NASCAR Cup PR

ERIK JONES, No. 20 Reser’s Main St. Bistro Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing - Qualifying Position: 4th - How have you been today? “Good. We have had good speed."

HOW WAS YOUR PRACTICE? OBVIOUSLY, THERE WERE A COUPLE OF CARS THAT CRASHED DURING THAT FIRST PRACTICE. “Yeah, I don’t know if it was due to the PJ-1 or not. I don’t really think so. I think it was just people pushing it to the edge to go faster and faster. We’ve kind of seen it the last couple of weeks, so everyone has figured out that you kind of have to be freer with these cars to gain speed. I think people were just pushing that limit. On our Geico Military Camaro, we just weren’t really happy with the balance on it. Hopefully in this second practice, we’ll hit on something and get better.”

WHAT ADJUSTMENTS DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU NEED TO MAKE THIS SEASON TO BE A LITTLE MORE SUCCESSFUL? “We just need to finish the race where we are running. In Kentucky, we were 18th with six or seven laps to go and we ended up 23rd one lap down. We’ve been having great runs ever since the All-Star weekend. It seems like the stars have lined up for us at the end of the race. Once that happens, we will start clicking off some spots in the points. But we were just behind the eight-ball for so long at the beginning of the season and we just need to climb our way out of it. We will continue to fight.”

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A SEASON LIKE THIS WHERE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’VE JUST BEEN MAKING SO MANY MISTAKES? “No, I mean 2015 I don’t really remember that year, I don’t really want to remember that year. But I just remember it being bad. I don’t know if we crashed a lot then or what. Lately, it’s just been a lot of mistakes on my part. Earlier in the year, it was just bad luck or whatever you want to call it. But lately, it’s just been my fault.”

“Mindset is to try to win and to put ourselves in a position to do that to try to get those extra five points that you can get and that trophy at the end of the day. Hopefully, we can achieve that success. We’ve got our Skittles colors with us this weekend. Those colors have always kind of boded well for us, so hopefully it continues a pattern.”

“Yeah, I can. It’s just a crazy story that people would barely believe if they heard it. It’s funny. It’s just crazy for me to think back a matter of a few years ago. It seems like so long ago just because of how far that I have been able to come in such a short time by doing stuff like that, basically, bugging people, bugging people like Bob Leavine (team owner, Leavine Family Racing).”

MATT TIFFT, No. 36 Surface Sunscreen Ford Mustang – HOW DO THE XFINITY AND CUP CARS DIFFER THEMSELVES FROM JUNE TO NOW? “I haven’t been in an XFINITY car since last year, so those cars tend to handle fairly differently than our cars do now just because of the high downforce package, so our corner speeds are a lot higher than what the XFINITY cars are, but I’m kind of interested to see this weekend because they applied the PJ1 here this weekend, so I’m hoping for our race that’s gonna allow for some more passing."

“I think the tires got really hard. Obviously, the tracks have changed a little bit with the PJ-1. It seems like the last couple of weeks, people have been crashing in practice. We just unloaded really loose and a little poorly, but hopefully we’ll gain on it and get better throughout the day.”

DANIEL SUAREZ, No. 41 Haas Automation Ford Mustang – HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS RACE WITH YOU BEING ON THE BUBBLE? “Every race is important, not just for the Playoffs. Every race is important and Pocono has been a good race track for us, not just this year but in year’s past. I really enjoy coming here a lot and we have a fast race car, so hopefully I can be in here talking to you guys again after qualifying. Track position as always is gonna be huge here and we’ve shown that we have good speed, so we just have to keep the car up there and hopefully have a good, clean day. I think that’s gonna be important as well. That’s something that, unfortunately in the last few weeks we’ve had very fast race cars, but we haven’t been able to show that because of a lot of little mistakes or bad luck situation. That won’t last for very long. We have to clean those things up and have the finishes that we deserve.”

KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Beer Gen X Ford Mustang – WHAT’S YOUR THOUGHT ON RESTARTS THIS YEAR?  HAS THERE BEEN MORE GAMESMANSHIP?  “I think you’re probably referring to last week at a certain point.  Here’s the thing, I don’t know if it’s gamesmanship this year anymore than last year."