NASCAR Cup PR

"Man, what a day. I was excited about our top-10 starting position, but we were just way too loose to start the race and lost a lot of positions. We ended up falling one lap down to the leader and struggled all day to earn our lap back. Crew chief Danny Stockman called for a lot of adjustments but no matter how many my crew made, we just never got a solid feel for the handling of the Roland Chevrolet. In the closing laps, we had to make a last-minute pit stop for tires after we got a flat from a multi-car incident. We were able to still finish in the top 20, and I'm really proud of everyone at RCR and ECR for working so hard all weekend."-Austin Dillon

CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 2nd “Honestly, I was just trying to win the race and the rest of it just kind of fell into our hands a little bit, with the 2 (Brad Keselowski) having a misfortune and the 22 (Joey Logano) being in that crash. Luckily, we got a good bit of stage points in that first one, got five more in the second stage, and battled for the win. I was proud of that. We weren’t the best car by any stretch, but I did feel like we came here with the mindset to win and I was proud of the fact that we came here and fought for a win.”

RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Dickies Ford Mustang -- Finished 21st (Advanced to Playoff Round of 8) “It was an up and down day. We didn’t start off great but we got better throughout the race. We were able to get up to second there but the 11 was pretty phenomenal and I could only make time at the wall and had to pound the fence to do anything."

Daniel Hemric was the fastest qualifier for Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) playoff race at Kansas Speedway with a quick lap around the 1.5-mile tri-oval of 178.047 mph in 30.329 aboard his No. 8 Caterpillar Camaro ZL1. He was the only driver in the 40-car field to surpass the speed of 178 mph, and it marked the first MENCS career pole win for Hemric.

DANIEL HEMRIC, NO. 8 CATERPILLAR CAMARO ZL1 – Pole Winner - GOOD JOB BY THE WHOLE TEAM! THIS IS YOUR FIRST CAREER POLE. HOW DOES IT FEEL? “Yeah, it’s pretty special. I kind of just feel crazy. I got out of the car and I thought I’d be maybe fifth to eighth but man, these guys on this Caterpillar Camaro ZL1 have done a great job all year of no matter what’s thrown at us, kind of just rising to the occasion and showing back up at the race track every week ready to work."

Martin Truex Jr. leads Toyota with an 11th-place starting position for tomorrow’s NASCAR Cup Series event at Kansas Speedway.

DAVID RAGAN, No. 38 MDS Ford Mustang -- Qualified 2nd “I hope we can be the fastest on Sunday too. We made adjustments on our Ford Mustang last night anticipating a little warmer race on Sunday. We looked at the weather and we looked at what we did here in the spring and so we really didn’t think much of qualifying."

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Martin Truex Jr. was made available to media at Kansas Speedway:

HOW IS THE BACKUP CAR? “We were just super, super loose. We made some adjustments and we’ll go at it again. I will say it was turning pretty solid.”

“I feel like we’ve come such a long way at Ganassi from our first race at Martinsville. I’m looking forward to going back to apply all the season-long trends. Martinsville is so early in the year and we were such a new team. I think we finished 12th. We learned so much together as a group. That’s what’s cool about going back to these tracks a second time.