NASCAR CUP SERIES
RICHMOND RACEWAY
TOYOTA OWNERS 400
TEAM CHEVY QUALIFYING REPORT
APRIL 1, 2023

CHEVROLET FILLS FRONT TWO ROWS AT RICHMOND
Past Richmond winners Bowman, Busch to start first, second in Camaro ZL1s

Due to morning rain and storms Saturday, race officials cancelled NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying sessions. The starting lineup for the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway has been determined by the NASCAR rule book.

TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL STARTING LINEUP:
POS. DRIVER
1st Alex Bowman, No. 48 Ally Camaro ZL1
2nd Kyle Busch, No. 8 3CHI Camaro ZL1
3rd William Byron, No. 24 RaptorTough.com Camaro ZL1
4th Ross Chastain, No. 1 Jockey Camaro ZL1
8th Ricky Stenhouse, No. 47 Kroger/Kraft Mac & Cheese Camaro ZL1
9th Kyle Larson, No. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM Camaro ZL1
16th Corey LaJoie, No. 7 BlueGreen Vacations Camaro ZL1
20th Daniel Suárez, No. 99 Quaker State Camaro ZL1
22nd Erik Jones, No. 43 U.S. AIR FORCE Camaro ZL1
23rd Noah Gragson, No. 42 Sunseeker Resort Camaro ZL1
25th AJ Allmendinger, No. 16 Action Industries Camaro ZL1
27th Austin Dillon, No. 3 BREZTRI Aerosphere Camaro ZL1
29th Justin Haley, No. 31 LeafFilter Gutter Protection Camaro ZL1
30th Josh Berry, No. 9 NAPA Auto Parts Camaro ZL1
35th Anthony Alfredo, No. 78 DUDE WIPES Camaro ZL1
36th Ty Dillon, No. 77 NationsGuard Camaro ZL1
37th Chandler Smith, No. 13 Quick Tie Products, Inc. Camaro ZL1

TOP-FIVE UNOFFICIAL STARTING LINEUP:
POS. DRIVER
1st Alex Bowman (Chevrolet)
2nd Kyle Busch (Chevrolet)
3rd William Byron (Chevrolet)
4th Ross Chastain (Chevrolet)
5th Tyler Reddick (Toyota)

· FS1 will broadcast the NASCAR Cup Series Toyota Owners 400 on Sunday, April 2, at 3:30 p.m. ET. Live coverage can also be found on MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.

ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1 – POLE WINNER

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE IN STARTING FIRST VERSUS STARTING FIFTH?

“Pit stall selection, I think, is probably the biggest thing. You’d probably still have a pretty good pit stall at fifth, though. So not a huge difference. Having clean air and all that at the start is important. Hopefully we’ll take advantage of a good pit pick and have a good, solid day. This has been a hard place for me to get a hold of in the past, even with a win here. So just trying to maximize the day and keep chipping away at it.”

IS IT ANY DIFFERENT WALKING INTO THE GARAGE TO THE FIRST PIT STALL RATHER THAN THE 16TH?

“It’s definitely nice. It’s something I haven’t done in my career. So it’s cool to lead the points with this crew. Obviously we’re a handful of races in, so it’s a small sample size. But we have had a good start to the season, which feels really good. It’s my job to keep that going.”

WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER FROM YOUR WIN HERE A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO THAT YOU CAN APPLY TOMORROW?

“We’ve had some strong runs here. Honestly last year in the spring, we had a really strong run. We had a tire issue on one run that probably made our day look worse than it was. Really the day we won, we were really good on long runs. We struggled a little bit on the short run and had an uncontrolled tire to start Stage Three, so I had to start at the back and still drove to third before we got that late caution. We’ve kind of been hit and miss here a bit, but hopefully I can apply some of that long-run knowledge that I have or what I’m looking for in the racecar to help us tomorrow. I feel like you’re going to see a lot of long runs for the most part. With no downforce on the thing, it’s going to be a lot about taking care of your tires.”

WE’VE SEEN THIS BE A STRATEGY RACE IN THE PAST WITH THE WORN-OUT SURFACE. WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR TOMORROW?

“Long runs and a ton of tire fall-off… kind of the same Richmond we’ve always seen. This is the one place that I don’t think that the downforce package is going to really change much. The tire fall-off always has been so high since this place has gotten worn out; it’s always been kind of what it is. I don’t even really feel like the race changed much when we went from the previous gen car to this car, so it’ll be interesting to see. I could be totally wrong but I think we’ll hopefully have a good day tomorrow.”

ON BEING BACK WITH GREG IVES.

