’ve got to take risks though, but hopefully we’ve got a faster car when we are doing it and that might give us a little better shot at it.”
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