Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
South Point 400 Media Availability — Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Saturday, October 3, 2026

RFK Racing drivers Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece came into the Las Vegas Motor Speedway infield media center before today’s NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying session to meet with reporters. Both discussed the recent news that Brad Keselowski will be leaving the organization as a driver at the end of this season.

CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Castrol Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “Brad has been a great mentor and has meant a ton to our resurgence and getting back to the point where we’re in the playoffs and in the hunt to win races and won a handful of races over the last several years. He will certainly be missed in a lot of ways, and I think that on the other side of it is we’re gonna have to compete against him now. We know what he’s capable of because we’ve been able to experience it week in and week out for a long time. It’s definitely an unfortunate part of how it’s rolling around, but I certainly wish him all the best going forward. Knowing Brad, he’s got a plan. I don’t know what that is, but he doesn’t do anything without a plan.”

IS THIS A BIG BLOW THAT WILL BE HARD TO FILL AT RFK? “Ultimately, no. Brad has been great and has been a huge part of that, but we’ve got a lot of really sharp people and really talented people. We have some roles to fill and we’ll work hard and try to make the best decisions there. If we can get that right, then we’ll be able to keep up and keep pushing forward. We’ve kind of established a great foundation and we owe so much of that to Brad and that will help set us going forward on a strong path.”

WHAT PART OF LOSING HIM IMPACTS THE ORGANIZATION THE MOST? “We’ve talked about it so much through the years. Brad has worn a lot of different hats in front of me, whether it’s the friend side of it, the owner’s side of it, the teammate’s side of it. You’d have a really hard time saying it’s just one thing. That being said, his knowledge and expertise through the years has been instrumental in helping me continue to improve. That’s been my case everywhere I’ve been and all the teammates I’ve had through the years that have been able to gather so much from them and Brad has been just on a step above that, just driving for him and with him over the past five years. We have a little more time under our belts together and it’s led to a lot of success for myself and I’m certainly not losing sight of any of that.”

DID YOU HAVE A HEADS-UP WHAT WAS HAPPENING? “I wasn’t completely in the dark, but it’s not like I knew something was coming down the line. We’ve had some conversations, not to the pinpoint knowledge part of it, but from both sides – from Brad and right before letting me know, and from Chip’s side as well.”

RYAN PREECE, No. 60 Smith’s/Tree Top Ford Mustang Dark Horse – FROM THE OUTSIDE THERE’S A FEELING THAT LOSING BRAD IS A BIG BLOW FOR THE ORGANIZATION AND ONE THAT WOULD BE HARD TO OVERCOME. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT? “For me, I think it’s an opportunity for Chris, myself. Chris has been there for a long time and I feel like we have a lot to say and hopefully it’s gonna help the direction, but Brad has been a great teammate, a great part of their ownership group in rebuilding, but the house needs to keep being built, so we’re gonna keep trying to do everything right and still have success.”

WHERE DOES LOSING HIM AFFECT THE ORGANIZATION THE MOST? “I want to think that most people that are coming to RFK want to work with Chris, myself, Brad and everybody. I think, for me, he was a good teammate. I’ve got nothing but great things to say about Brad, but I understand this sport. I’ve been on the side where things aren’t going your way, so as far as all the other things, that’s probably a question for Chip. For me, I have nothing but good things to say about Brad as a teammate and I’ve really enjoyed racing with him.”

IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU WILL BE IN A CHARTERED CAR NEXT YEAR WE WOULD ASSUME? DOES THAT HELP YOUR COMFORT LEVEL FOR MAKING RACES LIKE THE DAYTONA 500? “I assume. I’m comfortable with being uncomfortable, but it would probably be nice to go to Daytona knowing that we can lock ourselves in without even needing to qualify in the top two. I’ve been a part of that rodeo before. It’s nice to be on the side where you’re chartered.”

WHAT WAS THE IMMEDIATE EMOTION YOU HAD WHEN YOU HEARD? “I think there’s just a lot of questions that we’re working on answering. What I’ll say is this is an opportunity to keep building the house. It’s not gonna get torn down. I see a lot of glass half empty things and I’m a glass half full guy. I think we have a really strong foundation at RFK and right now I’m a racer and it’s taken me too damn long to win races, and I feel like we want to keep going that way.”

