NASCAR CUP SERIES
CHARLOTTE MOTOR SPEEDWAY
COCA-COLA 600
TEAM CHEVY POST-RACE NOTES & QUOTES
MAY 25, 2020
TOP TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
2nd JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 ALLY PATRIOTIC CAMARO ZL1 1LE
3rd CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1 1LE
8th KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 GEARWRENCH CAMARO ZL1 1LE
9th TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 ALSCO UNIFORMS CAMARO ZL1 1LE
15th AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 COCA-COLA CAMARO ZL1 1LE
TOP FIVE UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
1st Brad Keselowski (Ford)
2nd Jimmie Johnson (Chevrolet)
3rd Chase Elliott (Chevrolet)
4th Ryan Blaney (Ford)
5th Kyle Busch (Toyota)
The NASCAR Cup Series season continues with a return visit to Charlotte Motor Speedway with the Alsco Uniforms 500 on Wednesday, May 27, at 8:00 p.m. ET. Live coverage can be found on FS1, PRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
TEAM CHEVY NOTES AND QUOTES:
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 ALLY PATRIOTIC CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 2nd
YOU’RE BRINGING HOME SECOND. WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND WHEN YOU SAW YOUR TEAMMATE DUCK DOWN AND GO TO PIT ROAD?
“When that pit stop happened at the end, it’s so hard to know what the right thing to do is. We were talking about it too maybe for ourselves, but Cliff (Daniels) had a great sense of the right call to make. I feel for Chase (Elliott). He had such a great car on Wednesday, and to be leading here and have the caution come out with a couple to go, I feel bad for him. But I’m very proud of my team, very proud of everybody on this Ally Chevrolet. Second is OK – I’m very proud of the effort we’re putting in. But second, stinks. It’s tough being this close to victory lane, but we’re knocking on the door and we’ll get there.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 3rd
“Just trying to make the best decision you can and those guys are going to do the opposite of whatever we do. That’s just part of it. You make decisions and live with them. It wasn’t the pit call – I think being on offense is fine. Like I said, those guys are going to do whatever the opposite of what you do. It’s part of it.”
KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 GEARWRENCH CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 8th
“We got the pole with the GEARWRENCH Chevy and lead some laps; it was great to be up front and had good pace early. After the rain delay we just got buried in some dirty-air back in traffic. We just got to get our car a little better to maneuver in traffic. We just need the front tires front aero to be a little better in dirty-air. I know Matt McCall my guys are going to work on it; I’m gonna work on it, but a top-10 after all that, I will take it. Thanks again everybody at Ganassi, GEARWRENCH, Chevy and Monster Energy. Top-10 we will take it!”
TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 ALSCO UNIFORMS CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 9th
“Well, the longest night of racing is in the books. I’m proud of the effort our No. 8 Alsco Uniforms Chevrolet team gave tonight. We fought hard all night to make our car better, and we took a gamble there at the end, which almost paid off for us. The track just didn’t do quite what I hoped it would do tonight, but we still found a way to get a top 10 out of the race. We fired off really strong tonight and had a shot at the pole in qualifying. After the brief rain storm, it was tough to get the balance nailed down to where we needed it to be. I would be too loose in Turns 1 and 2 but then too tight in Turns 3 and 4. We tried a lot of different adjustments and strategy calls to try to adjust the handling, and hit on something during that second to last caution of the night. Randall (Burnett, crew chief) and my team were able to get our car loosened up just enough for me to run up through the field from 15th to 10th. From there, we decided to stay out and go for it on that green-white-checkered, and almost got a top-five finish out of it. I learned a lot tonight that I think we can take into account when we return to Charlotte Motor Speedway on Wednesday to help with our long run handling, but this is definitely a finish we can build on. 400 laps and 600 miles are done, and we’ll be ready to come back on Wednesday night. It was an honor to have SGT. Norman L. Tollett’s name above my windshield tonight, and I hope we made his friends and family proud.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 COCA-COLA CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 15th
“I feel really good, overall, physically, so that’s a good thing. We ran in the top-10 all night. We had a really solid car. We showed sometimes when we were up front in the top-five, we ran some of the fastest laps of the race at times. Bummed when you go all night long running like that and give it away at the end. Our call was if a couple pitted, we were going to stay out. I actually said if all of them stay out, I’m pitting. Not all of them stayed out; I thought more would stay out. Probably should have came and got two tires. The 18 (Kyle Busch) was running one position in front of us, came and got two, and ended up fifth. You never know – my teammate Reddick had the outside and ended up being able to maintain and run ninth. We were too tight at the end and I kind of drove the wheels off of it, and the caution came out. Just a little over-confident, I wanted to get another good finish. It worked for us at Vegas. But all-in-all, we had a top-10 car. I want to say we were eighth or ninth all night on average. I’ve got to thank Coca-Cola, all of our partners at RCR, Dow, Bass Pro Shops – 600 miles in remembrance today was really cool. Wednesday should be a good one for us. We’ll turn it around. We have good cars. We can prove that we run up front, we just need to get those finishes.”
ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 88 CHEVYGOODS.COM/NOCO PATRIOTIC CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 20th
“That finish does not show how great of a Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE we had today in Charlotte. We won two stages, led over 160 laps and really had a solid car. We would get loose or tight in certain areas, but Greg (Ives) and the guys made some good adjustments on pit road. At the end there, it just went straight. Not much I could do with that and unfortunately don’t have a finish to show how strong we were today. We learned a lot and hopefully can come back strong on Wednesday.”
WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 LIBERTY UNIVERSITY PATRIOTIC CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 21st
“We just shredded a left rear tire there. We had a bit of a tire rub when we went green with almost 50 to go, so I don’t know why it gave out with only a couple laps left after making it that long. I feel really bad though that it cost Chase Elliott and the No. 9 team. We had a fast Liberty Chevy up until that point.”
TY DILLON, NO. 13 GEICO MILITARY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 26th
“First and foremost, the Coca-Cola 600 is about so much more than ourselves and it was an honor to have SPC Richard C. Emmons III on our car. While we missed having his family at the track with us, hopefully we were able to honor them the best we could. Tonight wasn’t what we were looking for. The balance of our GEICO Military Camaro ZL1 1LE was pretty good, but unfortunately, we had to make an unscheduled pit stop under green in Stage 1 and never were able to recover. We usually don’t see a lot of cautions at Charlotte and that trend proved to be the same again. Just couldn’t dig ourselves out of the hole. It’s a shame, because I thought we were going to have a good night after a solid qualifying effort. The positive is we do have a good baseline setup for Wednesday night and we will try to have a better result then.”
BUBBA WALLACE, NO. 43 U.S. AIR FORCE CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Sidelined by mechanical issue; Finished 39th
“Well, what a bummer. Tonight wasn’t our night. We burned-up a hub, and it put us way behind. I don’t know if we had other issues going on with the car or what, but it wasn’t worth the risk. I thought we had a really good car, especially before all this stuff happened. We were running some really good lap times, so I was excited to try and get some track position and go race with our Richard Petty Motorsports No. 43 U.S. Air Force Camaro ZL1 1LE. But sometimes you’re the bat and sometimes you’re the ball; tonight we were the ball. I think we have a good baseline of what we need for Wednesday when we come back. I know it’s going to be a little different circumstances and conditions during the day, but all-in-all, I’m proud of the effort. It’s just one of those things that are out of our control and freak stuff happens. We’ll come right back here Wednesday – a little bit different setup to get this thing underneath us and get all the bad juju out of the way. We’ll rebound from this and go get them!”
Team Chevy high-resolution racing photos are available for editorial use.
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