Toyota Racing Post-Race Recap
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Charlotte Motor Speedway
501 miles, 334 laps
October 8, 2017
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, MARTIN TRUEX JR.
2nd, Chase Elliott*
3rd, Kevin Harvick*
4th, DENNY HAMLIN
5th, Jamie McMurray*
6th, DANIEL SUÁREZ
11th, MATT KENSETH
17th, ERIK JONES
28th, COREY LaJOIE
29th, KYLE BUSCH
36th, GRAY GAULDING
39th, BRETT MOFFITT
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA DRIVER POINT STANDINGS**
1st, MARTIN TRUEX JR. 3,106 points#
5th, DENNY HAMLIN 3,056 points#
6th, KYLE BUSCH 3,055 points#
9th, MATT KENSETH 3,043 points#
19th, ERIK JONES 748 points
20th, DANIEL SUÁREZ 686 points
34th, COREY LaJOIE 202 points
*non-Toyota driver
#Playoff contender
**unofficial point standings
· Camry driver Martin Truex Jr. scored his sixth victory of the season in Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
· Truex led the field twice for a total of 91 laps (of 337) en route to the victory.
· Fellow Toyota driver Denny Hamlin started the race from the pole and led a total of 45 laps in today’s race and earned a fourth-place finish.
· Camry driver Daniel Suarez (sixth) also claimed a top-10 finish in today’s race.
· Truex continues to lead the Playoff point standings after the first race of the second round and now locks himself into the third round en route to the quest for the championship in Homestead.
TOYOTA QUOTES
MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 78 Auto-Owners Insurance Toyota Camry, Furniture Row Racing
Finishing Position: 1st
What did you say to your crew when you go out of the car?
“Just thanking them for being the best there is. I’m so lucky to get to do this and I don’t know, it’s just one of those weekends – lot of pressure. We qualified horribly and I was mad about it. Cole (Pearn, crew chief) was mad about it and twenty minutes we’re like alright, I think this is where we went wrong. And he’s like yeah, that’s where we went wrong. We screwed up, we’ll get them Sunday. Just thankful to him and this whole team and Barney (Visser, owner) and everybody for giving us everything we need. Everybody at Gibbs for the chassis and you know the collaboration there – these guys work really well together. I got a lot to thank these guys for. TRD Salisbury, Costa Mesa, Toyota, everybody. Thanks to them. Auto Owners Insurance today. They’ve been pretty lucky on this car. They started this thing without even telling me at their offices. They said it’s called ‘Ride with Martin’ for their next race and everybody contributed money to my foundation to have their name on the car and gave me a check today for $75,000 to our foundation. They’re an unbelievable partner, so thank you to them. I’m so happy to get them to victory lane. But just everybody – Bass Pro, Johnny Morris, Furniture Row, Denver Mattress, 5-Hour, Wix. We’ve got so many partners, so many people to thank.”
Talk about this win today.
“Unbelievable win. Just a total team effort. Every single guy – every guy on this team just did a perfect job today and I can’t be more proud of them and at this time of the year is just when you want it to happen. You dream about days like today. I don’t know if we had the best car, but we damn sure go it in victory lane.”
How did you feel about that last two restarts?
“I felt good about them. I knew I was going to be on the bottom so I felt pretty good. Bottom lane was pretty good at the end of all day and just tried to get the best start I could and it worked out.”
How good does it feel to have this win before Talladega?
“You have no idea man. It feels unbelievable. I’ve never went there before and not been nervous about crashing or something bad happening. Seems like we’ve always had bad luck there, so it’s going to be fun next week.”
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Office Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 4th
You had a crew that got you up front at the end, how was it?
“Definitely pit crew did a phenomenal job. Number one pit stall was big for us as well. It’s just, you know Charlotte on restarts, having a car fast enough to kind of make moves. We were decent in the long run, but you know still – not as fast as what we needed to be short or long.”
