MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
AUTO CLUB 400
AUTO CLUB SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY QUALIFYING NOTES AND QUOTES
MARCH 16, 2018
TOP TEAM CHEVY QUALIFIERS:
POS. DRIVER
3RD KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 DC SOLAR CAMARO ZL1
5TH AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 DOW COATINGS CAMARO ZL1
9TH RYAN NEWMAN, NO. 31 CHEVROLET ACCESSORIES CAMARO ZL1
12TH CHRIS BUESCHER, NO. 37 HEALTHY CHOICE POWER BOWLS CAMARO ZL1
TOP FIVE QUALIFIERS:
POS. DRIVER
1ST Martin Truex, Jr. (Toyota)
2nd Kyle Busch (Toyota)
3rd Kyle Larson (Chevrolet)
4th Erik Jones (Toyota)
5TH Austin Dillon (Chevrolet)
The Auto Club 400 is scheduled to begin on Sunday March 18th at 3:30 pm, EDT. Live coverage can be found on FOX, MRN and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
QUALIFYING NOTES AND QUOTES:
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 DC SOLAR CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 3rd
ON QUALIFYING:
“Decent qualifying run, we would have liked to have been on the pole but got a little tighter each run. That is kind of what ended up hurting us a little bit and lost some speed off Turn 2.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 DOW COATINGS CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 5th
ON HIS QUALIFYING RUN:
“I feel very positive. This is the first time this year that we’ve made the final round in qualifying and I’m really proud of that. We’re working hard on the Camaro ZL1 and obviously it likes these big tracks; Daytona and here we’ve been good with it. We’ll keep working on it and see what we can do.
HOW IS YOUR CAR FOR SUNDAY’S RACE?
“I have no clue. These days are all about qualifying. We don’t ever do a race trim run. That’s what I was just talking to my guys about just now if what we can do to make it good in race trim. I seem to qualify well here and we’d like to race a little better.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, NO. 37 HEALTHY CHOICE POWER BOWLS CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 12th
“We unloaded in qualifying trim for the first time this season. First time in a really long time, just based on this racetrack how long it takes to make a lap and how hard it is on tires it seemed like the best way to do it. I think it worked out really well. We had good speed with our Healthy Choice Power Bowls Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, but we got everything rolling in and felt like we had good speed throughout all those qualifying runs. I think we made four runs, and it felt like we had a chance to go to the third round, obviously, some of the stuff that happened made it a little easier to get there and we picked up a lot our second run. That was really cool, just got a little tight that third run, so listening to some of the other guy’s talk, it’s a good thing to put in the notes that it is going to get a little tighter by the time you get late into that third round.”
JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 MCDONALD’S CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 15th
WAS THE RISK NOT WORTH THE REWARD TO TAKE ANOTHER LAP?
“Yeah, our McDonald’s Chevy was tight in practice and then too loose in qualifying and you just have absolutely zero chance of going faster on another run. If you can sit here and cool your tires down, you maybe have a chance, but to run back out in just two or three minutes, just not going to happen.”
THOUGHTS ON RACE TRIM:
“I’m sure that we will get it figured out. Race trim is so much different than qualifying trim here. We have run well the last of races at this track. Yeah, I feel like our 1.5-mile program has been actually pretty good this year. We haven’t finished, I don’t think, either 1.5-mile, but speed wise, it’s been pretty good.”
DARRELL ‘BUBBA’ WALLACE, JR., NO. 43 FARMER JOHN CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 19th
DID YOU LEAVE IT ALL OUT THERE?
“I felt like I did. I suck at this qualifying thing. I have never been the best, but what I always tell myself, is what my mom always tells me – it’s not where you start it’s where you finish. Yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks Mom. I don’t know, I thought I put it up out there, but I guess not. Our Farmer John Chevrolet looks good, I felt like it drives pretty good, which that is the biggest thing, so we will get it tuned in for tomorrow, but man, I can’t figure it out. I can’t figure it out and now I will get a bunch of Tweets saying ‘keep your head’ and all this stuff, I got it! I am good, I got it, I’m just competitive as hell, so we will figure it out, but all-in-all it’s good to be here in California I love this place. Tomorrow is where it really matters to get our car dialed in for the race on Sunday, get that Farmer John Chevrolet up there and have some fun.”
ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CAMARO ZL1 – Did not make a qualifying attempt due to issues getting through inspection, will start 28TH
HOW DO YOU APPROACH TOMORROW AND THE RACE KNOWING YOU PROBABLY WON’T GET OUT THERE TO QUALIFY?
