NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
CHEEZ-IT 355 AT THE GLEN
WATKINS GLEN INTERNATIONAL
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE NOTES AND QUOTES
AUGUST 10, 2014
AJ ALLMENDINGER, NO. 47 SCOTT PRODUCTS CHEVROLET SS – RACE WINNER
TELL US ABOUT LAP 89 WHEN MARCOS GOT PAST YOU:
“Yeah, I mean I knew our car was slick on restarts on the tires and I knew Marcos was going to try to move me out of the way if he had the opportunity. To his credit he didn’t wreck me. He just moved me like he should have. I went down into the next corner and leaned on him a little bit to see if I could get a gap and get them racing behind me. I knew if I could just get a three or four car length gap they weren’t going to get back to me. That was just a fun race. Thanks to the fans for enduring two red flags, the track workers for putting the track back together a couple of times. Everybody at home if you didn’t love that you are not a fan of racing.”
RIGHT BEFORE THE RED FLAG YOU PASSED MARCOS FOR THE LEAD DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE THE LEADER AT THAT POINT IN TIME?
“They told me I was. I didn’t know for sure. It’s the same thing. He put a great move on the restart. I thought Kurt was behind me enough that he couldn’t cut under me. And Marcos made a great move we went side-by-side through the esses which you are not supposed to. Clean racing and he kind of had his tires used up. He got loose into the last corner I got back around him and the caution came out. At that point I didn’t think it really mattered who controlled the restart it was going to be a battle to the finish.”
WHAT DOES THIS WIN MEAN TO YOU? YOU ARE NOW IN THE CHASE:
“Honestly the Chase doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s cool once we sit down and think about it, but just to everything I’ve went through all I’ve wanted to do for the last how many years is win a Sprint Cup race. It’s so hard. Jimmie (Johnson) makes it look too easy he wins so many. For this race team Tad and Jodi Geschickter, everybody at this No. 47 team, Brad Daugherty, to win our first Cup race together that means the world to me. We have so many great sponsors Scott Products everybody.”
WHAT DID ROGER PENSKE SAY WHEN HE CAME BY VICTORY LANE TO CONGRATULATE YOU?
“He just said he was proud of me and to have him and Bud Denker, Walt C and everybody at Penske Racing that means so much to me. To have RC, Richard Childress, because he means so much to this team the alliance that he has he has opened his doors to us. That right there honestly is probably the best memory I will have because that means the world to me.”
KURT BUSCH, NO. 41 HAAS AUTOMATION CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 3RD
“It was a hell of a day with the Haas Automation Chevy. We gave it a good battle. Ambrose was strong, Allmendinger was strong. We battled with those guys all day long. On one of the restarts I got some left-front damage. Ambrose was trying to cut underneath Allmendinger and I was there. He ran right over us, but I tried not to spin him because I was using Ambrose to go take out Allmendinger. I thought the two were going to take each other out and we were sitting in the cat bird seat. All in all a great day with the No. 41 car. With all that went on just a nice steady day to stay focused. I’m just real proud of this team. Thanks to Chevrolet, Monster Energy and State Water Heaters it’s been a good battle here we are getting better for the Chase.”
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 4TH
“It was a really good day for us. We were terrible all weekend long. I was down on myself it’s probably the most frustrated I’ve ever been with myself, aside from racing sprint cars in Pennsylvania. I can’t believe we finished top five. It feels like a win. This Target Chevy was good. I knew it was good I just knew I wasn’t good. I learned a lot throughout the race and wasn’t very aggressive on restarts in the beginning and I told myself I need to be more aggressive. It worked out we got a top five. I can’t believe it. I was hoping for a top 15 or top 20 going into today. I’m totally shocked and super excited.”
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONAL GUARD CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 11TH
“The strategy bit us there. We probably should of come. Steve and I think we probably should have come and got tires there. That last stop a couple of guys on new tires beat us. We had a good fast car, real good speed, just got caught out on that strategy there and didn’t finish in the top five. We had a good enough car to.”
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DRIVE TO END HUNGER CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 34TH
TELL US ABOUT THE EARLY PART OF THE RACE AND ISSUE THAT PUT YOU FOUR LAPS DOWN:
“I’m not exactly sure I’ve got to get with the team and find out what caused it. It looks like we had a battery go dead, two batteries go dead. I didn’t see anything on the volts meter that stood out or anything really going on there that was alarming. Everything thing was going along really well. Our Drive To End Hunger Chevrolet was strong. I feel like we were in control there when we were out front. We got a little bit behind on the pit stop sequence, but we were coming back. I was just having a blast out there. It’s just great to be that competitive here at Watkins Glen again and I would rather these things happen now so we can determine what caused it and make sure it doesn’t happen again because you can’t have those kinds of things happen once this Chase starts.”
IN REGARDS TO MORE SAFETY AT WATKINS GLEN:
“We can always do more to be safe. It doesn’t matter what we have our there. There are always ways to make it safer. Unfortunately I’ve been a part of incidents over there off the carousel. It’s a very fast portion of the race track and when things happen cars seem to get knocked back out into the track. But what I question right now from what I saw is the rubber. The Armco barrier I think did its job. Softened the impact, tore the car up, but prevented the car from going through there. So you don’t want a concrete wall you want a safer barrier, but that is tough to do on a track like this, multi-purpose track. That rubber wall with the tires just sucks the cars in, spins them around and spits them out. I definitely think there are areas on the track where it’s good like down in turn one, but I think there are other parts of the track where there could be something better than that.”
REGAN SMITH, NO. 14 RUSH TRUCK CENTERS/MOBIL 1 CHEVROLET SS – SUBBING FOR TONY STEWART – INVOLVED IN AN ON-TRACK INCIDENT ON LAP 81 WHICH RESULTED IN A 37TH PLACE FINISH
WHEN DID YOU GET THE CALL?
“I saw it on social media probably like everybody else did. It started hitting actually before I went to bed last night. I saw it on either Fox Sports or something like that. I didn’t know much about it at the time. I woke up this morning and obviously heard more about it and at 8:30 I got a call from my crew chief Ryan (Pemberton) and said to get to the shop as quick as I could so I did.”
WHAT KIND OF A CHALLENGE WAS IT GETTING IN THE CAR WITH SUCH LITTLE TIME?
“It’s a race car. It’s my job to be able to drive a race car and it took me a little longer to get acclimated than I would have hoped it would and felt like at the end there I was finally starting to make some progress and I was able to get consistent with the car and understood the car a little better and what it was doing. These guys build fast race cars at Stewart-Haas and I was thankful to get to get in one. Definitely not under the circumstances.”
WHAT WAS THE CHALLENGE EARLY ON?
“I haven’t been in a Cup car in a year and a half in an actual race. These things are a lot different now than they were a year and a half ago and there have been a lot of changes to them.”
HOW WOULD YOU SUMMARIZE YOUR DAY?
“My day really doesn’t matter right now. There are a lot of people more important than me at the moment; so we’re thinking about all those people and our prayers are with them.”
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