MATT KENSETH, No. 20 Tide Pods Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 11th
What was your day like today?
“It was really frustrating, really puzzling. We were running third that one run, catching both leaders and the end of the run thought we were pretty close, just wanted a little adjustment. I don’t really know what happened. We took off the next stop and it was just totally out of control. It was just so loose you just couldn’t drive it. We got a little bit better that last long run. We’re going to get back up in the top-10 there somewhere, it’s just I couldn’t restart either. It was just a frustrating day all around.
How do you feel about Talladega next week?
I don’t know. You do the best you can every week. You try to stay up front and get as many points as you can. We’ll just go there and do our best, try to figure out a plan. Hopefully we’re fast enough to be in that lead group. The guys that got fast cars there typically can stay out of trouble and you can go race other people. It’s when you’re hanging on and everybody’s in a different lane is when you find yourself in trouble. Hopefully our car’s fast”
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Interstate Batteries Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 29th
How are you after being overheated at the end of the race?
“I’m alright, I’m better now. I got heat soaked and felt like I had heat stroke just from being inside the race car for 200 laps with the crush panels knocked out of it. Obviously, it was my bad, just trying to get a little too much too early in the race and got too high out of the groove and got myself into the fence and tore the right side off of it. My guys did a great job trying to rebound and get it back together as much as we could throughout the day. It was just evil out there the rest of the day trying to stay with a relative pace with the rest of the field. We were just kind of hanging on with our Interstate Batteries Camry. After I first tore it up, it was just a handful from there. Literally as soon as I did it, just coasting around under caution I could feel it being about 50 degrees hotter inside the car. It just got so hot that you literally felt like you were going to puke and just trying to make it to the end of the race and luckily we did. From there, just trying to get cooled down and get body temperature back to normal.”
Did the impact to the crush panels cause excessive fumes in the car?
“Of course, they said my CO was in the double digits and I’m fighting some of that too. That was just the hottest I’ve been in the car. I didn’t feel sick from the CO or anything like that, but I felt heat stroke and I’ve had that before. Living in Vegas, you have that a few times when you’re playing outside in the summer as a kid. I knew what it was, I knew what it felt like, but the only way to do it is to just get out and get cooled down.”
How do you feel heading to Talladega just 12 points above the cutoff line?
“It stinks to give up points, we come in here and thought we had a good shot to run in the top-10 and we did and I threw it away. We’re still above the cut line, but we don’t have that cushion that we’d like to have going to Talladega and crash out early and be back in the pack and be coming from behind in Kansas. That’s what you try to not have happen, but anything can happen in racing so we just have to go out and race, race hard and do a good job at Talladega to get through there with still a cushion and then we can go race them and be fine hopefully through Kansas.”
Did you lose the grip from the VHT/PJ1 and that caused you to hit the wall?
“I got out of it or whatever you want to call it, I got in the slick stuff. I got into (turn) three and I was following (Kevin) Harvick and tried to get up a little bit and a little bit and the last few laps before that, everything was fine and I was kind of inching it up and inching it up and apparently an inch a lap is too high and just got crossed up and as soon as I turned off into the corner it was sideways.”
Was this the same thing that happened to you on Friday when you hit the wall?
“No, Friday I was running lower and got a little bit tight and then when I got into the stuff it just sucked me into the wall. That was on the exit of the corner, but later in the day the same thing happened again when I got into the wall the second time after they had repaired it the first time, the same thing happened to me. I entered the corner and thought I was normal and wasn’t trying to enter too high or anything and it just stepped out on me and the car was already hurt by then and obviously tore it up more.”
Should they not use the VHT/PJ1 here at Charlotte moving forward?
“Man, it was fine in the spring and I don’t know what the process was or what was different from the spring to this time. The middle groove, everything was fine there, but you could never get higher. It was really slick on entries up high and on exits up high so I don’t know what processes weren’t done, but there was something that wasn’t done right.”