“It’s been cool. He had a short retirement, right? I’m glad to have Greg back and glad to have that depth at Hendrick Motorsports to have a guy like that to fill in when needed. I enjoy working with Greg, and it’s been good to have him back.”

LEADING THE POINTS, BEST AVERAGE FINISH AND SO ON… WHAT’S BEEN GOING RIGHT FOR THIS TEAM?

“Execution. We’ve maximized our bad days. We struggled a little bit at Phoenix but still ended up in the top-10. At Atlanta, if the last lap goes a little different then we finish in the top-10 there, too. I feel like just maximizing our bad days and maximizing each little part and piece of everything throughout the races. This is a small sample size. It feels good to be leading points and to have this season that we’re having so far. We’re six races in and so much can change. We’re trying to continue that each and every week to keep that going.”

WHAT HAS IT BEEN AT RICHMOND THAT HAS BEEN A STRUGGLE?

“It’s been tough. We’ve had good days here and then we’ve had really bad days. You have a good day here and I’ve kind of left… Like last spring or even the race we won, I’m like ‘Man, I know exactly what we need and I know the feel that I want to have.’ Then we come back for the fall and be confused and can’t find that or can’t get the racecar to do the same things or feel the same way. So we’ve been a little more hit-and-miss than we want to be. We didn’t practice so it’s hard to say, but I think we identified some things that can help me. Hopefully with the right direction in the racecar we’ll be strong tomorrow.”

ON THE RESPECT BETWEEN DRIVERS ON-TRACK.

“They’re completely right. There’s no way around it. That second-to-last restart at COTA was a good example of that. I did not want to go down there and run into the 99 and the 19. The problem is that if I follow the 99 into the corner, then I get absolutely run over by everybody. So I get left just to try and defend that, but I still get runover by everybody and shoved into the corner. Fortunately it worked out for us but didn’t for those guys. If you are the super-clean guy and you’re not aggressive or anything, you’re typically going to be the guy getting used up. The cars are about indestructible at this point. The old car, you’d have tire rubs or knock the radiator out of it. We hit each other so hard all the time. At the Coliseum, it felt like you were crashing on every restart. It’s kind of crazy how hard we run into each other. I don’t like it. I’ve always tried to race super clean and I feel like I’ve been one of the cleaner, more fair guys at times – almost to a detriment. I don’t love racing like that but at some point if you’re not aggressive, you’re going to just finish bad every week. It’s also my job to maximize my finishing position for my race team and doing the best I can to achieve that and not be in the drama; we were in the drama a little bit last week but it’s a pain in the butt.”

WHAT’S THE FIX FOR THAT?

“I don’t think you can blame a racecar when we have three pedals, a steering wheel and a shifter. Everybody has the same thing and can avoid that. We don’t do it on the initial start of the races. We just do it at the end. So at that point, I don’t think you can just blame the car. I think the problem is that that gets rewarded. That style of driving absolutely gets rewarded where we are right now. I don’t know what the fix is. I think it’s a tough spot. I personally would love to see us do restarts in a different manner at road courses, whether that’s how F1 does it or just something different. The Turn One stuff at COTA and at Indy and possibly at Chicago is a bit much, but I think it’s a shared blame between the drivers and cars. It’s the situation we’re in. Every driver here is paid to maximize their finish and everybody sees that being aggressive and doing that stuff is going to help you. At some point, you’re just stuck in a corner where you have to or you’re just giving up positions, which if you give up positions, your team isn’t going to be happy with you. It’s an awkward box that we’re all in. Trying to tiptoe around that and be on the right side of things is tough sometimes.”

THIS THREE-RACE, SHORT-TRACK SWING COMING UP… YOUR THOUGHTS ON GOING INTO THOSE RACES AND IS THERE A STRATEGY FOR NEXT WEEK?

“For next week, I don’t know. It’s obviously an interesting race. I’m interested to see how it plays out. I unfortunately looked at the weather (for Bristol) today, and I’m a little nervous. Hopefully that changes. I think it’s a bit different. It’s somewhat fun depending on how the racetrack is and how the race goes for you. I love short-track racing. This place and Martinsville are super-technical. This place, especially, in trying to keep the rear tires on it and trying to find little bits of grip and trying to be smart when you’re racing guys is difficult at times but technical and fun. I like this stretch. It’s some good tracks for us. Hopefully racing the sprint car a little more helps me at Bristol even though they couldn’t be more different. At least I’ll have some dirt laps. I don’t know… we’ll see how it goes.”

THOUGHTS ON THIS PACKAGE AND HOW IT WILL PRODUCE AT MARTINSVILLE.