TOYOTA RACING – Denny Hamlin
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes

LAS VEGAS (October 3, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to the media on Saturday prior to the NASCAR Cup Series race from Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 National Debt Relief Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing

What tracks are you worried about coming up?

“I don’t know. I’m just so week to week. It’s hard for me to look that far forward. I obviously know the schedule, but, I mean, yeah, if I had any issues of any tracks, if it were, if it were Talladega or if it were Homestead, the position that I’m in is dictated off of what I do this weekend. So, full focus is the week to week, truthfully, and that builds you the cushion or the gap that you’re going to end up facing later on when you get to those tracks.”

How critical is it to create a gap from the rest of the Chase field?

“Well, I think ultimately, it’s a numbers game that, of course, if you’re racing less cars, you have a better chance than if you’re racing more. When you had to old final four, it was four cars, and you had a 25% chance. Now there’s percentages would change based off of your track history, how good have you been there and stuff like that. If you can separate yourself by putting really good finishes and wins together early in a Chase, then typically, yeah, you’re going to narrow the field down and narrow the competition down. So that goes back into the do the work now and then you check out the results later, type of mentality. But overall, yeah, it’s all just going to work itself out, however it is, and there’s kind of peaks and valleys to this that some teams had a rough, maybe week or two, and I think that, they could end up going on a run and winning a couple, put themselves right back in it, too. So you just never know.”

Does the weather impact what you bring to the track this weekend?

“We have we have to always evolve, different setups and things like that, for different changes, track changes, tracks aging, things like that. It’s going to be lots of sun, pretty warm, and so a little bit more off throttle time, more than likely than what we’ve had here over the last couple. So, of course, to me, as a driver, I think about my role, what I need to do. It will change this weekend compared to what we’ve had over the last couple, certainly. We’ll find out kind of where the pace is indicative for – the pace is, this time, compared to where it was last time, and kind of play our strategy off of that.”

Do you think still need 40 points per race or has that thought adjusted as you have gone through the Chase?

“Well, it always, I think it’s a reasonable goal. I think that’s what we kind of averaged in the regular season-ish, and we had a really good regular season. So, I mean, if someone’s going to go out there and perform great in the last 10, and negate kind of what they did in the first 25, then that’s great performance. I think that it was a goal set out that I think most people wanted to achieve, and they were on pace for that, but that doesn’t mean that that’s going to be good enough. I’m definitely not driving to a point total. I’m driving to try to get the best result, and then stack as many points as we can. I felt as though if you average it out, that’s what you needed.”

How difficult would it be to add a car for next season at this point?

“I mean, extremely difficult, this late in the game, October 1st-ish. I don’t, yeah, I don’t see how that’d be possible, but nothing, I mean, it certainly wouldn’t be a very strong entry, I wouldn’t think. Adding car is more than just putting that car on the racetrack. You have that personnel, where’s the crew coming from? It takes years and years to get a third car going and going competitively.”

How much do you share between the teams at Joe Gibbs Racing?

“Truthfully, it’s all kind of open between all the race teams. They all each know what each one has. The 19 (Chase Briscoe) just had better track position than I did at the end. I don’t think there was any speed difference between his car and my car. I think he jumped us on a pit stop, and came out ahead of us. He got the front row, that put me now back to the second row. That’s all she wrote from there, and so it just the competition’s so close. It’s all those little, small details that truthfully matter. It seemed like the race kind of played out very well in the 5’s (Kyle Larson) favor of how long the runs were, when he caught traffic. It was the end of the race or the end of the stage, and so, things kind of worked out very interestingly last week, and it worked out perfectly for the 5. We chipped away and stayed right where we were at. Never could get past that hump of where we were, but we always keep track of kind of where all our teammates are, the comments that they have, and how we can improve our speed, if we’re just comparing amongst each other, it’s always analyzing, where I need to be better or where the team needs to be better relative to our teammates, because we know that that is the data mark that we have to pay attention to.”

How does this track challenge you?

“It’s very challenging, because the two corners are just so different. How you approach turn one is far different than how you approach turn three here. This track is far more narrow than a lot of the mile and a half that we have. It’s a super aero-sensitive racetrack, especially in turn one. We have a weekend that’s out of characteristic hot this weekend, so there’s just this track brings so many variables. I think that we’ve been here during windstorms, and there’s all kinds of different weather and stuff, so again, you change a little variable, one thing or another out here in the desert, and it completely changes the racetrack.”

