Toyota Racing Post-Qualifying Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Martinsville Speedway – October 27, 2018
TOYOTA STARTING POSITIONS
1st, KYLE BUSCH
2nd, Clint Bowyer*
3rd, DENNY HAMLIN
4th, Ryan Blaney*
5th, Aric Almirola*
6th, MARTIN TRUEX JR.
9th, DANIEL SUÁREZ
24th, ERIK JONES
33rd, DJ KENNINGTON
34th, JJ YELEY
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M’s Halloween Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Qualifying Position: 1st
How does it feel to get the pole for tomorrow’s race knowing what’s on the line for the Playoffs?
“It feels pretty good. My guys, they obviously come here and I wouldn’t say you do anything different coming here knowing that you’re one of the top-eight, but there’s a lot on the line here Texas and Phoenix and what that means being able to win one of these next three. To be able to come to Martinsville, I enjoy coming to this place more so now at this stage of my career than earlier in my career. It’s due to a great team and all these guys and our fast M&M’s Toyota Camry. Nice to have a pole run here today. We don’t qualify that well here all the time so it feels pretty good today.”
How strong is your car in race trim?
“I feel like the car is actually better in race trim so hopefully that stands true and we can keep ourselves up front for a great race tomorrow. There’s a bunch of other guys though that are pretty fast and will be right there with us.”
What does it mean to have the first pit stall tomorrow?
“Hopefully we can put it to good use tomorrow. Obviously starting position is important, but the opportunity is really to have that pit box. That number one pit box tomorrow will hopefully do us good and we can have a good day, run up front much of the day and finish there more importantly. Earlier this spring, having Clint (Bowyer) here, having role reversed and hopefully we can keep it the way it is right now 24 hours from now.”
Is this track better suited for veteran drivers?
“I think so. Earlier in my career I did come here and test and felt like we had a good test and absolutely couldn’t put the work from that test into the race. Everything that we learned, it just seemed like it wasn’t repeating when we came back to race and a few years ago, came here and tested and had a really good test and it seems ever since then we’ve been able to put all of that to really good use and run well here and repeat it all. It’s a frustrating track, it’s a challenging track and when you’re good and successful, it’s a fun track like Clint (Bowyer) says. It’s just all a matter of what’s kind of happening in the moment.”
What does it mean to win here and get a few down weeks before Homestead and can that be a detriment too?
“Certainly there’s some opportunity there to mess up there or over-think things, but I think anytime you’re under pressure or under the amount of stress as what this round is to get yourself into the final four for Homestead, anytime you can kind of take a step back and have a clear head is a good time in my opinion. The pressure that sets in over these next two weeks if you’re behind the cutoff line and trying to get in or whatever or if you’re right on the cusp of the cutoff line and trying to stay in, that can certainly wear on your during the week. You try to have other things to do to kind of take your mind off of it a little bit, but overall this is what we live, eat, breath, sleep, everything. It’s always on our mind.”
Do you expect tomorrow’s race to be as clean as the race here in the spring?
“We talk about it all the time, I think it’s just the talent pool and the engineering and how these cars drive and how well the drivers drive the cars nowadays. There’s little errors that are made, there’s not such big errors that you see any more in making mistakes and causing crashes like that. I think that’s what it boils down to, I don’t think we’re out there just trying to make a green flag run or keep a green flag run going, it’s just everybody is pretty well feeling pretty good about what they have going on. I guess that’s why you don’t see more action and things happening.”
How is your car on the long run versus the short run?
“We’ve actually had really good short run speed so far and our long run speed has been okay as well too. I’ve just been able to really bust off some good lap times on the short run. We knew we would have the opportunity to qualify well if we hit all of our marks and did a good job in that and we did. I still feel like we do have a good race car and we can be a car to contend with tomorrow.”
Is it possible to waste a season if you don’t win a championship?
“Absolutely, I’ve wasted 13 of them. It’s a long time from championship to championship. It’s 365 days and it feels like eternity when you look at it in a driver’s mind, but also from traveling so much, as much as we all do – it feels like a short time. We were just in Daytona. When you’re as good as you are and like Clint (Bowyer) was talking about how the JGR cars were the best last year, arguably the Furniture Row car was the best car last year and he did a great job and was able to bring it all home. This year, the JGR cars are good again, but the SHR cars are probably a tick faster. It’s going to be a dogfight down to the end on whose able to bring it home and who’s able to get it at Homestead. It’s going to be an interesting battle for sure, but I’d like to think we can fight them out all the way to the end even though they have the upper hand.”
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Qualifying Position: 3rd
How do you feel about your car for the race tomorrow?
“This is probably one of the best days we’ve had all year in practice. We were not very fast in the short run so that was a very pleasant surprise for us that we qualified as well as we did. As built for the long run as our car is, I’m pretty optimistic.”
Are you more optimistic about this race weekend?
“A little bit. We’ve won here in a lot of different configurations, but I would just go off of the feel that I had today was more like the old school feel that we had when I was really good. Typically when we practice kind of bad, we race bad here and today was not one of those days.”
MARTIN TRUEX JR, No. 78 Bass Pro Shops / 5-hour ENERGY Toyota Camry, Furniture Row Racing
Qualifying Position: 6th
“It was okay. Obviously, you always want to be first, but sixth was a decent day. We were just a little too tight there on every run. We kept freeing it up and freeing it up, but we never really got on top of it. Hopefully we’ll figure it out for the race and have a decent run.”