“I don’t think it’ll change much here. Hopefully it changes Martinsville because last year was not what we all wanted for Martinsville. It wasn’t what we all came to love about that place. Hopefully it improves the racing there… getting the tire to fall off, getting the rear tires to wear out, creating forward drive issues to where you can’t just downshift and accelerate off the corner and stop in the center of the corner and beat the guy behind you. We’ll see. I’m hopeful. It’s a step in the right direction. I think it’s really going to be about the weather, how the rubber lays down and how the tire falls off more than anything.”

About Chevrolet
Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world’s largest car brands, available in 79 countries with more than 3.2 million cars and trucks sold in 2020. Chevrolet models include electric and fuel-efficient vehicles that feature engaging performance, design that makes the heart beat, passive and active safety features and easy-to-use technology, all at a value. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.

Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Richmond 1 Qualifying | Saturday, April 1, 2023

Practice and qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series was canceled today at Richmond Raceway due to rain. Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 Castrol Edge Ford Mustang for Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing, stopped by the media center and talked about how the rain will impact the weekend and also about the improvement RFK has made this year.

CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Castrol Edge Ford Mustang – HOW DOES THIS RAINOUT CHANGE THINGS? “It’s not too bad. I guess we’ll start really well out of it. We were really good here last year and I guess that gives me a lot of confidence that we’re gonna be just fine. If last year didn’t go as well as it did, I would be a lot more nervous right now.”

WHAT’S THE MOOD LIKE AROUND THE SHOP WITH HOW IMPROVED YOU GUYS ARE THIS YEAR? “There was a lot of optimism at this time last year, but not a lot of results to go with that. It was just a tough time. There was a lot of development and a lot of stuff going on and we’re just in a way better place this year. We’re making some awesome progress. We’re not starting from scratch with so much new. We’ve definitely had a lot of speed. We’ve had some bad luck along the way too and some good luck as well, but a lot of hard work and good, fast race cars will fix a lot of things.”

WE HAVE BEEN TO SO MANY DIFFERENT KIND OF TRACKS, SO DO YOU HAVE A FEEL FOR WHAT YOUR TEAM’S STRENGTH IS RIGHT NOW? “The speed has been there at all of these different style of tracks so far, COTA maybe not as strong as we wanted, but we’ve had speed at a lot of different styles, so it’s not that any one is standing out to us right now. I think we have a lot of potential anywhere we go, which gives you confidence you’re not having to circle one race and put all your eggs in one basket.”

HOW HAVE THINGS EVOLVED WITH BRAD NOW THAT YOU GUYS KNOW EACH OTHER BETTER THAN A YEAR AGO? “It’s just getting closer and building up that friendship and that relationship within the shop, and getting to know how we’re gonna operate and how we’re gonna find speed together, what our driving styles are like. There are a lot of things that have definitely started to mesh a lot better as we’ve gotten through the offseason and into the beginning of this year. It’ll continue to get better, but it’s definitely way more comfortable now with where we’re at and knowing what we can say and what we’re focusing on and what we need to work on.”

YOU DID THE TIRE TEST AT NORTH WILKESBORO. WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE SURFACE AND DID IT COMPARE TO ANY OTHER TRACK? “I wasn’t surprised by it because I had heard a lot of stories, but the best I can compare it to is Berlin, Michigan when we were ARCA racing. That’s a track where you got wide-open maybe twice during an entire race. I felt like at Wilkesboro we were able to do a little better than that, but it definitely wears on tires hard, so that’s gonna be a really fun race. It was a good time going out there and I think it’s gonna be really neat when we get all cars on track for the All-Star Race.”

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU TO GO BACK TO A PLACE LIKE THAT WITH SO MUCH HISTORY? “It’s really neat. That was a little bit before my time, so it’s not something that I have a real personal connection to like a Darlington. I love going to Darlington because of the history and because I watched growing up and was able to go there early in my career in Xfinity, so we don’t have that at Wilkesboro. At the same time, you know the history behind it and you love that we’re going back short track racing. It’s also really just cool to see it evolve from that abandoned racetrack that you drove by on the way to Bristol twice a year and watch the trees grow up higher and higher and just watched it go away to watch it making that recovery and coming back. That’s the cool part, to see how much progress has been made and that we were actually on track. I went up there when (Earnhardt) Junior got that group together to go help clean up and get it scanned for iRacing, which we assumed was the last saving grace for it was to get it digitally cataloged so that when it did disappear there was still some evidence, but it’s become a whole lot more than that. It’s just really neat to see it evolve here rather rapidly to get to the point where we can get back on track and I’m looking forward to the race. It’s gonna be really cool.”