Are you having to readjust what feels like a big gap or small gap in the points?

“If you could win, yes. If you can win, absolutely. If you don’t think you can win, then the gaps are the same as what they were last year, but everyone, I would think, in contention, thinks that they can. So, I would say they feel smaller than years past.”

How do you take the information and get better from the last race you ran there?

“Well, I mean, like Martinsville, just as an example, what you brought up, it was a dominating race, and obviously, a little pit miscue, and a loose wheel there on that final run. But I don’t know, I just, when I prepare, the result really, whatever the result was, doesn’t really matter to me. I certainly know what happened, where we were strong in the spring is no correlation to what we will be eight months down the road. So, I don’t prepare any differently based off of kind of how I ran. I just figure out how I can go faster the next time. Every race is broken down the same. Not much changes based off of the result.”

How do you stay fresh mentally at this point of the season?

“I mean, it’s difficult this part of the year, for sure. Just simply that the wear and the tear, the age, and things like that, it’s a grind, but I’ve actually taken a little more time off. My team really does a good job of front-loading appearances early in the year to that way than give me some more time for the Chase and things like that. So, we always were conscious of saving some in the tank for the last stretch run. I felt like that’s really worked well for us, and that’s something that we approach the same this year. It’s hard, it’s a grind, but you have to go get that extra little bit, that you feel like you don’t have.”

As someone who spent a lot of time with Kyle Busch, will you focus on it more with all of the tributes scheduled to take place?

“Yeah, certainly. I think that this is a place I just know that the Busch brothers, especially, really took a lot of pride in running, wanting to run well here, as their hometown. I like all the tributes and things like that, because just so much in our society, you move on to the next thing, right? Then it’s so easy to forget, and just when you have these tributes that just keep going on, especially throughout the year, it’s, like, a really good reminder, right, that you need to put things in perspective and helps us keep remembering someone that was so big and so influential in our sport. I say keep doing them as long as we can.”

What impact does losing someone like Brad Keselowski do to a team?

“I would find it really, really hard to do what apparently Brad’s (Keselowski) titles were. I just went about it differently in the sense of that I have a grand vision, and then I hired the people to then, you play that out. You make that happen. I’ll put in the big puzzle pieces. You guys fill in all the little ones, and we’re going to create the picture that we want here. I couldn’t imagine having to do my job as a driver, even if I’m even with that team, and then doing Dave Rogers’ (Sr. Director, Competition, 23XI Racing) job also, there is absolutely no way that I’d be able to do it entirely too much work, but we’re not privy to, like, what structure was around them, right? Was he in the building 10 hours a day, like those guys or did he was he doing it to where it was that he had the people in place? I don’t know, it just seems like that would be a really tough task to be the comp director and the driver, because the two are very different. But again, I don’t know if it was just visions and things like that, he was having other people play out. But it’s certainly challenging. Again, I just couldn’t imagine taking on both, and I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for workloads. So, it’ll be something that certainly is going to be a pretty big change over there. Obviously, there was a jump in performance, when he went over there, and whether that be through – could that be manufacturer stuff? Could that be technical stuff? Very wide range of reasons why teams run better after certain times or not, but, you know, the proof will be in what happens years down the road, right? And so, it certainly is going to be a big reset for the whole Roush Fenway group.”

How has the intermediate racing changed as the car has continued to evolve?

“I think the field has just gotten close, because there’s not been any real big rules changes when it comes to, like, major aerodynamics or there’s been no horsepower changes on the big tracks. We’re years and years into this, and if you give teams more than two or three shots at one racetrack, the clump of the lap time is just going to get tighter, and then it becomes the track position racing, like we’ve seen. Now, that doesn’t mean someone can’t overcome it. I mean, fast cars still can make their way through the field, but you’ve really got to build a gap on the field in order to do that. It’s just very hard otherwise.”

Where can you trace your competitiveness too? What has Michael Jordan taught you about being a competitor?

