NASCAR Cup PR

A FEW DAYS AGO YOU DID DEMO LAPS AT COTA IN AUSTIN. HOW AS THE ATTENDANCE AND ATTENTION FROM THE F1 TEAMS AND DID YOU NOTICE THE BUMPS ON THE TRACK THAT THE F1 DRIVERS HAVE BEEN SO VOCAL ABOUT THERE?

Erik Jones starts a season-best second for tomorrow’s Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. Jones leads three Toyotas qualified inside the top 10.

KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Bush Beer Ford Mustang - Qualified 1st “I think the key to the lap was obviously knowing that you had to be wide open and kind of did a halfway qualifying run yesterday and worked most of the day on race runs and making sure we ran enough laps to know where our car was."

ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 88 VALVOLINE CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 5th “It drove really good. I think that’s better than we’ve been in a long time and hopefully it races well. We were wide open, so you have what you have. We’ve been a little slow in qualifying at 1.5-mile tracks and we put a little more effort into it this week.” WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FOR THE RACE? “Hopefully, a trophy and a cowboy hat. I think you get a shot gun too; I want it all. It’s going to be interesting. This track is tough. One and two is different and it makes for a tough race. Hopefully, we’ll stay on top of it.”

HOW’S YOUR CAR? “I feel like my car is pretty good, like I could run wide open fairly easy. Maybe we could trim out a little bit to get some more speed, but I think as far as racing goes, it handles good.”

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Kyle Busch was made available to media at Texas Motor Speedway:

ON THE FIRST PRACTICE SESSION, HOW WAS YOUR CAR? “It was okay. Not a lot of pace, I didn’t feel like, from a speed-standpoint, so just trying to weigh out as we always do at these places now, how fast you want to go versus how you want your car to drive and you hope you can have a little bit of both. And, whoever can have a little bit of both tends to be pretty good. So, just trying to balance that out. It’s hard to tell, I feel like, until you can get all the information gathered and kind of go from there.”

SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAVE QUITE A BIG FOLLOWING COMING TO THE TRACK THIS WEEKEND: “Yeah, it is a special weekend for myself and the team. We have a lot of exciting things going on, starting with another weekend of Daniel’s Amigos. We are bringing a lot of people that are latinos out to the race track. We have pretty incredible numbers. We have over 5,000 subscribers for this weekend alone which is pretty amazing since this is just the fourth race we have been doing this. I feel like we are moving the needle. Last time in Las Vegas we had almost 2,000 and that was pretty unbelievable. We have high expectations for the weekend. Hopefully we can have fun with Daniel’s Amigos and have some good results on Sunday.”

YOUR CAR LOOKED PRETTY SPORTY IN PRACTICE. TALK ABOUT IT. “It was good. I think the first couple of runs weren’t quite as good as we wanted them to be, but once we kind of got the balance of our car a little better, I thought it was pretty good. I think the Toyota’s and the Gibbs’ guys are really fast. It’s going to be pretty tough to compete with that, but I think we are in the ballpark I would say with where we have been on 1.5-mile tracks. I feel really optimistic.”

DENNY HAMLIN MADE A COUPLE OF COMMENTS TODAY. HE THOUGHT YOUR CREW CHIEF WAS NOT IN CONTROL OF YOUR TEAM AND THAT WAS PART OF WHY THERE WAS A FIGHT. HE ALSO SAID WHEN ASKED WHETHER YOU WERE JUST TRYING TO GET IN HIS HEAD THAT YOU WERE JUST NOT THAT SMART. DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE A RIVALRY OR JUST DON'T LIKE EACH OTHER OR WHAT? “I am sure he will turn it in that way. Here are the facts."