NASCAR CUP SERIES
RICHMOND RACEWAY
TOYOTA OWNERS 400
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
APRIL 1, 2023

KYLE BUSCH, NO. 8 3CHI CAMARO ZL1, met with the media prior to the NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying session at Richmond Raceway. Press Conference Transcript:

AFTER LAST WEEK, THERE WAS MORE TALK ABOUT RESPECT IN THE FIELD. WHY IS IT THAT WAY?

“I think there’s a culmination of a lot of different things, too many to list or that I can dream up and think of. Some of it stems from how these younger guys are trained to race, what they do and how they are told what to do from a young age, how to be aggressive and things like that… go out there and a take-no-prisoners kind of thing. But then I feel like there are a lot of guys that just… I don’t know. It’s crazy. A lot of them are friends off the track, too, and then they’re running over each other on the track and even teammates are running over each other. I guess there’s not enough payback per se, even though you look at the Denny (Hamlin) and (Ross) Chastain thing and they’ve continued to go back and forth a few times. It’s just not good. I think the road courses kind of (lend) to a more aggressive nature. I think it’s a little bit of the car, too, where you can just bash into the back of somebody and you don’t have anything that hurts your racecar, where the old car you’d crush a nose in or break a radiator or something like that if you were too dumb about it. Now you can flat-out punt somebody and nothing happens to your racecar. There are a lot of different variables.”

THERE’S SOME TALK ABOUT CHANGING DOUBLE-FILE RESTARTS ON ROAD COURSES TO SINGLE-FILE. IS THAT SOMETHING YOU’D LIKE TO SEE?

“We talked a lot about respect last year at Indy. The Indy road course is super-terrible for it because you have that long straightaway where we’re all bunched up two-by-two then you fan out four-wide and you have to come down to two-wide or even single-wide trying to get through Turn One or Turn Two. The same kind of thing happens at COTA and the Chicago road course, who knows what the hell is going to happen there. If somebody gets turned sideways in one corner, it’s going to be a track block. That’s going to be interesting. Single-file for Chicago, I think there’s no question that you can’t go without it. You have to go single-file. It would probably help a little bit just to spread some out. You’re still going to get some guys that dive-bomb and go three-wide if they’re at least relatively close enough because the car allows you to do that. The car allows you to take that chance of throwing it in on somebody and knocking into them and you don’t care.”

YOU MENTIONED THE FIRST CORNER AT THE INDIANAPOLIS ROAD COURSE. IS THERE A SOLUTION FOR THAT OR IS THAT AMONG THE REASONS WHY THE OVAL WOULD BE BETTER?

“The solution obviously could be single-file restarts. A solution also could be that when you leave – I think Turn 13 is the sweeper before the front straightaway – so between turns 12 and 13 if the leader was allowed to leave there and start building speed, you’re still going to have the tail of the field that’s braking getting into Turn 10 and have to come through that S-section before getting onto the frontstrech. So to me, that could be a solution where you’re going to break up the field a little bit and get some separation so you don’t have as much calamity.”

WOULD YOU PREFER TO GO BACK TO THE OVAL?

“Yeah. I don’t know why we ever went to the road course, to be honest with you. I don’t think it really did an up-tick or change a thing at Indy. If we can’t do a good enough job getting enough people to Indy to suffice us staying on the oval, then we need to go somewhere else. I’ll say that about any track.”

YOU’D LIKE TO WIN EVERY RACE, BUT HOW IMPORTANT IS TO THE SPORT AND TO FANS THAT OTHER MANUFACTURERS HAVE FINALLY WON RACES?

“Parity is always good, right? Last year we had 19 winners (from) every manufacturer. I think the guy who won the most races – I think it was four or five – so it’s been awhile since it’s been that few of races by the top winner of the series. Typically you see seven, eight, nine, 10 races of a guy who wins. It just showed good parity. I think a lot of that has more to do with this Next-Gen racecar than it does the manufacturers. They’re all working hard and doing the best with what they’ve got, and we continue to build on what our program is with RCR and Chevrolet. Hopefully we can keep heading in the right direction.”

IS PARITY A GOOD THING IN RACING?

“If you look at F1, I don’t think there’s much parity. You could argue that if you turn on NASCAR races, you kind of don’t really know who’s going to win each week. You know who’s good at particular racetracks and sometimes those guys – myself – will only win one race a year, so they’re not winning every single week. You turn on an F1 race and you wonder if anyone is going to beat Red Bull right now; it was Mercedes so there’s obviously a distinct difference between our two series.”