“I think some of it is you’re just, it’s born into genetics. I mean, when I was really young, before I even got into racing, I was absolutely pissed when my grandma would beat me at putt putt (laughter). I’ve always been that way. I’ve always been a really sore loser. I think some of that is genetics, and I think that some of it is, once you get a taste of success – there’s some people that that is their dopamine hit, that then they have to go get more. So then you have to figure out the roadmap to how you’re going to get that. That’s when the competitive side of it starts to kick in. But every person is different. I mean, every person’s drive is different. There’s 36 drivers, and I can tell you, not one of them is the same in their level of how competitive they are. Now, we might be talking in the margins, but everyone’s a little different. Everybody’s want is a little bit different. So, yeah, I don’t know. I blame my parents, I guess, as far as the relationship with Michael (Jordan, co-owner, 23XI Racing), of course, I’ve only got to see him again as retired, Michael. I was not around during his playing days, and so I learned, like, the rest of you about his competitive nature through documentaries and things like that. I understood all of the crazy tyrant things that he would say because it was something, it’d be something I would say. I think we’re very, very similar in that regard, which is why we think very similar lots of times on decisions that we’ve made.”

What do you think of the scheme that Kyle Larson is running? I know you were there when he won at Bristol.

“That one was a heartbreaker. I had that race in the bag. I think my fuel pump cut off. One of the wild things in my career. My fuel pump shut off with a few laps to go, something like that, and I believe it was him and (Jeff) Burton maybe battling at the end, so I definitely remember the car, and certainly it brings back tons of memories and good memories, because that was really fun time in our sport, the fans didn’t think it was a very fun time with that car, but it was really the height of the sport, and a lot of good things going on, and I am really looking forward to seeing it in my camera (laughter).”

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NASCAR Cup Series
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Team Chevy Driver Quotes
October 3, 2026

Kyle Larson, driver of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying session at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The current points leader and three-time Cup Series winner at the 1.5-mile Nevada circuit will be sporting a special paint scheme this weekend to honor Kyle Busch.

Media Availability Quotes:

Kyle, you are running a special paint scheme this weekend. Do you want to talk about that, how that came together and what that’s all about?

“Yeah, it’s a tribute and a throwback to when Kyle (Busch) ran at Hendrick Motorsports. He got a few wins in that paint scheme. Yeah, it was just important to at least mention it, to try and convince them if we could do it. And thankfully, everybody at HendrickCars.com and Hendrick Motorsports were all on board. It’s a beautiful paint scheme, and definitely I think for everybody, it brings back some cool memories. Excited to get it on track at his home track and hopefully have a good weekend.”

In the process of having the scheme designed and unveiled at the shop, did anyone within company leadership talk about their favorite stories of that time or them working with Kyle? Is there any kind of standout story that was shared amongst the group?

“I mean, I haven’t been around it enough or around the shop this week to get the intimate stories, but I’m sure throughout the weekend, we’ll all hear a lot of that as we get back to the shop. And hopefully, after a good weekend, we’ll hear more. I wasn’t around this whole week to be in the shop, to see it on the shop floor and dressed up. But, yeah, like I said, I’m sure when we get back, we’ll all hear more and reminisce.”

As the Next Gen car has evolved on intermediate tracks, whether it’s just the teams learning how to optimize the car or the various changes they’ve made to the aero and things like that to keep the car rounded, has that changed the fundamental way that you guys race on intermediate tracks, or has it still been pretty similar over the course of four or five years?

“Sure, I’m sure there’s been differences along the way as those small changes have been added. I think the biggest thing for me has been the tires have changed, I think, quite a bit since we first came to intermediates. I remember when we first would come to these style of tracks, you would just build so loose throughout a run. And now, you have that half as bad. I feel like the cars are easier to drive on the tire side of things throughout a duration of a run. And then, just teams getting the cars more optimized probably helps that, as well. So, yeah, it’s definitely more track position dependent than it was when we first debuted this racecar. As you would imagine, things would progress to being this way. Teams have just learned a lot, and it makes executing a solid weekend from start to finish that much more important than it even was before, which it was very important back then.”

It says Tiny Kyle, is that right, on the door? Is that the name you gave yourself, or the name that Kyle and Brexton (Busch) gave you?

“Yeah, that’s what Kyle and Brexton (Busch) always would call me. We put it on the car for the Charlotte weekend, and when we decided to do this paint scheme, I mean, we had to put ‘Tiny Kyle’ on there. That’s what Kyle always called me. And then, Brexton calls me that, as well.”