“We will be alright. There are a few minutes left and only 22 cars have gone so far. It’s by no means just us. There will be a bunch of fast cars there starting in the back probably, but really confident in our Nationwide Chevy. It’s been fast off the truck. As soon as we went to qualifying trim, we were too tight in race trim when we unloaded, but we can make good changes. It looks like the weather has cleared up so a lot of good practice tomorrow. We all sometimes have to face these circumstances and we will be just fine.”
DOES THIS TRACK CHANGE EVERY TIME YOU COME BACK?
“Yeah, I think it’s always been pretty rough. I haven’t been here in like three years, so it’s kind of why we unloaded in race trim, just to kind of let me get my bearings, but I feel like it’s pretty similar to the last time I was here. Obviously, I’ve never been here in a great racecar like we have with Hendrick Motorsports, but it’s a fun place. It’s fast, but you can move around a lot and kind of can drive the cars out of shape more than you can at a lot of the really fast places. We will have fun coming from the back and hopefully get it all the way from the back to the front.”
WHAT IS THE UPSIDE AND MAYBE THE DOWNSIDE OF NOT GETTING TO QUALIFY?
“Hopefully, the upside is we will get to pass a bunch of cars. The downside is, I felt we had a really good racecar. We only made one qualifying run in practice and we were 10th, so, we had a good shot at qualifying really well, but everybody at Hendrick Motorsports works really hard, they are really smart, a lot of depth of knowledge, so we will get our race trim stuff better and we will get our Nationwide Camaro ZL1 up front on Sunday.”
ALAN GUSTAFSON, CREW CHIEF, CHASE ELLIOT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1 – Did not make a qualifying attempt due to issues getting through inspection, will start 31st
AS A CREW CHIEF HOW DO YOU BALANCE THE RISK VERSUS REWARD IN PUSHING THE LIMITS?
“Yeah, I mean ultimately you’ve got to get the lion’s share of the tolerance. To kind of put it into perspective 90-95 percent to be competitive. So, certainly can be much more conservative and make it through inspection easier, but you wouldn’t run very good and ultimately that is not good for job security on my part (laughs). You kind of have no choice and the tolerances are tight and in this certain situation we failed the first time, I think it was 20 or 30 thousandths of an inch and we certainly did everything we could to rectify it. The issue for us is, we don’t have the equipment here to measure to that accuracy or to measure that way, so we are just taking some tape measurements at different places and trying to manipulate the body to get it done. So, usually we have a lot of success with that and it’s not a problem, but unfortunately today it seems like it was a problem for a lot of people. So, in that case, you kind of scratch your head a little bit. Certainly, seeing 13 cars or how many ever cars not make it is a bit odd, so we are going to have to figure that one out.”
DOES THIS CHANGE YOUR APPROACH FOR THE REST OF THE WEEKEND?
“Well, I mean, it won’t affect our strategy as far as our car set-up or what we try to accomplish. It certainly puts us at a disadvantage for that first stage to score some points there, but ultimately, it’s a big, wide track and if you’ve got a good fast car here you can make hay pretty quick. That is going to be the key for us to get our NAPA Chevy driving good and Chase is certainly good enough to drive his way through there and if we give him a car he can do it with, I don’t want to feel like there will be any detriment there. You don’t want to start in the back, but if there is a place where we had to start in the back, this is one of those places that you are not going to freak out about. Pit stall will be significant, I think, of all the things that we will have to deal with is the pit box, but they are also really big here too, so it shouldn’t be terrible.”
JEFF ANDREWS, VICE PRESIDENT OF COMPETITION AT HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS:
WERE THE PROBLEMS WITH ALL FOUR CARS SIMILAR?
“No, they were all similar, in the same area of the car. We’ve got to go back, we have to talk obviously, internally, and talk with NASCAR. We felt like we were making changes, obviously in the area effected and just we were not seeing the results when we went back through.”
YOU ARE ONE OF THE TEAMS THAT DOES NOT HAVE AN OPTICAL SCANNING SYSTEM AT YOUR SHOP DO YOU THINK THIS COULD BE RELATED TO THAT?
“I don’t think it’s related. We have equipment in the shop to scan our cars that we feel like is very accurate and we have had good results with up until this point. This is… obviously, there was more than just our four cars, so we need to work with NASCAR on it. I know they don’t want to see this either and we have to figure out a solution going forward.”
CAN YOU TELL US THE AREA YOU WERE HAVING ISSUES WITH?
“It’s related to the rear decklid area. That is the general area where we were working on and making changes.”
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