YOU MENTIONED LAST WEEK THAT YOU HADN’T HAD ISSUES WITH TYLER REDDICK AND YOU RACED HIM CLEAN. WHAT IS IT THAT HE HAS DONE WHERE YOU HAVEN’T HAD THOSE ISSUES?

“For me and Reddick, we’ve always raced around each other, we’ve always been cordial with each other and given each other room. If you kind of lay on a guy a little bit, no big deal. You give the benefit of the doubt, but you haven’t had guys that have flat-out run over you. Reddick was one of those so you kind of remember those. There are a few others on the opposite end of the spectrum that if it had been them in front, you’d throw it off in there and you don’t care if it sticks. You’d rather you stick and they don’t. So that’s just the nature of our sport and what racing has been forever. I talked about it weeks ago with the past generation of Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Bobby Labonte, Mark Martin and all those guys on how they did things and how I remember growing up watching that and seeing that. Yeah, you had your Earnhardts out there and some of the other guys who were a little rough sometimes and you’re going to have that occasionally. But the week-to-week nature of it and the same guy being in the headlines running over somebody every single weekend is a bit tiresome. I remember Ernie Irvin back in the day who obviously did a little bit of that and had to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with the whole garage area of basically admitting his mistakes. You’re never going to see that in this day.”

IS IT ANY DIFFERENT ON HOW YOU MEND FENCES WITH TEAMMATES VERSUS NON-TEAMMATES?

“I think that has to do more with the team owner. When I had an issue with Jeff Gordon a long time ago, Rick (Hendrick) brought us in, sat us down and we talked. Myself and Denny once or twice; once for sure in the All-Star race but then after that there were a couple of speedway racing incidents where we had to agree to disagree on our philosophies on speedway racing. Obviously he’s won a hell of a lot more than I have at those, so he’s better at that. But that was where Joe (Gibbs) had to get involved and kind of talk us through our differences. That’s kind of where it lies in my opinion. When I’ve had drivers at KBM that don’t get along or whatever, I talk to them individually, then I bring them together and I talk to them together to try and go over that stuff. Last week looking at the Suarez incident and just the replay incident I saw – I didn’t go back and watch – Chastain dove it in like anyone would and ran into the back of a guy who ran into the back of Suarez. It wasn’t maliciously intent for the 1 to hit the 99; it just happened that way through chain reaction.”

WE HEAR A LOT ABOUT YOUNG GUYS COMING UP SPENDING A LOT OF TIME IN SIMULATION. DO YOU SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN SIMULATION AND DO YOU FIND IT A BENEFIT?

“I have been in the Chevy sim more in the last two months of me being allowed in it than I had been in three years in the Toyota sim. Trying to get intertwined and engrained in the system and how our setups are, how it feels and how it drives. I did the COTA tire test and then I went in there and had to model the tire and build the tire to what I felt like the tire should feel like. We have a rotation of drivers that go in after races so I did Phoenix a little bit and I did COTA again. There’s a bunch of stuff that happens behind the scenes. What’s been most useful for us probably I would say is Fontana. Fontana was really close. It was probably closest to the sim that we had on a real track with laptimes and everything. Our car feel was right on point. We won that one, so that was really rewarding. Then we go to Vegas and Phoenix and you struggle and you can run seventh to 10th. It has a similar feel but you don’t have the same speed. Like your laptimes are off. If we were running the laptimes that we ran in the sim in real life, we’d be up front and leading all the races. But it’s just about finding that grip. Something’s not correlating between the sim and the shop and the car that gets built and brought to the track. We need to work on that.”

SO THAT’S WHERE YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF RACING AS LONG AS YOU’VE BEEN DOING IT WOULD BE MORE BENEFICIAL TO YOU THAN THE SIM IS TO A YOUNG DRIVER?

“I’m the best sim we’ve got. I’m the most expensive one, too! I take pride in that because I feel like I give very detailed (information) and can explain a lot about the feedback of the racecar and what it’s doing, it’s attitude, it’s nature, what happens on a short run and a long run, all of that stuff. That’s really where you get a lot of information – the post-race meetings we have and dissecting me and basically downloading me and getting the information so the crew chiefs can go back. Last year we struggled on sim and not seeing the correlation. So a lot of times we would just go off our last race notes, what the setup was, what I said needed to be better and then just change the car around some of those ideas, not validate it on sim and go to the track and we were OK. That right now is not how we’re doing it. This year, we’re going to sim and trying to make that tool as representative as we can.”

About Chevrolet
Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world’s largest car brands, available in 79 countries with more than 3.2 million cars and trucks sold in 2020. Chevrolet models include electric and fuel-efficient vehicles that feature engaging performance, design that makes the heart beat, passive and active safety features and easy-to-use technology, all at a value. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.