Did you like that?

“Yeah, I don’t mind it. I never minded it. I always thought it was funny. You know, it’s kind of cool that it’s more of like a joke, I think, on their behalf to me because Brexton’s about my size already, and Kyle was much bigger than me. But yeah, I like it, for sure.”

I know it’s not a two-driver race, at least not yet, but competing against Denny (Hamlin), a good friend of yours, what do you have to do to beat him?

“Well, you have to run good all race, every race. I think he’s got the best average finish in the Next Gen era, probably the best average finish that we’ve seen in a very, very long time. So, with that, you’ve got to be ultra-consistent. He’s just not going to have DNFs, and his bad days would be around 10th. So, with that, you can’t have DNFs. I mean, obviously, you have Talladega out there where anything can happen, but he still seems to find a way to finish those even. So, yeah, you’ve just got to be consistent.”

Obviously the goal is to maximize the points you’re getting, but how critical is it as we’re getting to the halfway point of the Chase now? Is it to build a gap to other Chase contenders and really separate yourself from the rest of the contenders?

“Yeah, I mean, obviously, I would love to. I would love to continue to put together weekends like we have, where we’ve gained a lot of points, just to stretch it out. That way, if you do have a blowup race, you won’t fall down the order a lot. But I mean, that’s not guaranteed.

I mean, that’s really not on my mind when I’m out there. I’m just kind of treating it as just trying to get a good practice, qualify well, get a good first stage, get a good second stage, and a good third stage. And then, you look at the points afterwards. It’s been a good start to the Chase, obviously, at this point, and would just love to keep it going.”

You have talked a lot about the love you discovered of working through struggles throughout the early part of the season. Where would you say your confidence is now compared to where it was during the spring?

“I would say I always had confidence that we would get back to a solid state of performance. I just didn’t know how long that would take, if it would take weeks or months or years. So, yeah, I mean, it’s definitely turned around quicker than I thought it could. So yeah, the confidence is high, but I still wouldn’t say that I’m as confident as I was in 2021 when everything was just so easy and we were putting together weekends like we did last week every week. I still don’t think we’re to that level yet. I don’t know if anybody will ever get to that sort of level again, at least in this Next Gen era. I feel like we’re just in a better place than we were in the summer. I just think when you’re in a team like Hendrick Motorsports, it gives you natural confidence, just being surrounded by great, smart people, that you’re going to dig out of the hole eventually. You just got to stay patient.”

On the Dale Jr. download this week, you mentioned that stage points feel like they have like sort of outsized points right now in the chase. Is there anything that you see that could be a tweak made?

“I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t put like a whole lot of thought into that. I’ve just recognized throughout the Chase, especially, that it just seems very, very important. I think I mentioned it on there, and correct me if I’m wrong, I could be off, but I think Ryan Preece has finished in the top-10 every race in the Chase; four top-10s probably or he’s been right around 10th every time. But he’s probably got five-ish stage points in the Chase, and he’s not made any ground up, it seems. He’s probably got one of the better average finishes out of all of us, yet he’s stuck because others get good stage points, a rotor failure, a crash or whatever, and they earn almost as many points as he does.

So, yeah, I see the upside of stages because people want to argue that you should be rewarded for running up front all race long. But then, there’s also the side of it that you should be rewarded for just good, consistent finishes, even more than what it is right now. A team like his might not qualify in the top-15; you’ve got to just grind your way through the race, and you just run 11th in every stage. And then, you squeak into the top-10 and it’s like you’ve not really gained much on the guys that got a DNF.

So, I don’t know. And I’ve scored the most stage points by a lot, I think, but I don’t know. I just think we’re the only series that gives out those little participation awards in competition.”

I wanted to ask you a little bit, your friendship with Denny (Hamlin). What is that like when it’s the two of you vying for a championship? I mean, you had that last year. You’ve got it this year. Do you guys speak as often as you would normally? Do you play as much golf? What is that dynamic like between the two of you?

“Yeah, I mean, we’re friends, but we’re not like BFFs like I think everybody makes us out to be (laughs). I don’t golf, really, anymore, so with that, I haven’t played in the Golf Guys Tour in the last, I don’t know, three or four years. I couldn’t tell you the last time I played golf with Denny (Hamlin), but that’s not because I dislike him or anything like that. Our lives are kind of separate a little bit in that side of things. But, yeah, I mean, I still talk to him when I see him on the track. I’m still in some group texts with him, so we chit-chat and all that now and then.

