NASCAR Cup PR

For the sixth time in his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) career, Chase Elliott will lead the field to the green flag in Sunday’s Gander RV 400 at Dover International Speedway. It is the first pole at the famed track known as ‘The Monster Mile’ for the driver of the No. 9 NAPA Brakes Camaro ZL1. In single-file qualifying, Elliott ran a fast lap of 21.692 seconds, 165.960 mph.

“Super fast. The corner speeds are just so high. There’s just a lot more throttle through the corner than what I feel like we’ve been carrying. But it was a lot of fun. Our NAPA Brakes Chevy was good right there. It’s always nice. This place can either be a lot of fun in qualifying, or it can be a handful. Today was one of those fun ones. Team Hendrick 1-2 (William Byron qualified 2nd) was awesome, Chevrolet power and everybody that contributes to our car has been working hard. Hopefully we can back it up on Sunday.”

“Pretty good. I thought it went well for us considering the draw that we had. I was pretty happy -- qualifying there in the top-10 at least gets us a good draw for next week’s qualifying. We’ll battle from there. It’s just a starting spot and you really don’t know what you’ve got in race trim until tomorrow morning. We’ll go to work on that and see where we end up.”

ON THE ROLLOVER ACCIDENT LAST WEEKEND AT THE END OF THE TALLADEGA RACE “I’m just thankful that the chassis and all my safety equipment held up good.”

“Running against the wall has been more and more important each year. But we throw this new package at it and I don’t know what that’ll look like. Whether we get a lot of drafting, which could be very key in determining the race. I hope we do it. I think it will be a really fun race. I’m excited for that. Every week is a different monster than we’re figuring out. I think Kansas is going to be a really good one.”

ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CAMARO ZL1, met with media and discussed Sunday’s race at Dover, practice speeds, and qualifying procedures and more. Full Transcript:

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1, met with media and discussed his enthusiasm and success at Dover, the new qualifying rules beginning today, on-track speeds, and more. Full Transcript:

“I didn’t get a real good sense how practice went from any of my guys. Overall, just saw that he was at the top of the sheets first practice. That is always kind of difficult to tell sometimes how that exactly happens. I think they made a mock run at the end of first practice so I think that is what put them up there. It is all about the lap tracker and consecutive laps, consistency and things like that. We talked a little bit this week about coming here and being prepared for it, so it was nice to be able to help him out and get him up to speed a little bit to see that they had speed at least. I hope they can do a good job. This is the biggest track he has ever seen or been on and the fastest he has ever gone; it will be a big learning experience for him.”

CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA BRAKES CAMARO ZL1, met with media and discussed Sunday’s race at Dover, his victory the previous week at Talladega Superspeedway and more. Full Transcript:

“It’s definitely a change of mindset. It’s kind of going back, I feel like quite a while now since we’ve done this and it’s just a dramatic change in just the way you approach it mentally. You get one shot at it now. You work through practice and you do everything you can to make one fast lap – you only need one fast lap, not three like we used to with three rounds. It’s definitely a lot different and I think the pressure is higher. It’s easier to screw up. You only get one crack at it. Just trying to think back to years ago how we used to do it and try to pull from that.”