Toyota Racing Post-Race Recap
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Dover International Speedway
Race 11 of 36 – 400 miles, 400 laps
May 6, 2018
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Kevin Harvick*
2nd, Clint Bowyer*
3rd, DANIEL SUAREZ
4th, MARTIN TRUEX, JR.
5th, Kurt Busch*
7th, DENNY HAMLIN
18th, ERIK JONES
30th, GRAY GAULDING
35th, KYLE BUSCH
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA DRIVER POINT STANDINGS**
1st, KYLE BUSCH 466 points
8th, DENNY HAMLIN 344 points
9th, MARTIN TRUEX JR. 340 points
13th, ERIK JONES 253 points
17th, DANIEL SUAREZ 234 points
**unofficial point standings
· Camry driver Daniel Suárez finished third with the top-placing Toyota in Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover International Speedway.
· With his third-place result, Suárez tied his career-best finish in the Cup Series. The result also marked his best finish in the Cup Series on an oval after he previously finished third on the Watkins Glen International road course in 2017.
· Camry drivers Martin Truex Jr. (fourth) and Denny Hamlin (seventh) also tallied top-10 results on the one-mile Delaware track.
· Toyota’s Kyle Busch was racing among the top-five overall before a part failure relegated the Camry driver to a 35th-place finish.
· Busch continues to lead the Cup Series point standings with a 22-point cushion over his closest rival.
· The race was red flagged for 41 minutes due to a rain.
TOYOTA QUOTES
DANIEL SUAREZ, No. 19 STANLEY Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 3rd
How would you sum up your performance today?
“It was good. Very proud of everyone on this team – Scott Graves (crew chief), the rest of the guys, STANLEY, everyone that makes this happen. We had a little rough start in the first few weeks – month, month and a half – and now definitely we are moving in the right direction, so I’m just very proud of this team, Joe Gibbs Racing, TRD (Toyota Racing Development) engines, everyone that makes this possible. This is pretty cool to finally get moving in the right direction.”
Would you say this is the best run of your Cup career?
“Yeah, for sure. I feel like we had a very strong car pretty much the entire weekend – top-five, top-10 car the entire weekend. Sometimes a little bit less, a little bit more. Track position was huge, but just very proud of my team, STANLEY, Joe Gibbs Racing, Toyota, TRD (Toyota Racing Development) engines, everyone that puts this program together because definitely we have fast cars everywhere we go and when you race like that, it’s always a lot of fun.”
Did you have anything extra for the ending?
“I feel like right there at the end we were maybe a third-place car. Track position helped us a lot. My pit crew actually did an amazing job right there picking up – I don’t know, four, five spots or something like that. They did it right when it counts, so very proud of those guys and excited to keep moving forward.”
How did you Camry change with the rain delay?
“Well, at first the most important thing was definitely track position. My pit crew did an amazing job right there in the last stop picking – I don’t know, four, five spots. They did it right when it counts, so very proud of those guys. The team actually did great adjustments to help me in the short run when we were struggling a little bit and we were able to keep the third-place, which is good for us. In the beginning of the season, we had some struggles and now finally it seems like we’re going in the right direction.”
What is about this track that suits your style?
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know what is the deal about concrete that I just love Dover. I love Bristol. It’s a lot of fun. I feel like this race track is just very demanding physically and mentally and I like that, you know? I like to push myself to the limit and I feel like this is one of those places where you have to be in the top, at the limit most of the time, so it’s just fun for me.”
How is your hand doing?
“My hand is fine actually. I was just – I was going to talk about it. I had my little cast the first 300 laps and then had a little bruise here that it was bothering me a lot and luckily we had the red flag and I had to get out and I changed gloves and stuff and I feel great, so hopefully next week I won’t have to wear that cast anymore.”
Is this indicative of your love for Dover or how your team is improving?
“I think it’s about my team coming on strong. I feel like my team has been working very hard. Like I said, we had a rough start of the season with the speed just very inconsistent and the last month, month and a half definitely we have found good speed and consistency and definitely we are moving in the right direction.”
How much have you grown as a driver at the Cup level?
“You know, just every weekend I feel like I’m getting better, learning from these guys and from my team – Kyle (Busch), Denny (Hamlin), Erik (Jones), everyone. As a team, as a family, we help each other a lot, so I feel like actually every weekend there is something new that I’m getting better at, so excited for that.”
MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 78 5-hour ENERGY/Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry, Furniture Row Racing
Finishing Position: 4th
How was your race?
“It was up and down, you know? We – I thought we were pretty good at the beginning of the race and lost that lap and had to come from the back. Just really hard to pass here today. Our car was fast in clean air, but I couldn’t pass anybody – especially those last 200 laps once we got somewhere up towards the front, so it was all about where we come off pit road and how we restarted and it’s frustrating, but we just couldn’t seem to make the car turn off the corner all day long. It was tight from the get go and that really hindered me in traffic.”
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Pedigree Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 35th
Could you tell the problem was serious?
“Oh yeah, it just kept getting worse and worse the more the day was going, especially after restarts it was really, really bad, so I was just trying to bide it out, see if we’d make it to the end. At first, I thought that it was an engine problem, but that wasn’t the case. It was certainly in the drivetrain – something else. You know, this isn’t very popular of a failure for us, so we have an idea – I already know what was wrong – but we’ve got to go back to the shop and kind of diagnose and figure out why it was wrong and kind of go from there. The Pedigree Camry was good – it was top-three car. I felt like barring some different clean air circumstances, you know, and different restart lines and stuff, I felt like I could get up there and race with the 4 (Kevin Harvick) or the 2 (Brad Keselowski), but as bad as that vibration kept getting throughout the race there it was just too hard to handle and finally it threw the shifter knob off the shifter and there was – even when it broke, I could just push the clutch in. I couldn’t even grab the shifter in order to get it knocked out of gear or anything like that. It was so hard – still vibrating so badly. We’ll go on to next week.”
When could you tell you had an issue?
“Yeah, just we started the race with it unfortunately and it just kept getting worse and worse as the day was going. I don’t know why we started the race with it – we hadn’t had anything like that in a long, long time. I know what it was, but not sure why we had the problem to begin with, so, you know, we had a really fast Pedigree Camry. I thought we were going to be top-three car for sure – no question about that – but then what was going to happen with the guys in front of us. I felt like if we could have jumped them In track position, maybe we could have done something better about keeping the clean air and keeping the lead and stuff like that, but it just got so bad there that last run vibrating it even blew the shifter ball off the shifter and when it finally broke, I couldn’t even grab the shifter in order to knock it out of gear so I could just push the clutch in, so I had to nurse it back and get out of everybody’s way.”
Were you saying this is a somewhat common problem?
“No, it was not a popular problem. We’ve never had that problem before. Just I know what it was, but I don’t know why we had it, so we’ll have to go back to the shop and diagnose it, try to figure it out. It’s kind of weird. We’ve had issues like that in practices before and we’ve been able to figure it out early enough to not have the problem in the race, but this weekend we never had that issue at all until the race started, so felt weird about how that went down.”
When you feel a vibration are you trying to asses it in the moment?
“I definitely knew what it was and I was hoping it wasn’t going to continue to get worse and on every restart it just got so bad. The pace was just so fast, the speeds were so high that it just was vibrating so hard that, you know, you could barely stand it through your body down the straightaways getting into the corners, you know? I couldn’t feel anything through the corner through my butt with the car just feeling tight, feeling loose and all that. Just visually and through the steering wheel, so you’ve got to have everything kind of right in order to be fast here – especially at Dover – and I thought we were going to be alright, but just not today.”