But, ultimately, I just have a lot of respect for him as a competitor, and I think the same would go for him for me. He’s been the best in the series, I feel like, for the last couple years. Competing with him as he’s trying to chase his first championship is fun. It’s fun to try to keep him from doing that, and I think it’s fun for him to try to work really hard to beat not only me but others to gain that first championship, too. So, yeah, the competition is a lot of fun. There’s nobody more competitive than Denny Hamlin in all facets of anything. So, yeah, it makes it rewarding when you beat him. It makes you try harder to beat him.”

Your average finish is 2.5 coming into this race. Looking forward, and knowing where Denny (Hamlin) is good and where Denny is bad, where do you expect that he might have trouble in these final Chase races? Where do you expect to or worry about having trouble and how do you approach those tracks?

“Well, I don’t think he’s bad anywhere, truthfully. I mean, you look at all these racetracks. Vegas, he’s extremely good. Charlotte, he should have won the 600. Phoenix, he’s super good. Talladega could go any which way. Martinsville, there’s nobody better. Am I missing any tracks? Homestead, yeah, I would feel like that’s probably the one track ahead that I’m confident that I’m better than him at. So, yeah, I mean, that just makes you have to execute because you know he’s going to be up front all race long at all these races, maybe outside of Talladega. But again, that’s just fun to compete with somebody that makes you have to level up like that.”

Are you worried about any of the tracks for you?

“Well, I mean, all of them. But yeah, Talladega can go either way. And then, Phoenix is, on paper, we’ve finished well there, but it’s probably our worst track on the circuit. So, yeah, hopefully we can get better there.”

I’d like to circle back to something you said earlier about Hendrick Motorsports. There’s a lot of smart people in the room and Cliff Daniels is one of those smart people. Last week, he got a little bit of a spotlight shine on him after the race. But I wanted to know just a little bit more about Cliff Daniels outside of the racetrack. What’s your favorite off-track memory you have of him as you guys have worked together over the years?

“Well, I mean, I can just speak on his leadership. I just think there’s nobody better on that side of things. He just takes his role extremely serious, and he’s so good at it. He’s just pushing people and pushing himself to be better. He works every bit as hard on that side of things as he does on making the racecar fast, so yeah, again, I think that’s what makes him special. I’ll never forget our first championship and spending it with him afterwards, so hopefully we have more of those celebrations.”

A lot of comparisons can be drawn to Cliff Daniels and Chad Knaus. How do you see that relationship as you’re in the walls of Hendrick Motorsports, and what’s that dynamic like between the two of them?

“Yeah, I mean, I think they’re two very similar people in how they approach success, work ethic and all of that. I’m sure Cliff (Daniels) learned a lot from Chad (Knaus) working underneath him as an engineer for those years that he did with Jimmie (Johnson). I’m sure a lot of his foundation was set then in on how he is. I’ve always heard of Cliff being an ultra-competitive leader even back to his kickball days, so I think it’s just been in him. I think he enjoys the fact of being compared to Chad. I also enjoy the fact that we’re both compared in the same sort of categories as Jimmie and Chad because they’re the greatest of this modern generation. When you can be in the same sentence as them, you feel like you’re doing something good.”

Under the previous playoff format, there would be 12 drivers, essentially, in contention at this point, whereas right now, you have about half of that. As a competitor, do you like having that condensed crop of title contenders, or would you rather have that 10-plus that you’re trying to fend off for the title at this point?

“I don’t know. I mean, it doesn’t really matter, I guess, at this point because it’s not that way. And who’s to say it’s always going to be like this? I mean, next year, there could be 12 guys in contention if races go a different way, or there could be less. So, I don’t know. I just think at the end of the day and at the end of the season, whoever wins a championship, there’s going to be no argument, or there shouldn’t be. But where the previous format, in the Next Gen cars, I feel like there was always a bit of an argument on if that champion was deserving. So, yeah, I think it’s fine how it is.”

As the leader with the points cushion you have right now, are you looking down at the standings towards like sixth or seventh to see who could make a run, or are you just minding your own race?

“Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I don’t view my gap as anything, where I think a lot of media members, it sounds like, views it that way. And then, I also don’t consider as many people out of it as it seems like everybody else does. There’s just a lot of racing left. There’s a lot of points on the table. There’s a lot of things that can happen. There’s a lot of restarts left. There’s all sorts of things. So, yeah, I think with that, you just stay focused on yourself; stay focused on your team and what you’re doing during the week to improve and prepare for the upcoming race. I think that’s kind of where we’re at as a team, and that’s where we’ve been at all year. So, yeah, just have to kind of keep it going.”

Last night was a big night here for the facility with the Kyle Busch Classic. We saw Owen (Larson) hanging out with Brexton (Busch). How cool is it to see the relationship they carry, learning together and racing together on other tracks, and how nice would it be to continue to see them climb up the ranks together?

“Yeah, Owen (Larson) had a great time here yesterday. He was here all day. I was waiting for him to text us, like, ‘hey, come pick me up, I’m bored now. I’ve been here all day’. But Katelyn (Larson) checked in with him, and he said he was having a blast, so that was really cool. And then, I ultimately ended up coming out here because it was getting late, so I watched the Legends race and then picked him up and stayed here at the track.

But yeah, just to see the enjoyment that he was having there and getting to see the little bits of videos — I think Bob (Pockrass) maybe posted something before the Legends race of them, like, looking at Flo together on Brexton’s phone. Just memories like that, I think, we’ll all remember for a long time. I hope that they’ll remember nights like that together. And yeah, hopefully, they’re racing across the street someday together on this big track. But yeah, it’s fun to obviously follow their careers, but even the others that you might not know about right now that are working really hard to try to make it someday. Grassroots racing is in a great spot right now.”

For you, obviously we’ve seen you in victory lane many times throughout your career, in different series, running different schemes. But if all goes well, what would a Kyle Busch throwback scheme look like in victory lane rank amongst all the cars you’ve taken there? “Yeah, it’s definitely going to add some level of importance and memory to winning in a scheme like that. But you don’t ever want to get ahead of yourself, and I don’t ever like to think about what a celebration might be like. I just try to, again, do a good job. If you end up in Victory Lane, that’s when those emotions happen, and you can never predict what it’s going to be like.”

I want to circle back to how you said you guys kind of had some struggles earlier in the season. One track where you didn’t struggle was here in Las Vegas. You and the entire Hendrick Motorsports organization were actually really well, but you were slightly off of JGR. How do you think the change in the splitter affected you guys last week at Kansas? And although Kansas and Las Vegas are two different tracks, can you take anything away from last week and put it forth towards this weekend?

“Honestly, I had no idea there was anything different with splitters. I don’t get involved in any of that.

And then, yeah, I mean, for Vegas earlier this year, we actually weren’t that good for our standards here. I felt like we were like a, I don’t know, 6th to 8th, 9th-place car. I just remember my balance was just different every run. It was hard to get a good, consistent race because I was always just fighting something different. But, yeah, I mean, Chase (Elliott) was really good. I watched some of his onboard this morning from that, and what his car was able to do is what I feel like I’m typically able to do here. He was really strong at the end of that race. I think our package has come a long way since March or whenever we were here, so excited to get on track. I mean, it’s going to be a lot different. It’s so much hotter, and the surface is going to be slipperier and it usually feels bumpier because of that. So, yeah, we’ll see. I don’t know. I still believe that Toyota’s and Denny (Hamlin) will be the best, but hopefully we’ve narrowed that gap even more here.”

We saw the other night that you were at the Aces-Fever game. What was your experience like there, and how important is it to support the teams in the cities that you’re racing in? “Yeah, that kind of came together last minute, but it was a lot of fun to go there. I’ve honestly been to more WNBA games than NBA games here in the last couple years, and I enjoy it. You know, the atmosphere at those games are way better than watching the men play. It’s loud the whole time. People are screaming, cheering and booing, and the girls are fiery on the court. I enjoy it. It’s a good time. Anytime you get to see Caitlin Clark play, it’s going to be exciting. And, you know, Sophie Cunningham, being a fan of NASCAR, you have somebody to cheer for. So, yeah, I enjoyed watching it, and I’m sure I’ll go again. It was a good time.”

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