Austin Dillon — winner: “Man, that feels good. Got to thank the Good Lord above. I really wanted that one. Last year, hurt really bad. Just going through the whole process of it. But this one feels so sweet. Man, I love Richmond. I was thrown down a lot this week. Didn’t feel great. I’m actually racing with a broken rib right now for the last two weeks, and man, that was awesome. God has timing, and his timing is the best timing. I’m so excited to get my wife and kids here to celebrate with us. Man, it’s so sweet. This is so special. Every one of these means so much to me and my grandfather for all that he’s put up and believing in me because there’s been a lot of ups and downs and it could have been easy for him to change the drivers in this No. 3 car, but today it feels really darn good. I probably am the slowest to get going on some of these tracks when it really comes to high grip, but when it comes to these places and taking care of your stuff, I’ll go against the best of them.”
Bowman: ‘Stressful’ week coming up before Daytona
Alex Bowman discusses his second-place finish in the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway, sharing what he did well, why he is proud of his team and how he will prepare for next week’s race at Daytona International Speedway.
Alex Bowman — second: “Had a really good (car) in the last run. Just broke the tires off too much in lap traffic. Didn’t get any breaks. That made me kind of work the rears harder than I need to. Just need to be a little better through there to get to him. I certainly think we had the better car. Unfortunately didn’t get there. Blake and all the guys did a great job. Just came up a little bit short. … Yeah, certainly really stressful on a lot of fronts. I think with the way that race normally goes, it’s about a must-win at that point because I think you’re most likely going to have a new winner. Yeah, just need to go execute and try to win the race. That’s all we can really do. Looks like we maybe can get to (Tyler Reddick). Looks like he had a bad day. So possible there. Looks like a big gap, so … just got to go to work. That’s all we can do at this point. That’s what we’ve been doing, right? We’ve been doing a lot of good things. Unfortunately just one spot short tonight. The team, clearly we’re not very popular through the garage with that last run (smiling). Still doing a really good job and executing at a high level. Just proud of all the guys to continue to work hard and try to overcome the situation we’re in, and we’ll keep digging.”
Blaney ‘just lost it’ in Cook Out 400 at Richmond
Ryan Blaney speaks after finishing third in the Cook Out 400, explaining what went wrong toward the end of the race and why this was “by far the most fun” he has ever had at Richmond Raceway, a track he has struggled at.
Ryan Blaney — third: “I don’t know. I think the track changed a lot. I felt really, really good 10 laps into the last stage. Went from seventh to second. Man, I’m pretty good here. Then kind of got the lead there, then he got it back from me. I was kind of starting to go free. I think we stayed out like three or four laps longer than the 3, trying to have some tire at the end. I was out there cruising around. All of a sudden I had no right rear tire left. I thought I was really trying to be disciplined saving tire. Just lost it.
So have to look back and see kind of where the track went. I think it changed a little bit there. Overall great show. All of Team Penske, me, Austin and Joey running top five. By far the most fun I’ve ever had at this place. I always look at different ways to get around here every time I come back. I don’t think it’s a secret. I struggle really bad here. We work really hard to try to figure out how can we improve, like how can I improve, how can we work on the car to figure out what will mesh. Just a big effort by all the 12 boys, big group effort. So yeah, definitely think we’re creeping up on it. Hopefully we can keep going.”
Logano: ‘Golly, we had bad luck’ in Cook Out 400
Even though Joey Logano says he does not believe in luck, he could not believe how bad his luck was during the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway. Logano finished fourth, behind Austin Dillon, Alex Bowman and Ryan Blaney.
Joey Logano — fourth: “We had a really fast Mustang. The car had a lot of speed in it, but we just had to overcome too much. We got up into contention, and then we had a flat right rear and lost all of it again, and then steadily grind your way back into the top five. Apparently, I needed maybe 500 or 600 laps. It’s just not our weekend. We had a flat tire in practice and then another flat tire in the race and both of them were punctures. It’s not like we were being too aggressive or anything like that, it’s just running over crap on the racetrack. Not our weekend.”
Austin Cindric — fifth: “I’m happy with the effort. It’s a shame the restart in stage three went the way it did because we had a really great long run car and I just had to drive the snot out of it to move through the field. I thought we were maybe good enough to contend for a top three finish if not a win if we didn’t get so far back, but it takes all the pieces. My team ran a playoff capable race tonight and the boys are ramping up. We had just a really fast race car, a complete car, and that’s what it takes at a racetrack like this. I always say there’s nowhere to hide and sometimes I’ve wanted to hide coming here and other times like tonight it’s a really rewarding track to get into that rhythm. Obviously, everybody at Team Penske did a great job building three fast Ford Mustangs and I wish the initial restart in stage three would have gone better for us. We kind of got stuck top of four and in the wash, but I’m proud of the guys. They kept up with the track well and I’m proud of the effort.”
Kyle Larson — sixth: “Yeah, on equal tires, it was really difficult to pass. I felt like my team did an amazing job with our strategy today in every stage of the race. Without the great calls, we definitely wouldn’t have finished up here, so huge kudos to Cliff (Daniels, crew chief) and everyone on the No. 5 Chevrolet team. They worked really hard all night and grinded it out. I thought restarts and stuff in traffic, I felt like I was too tight in the center, and then it would just kind of beat my stuff up. We short-pitted early in the race and then went long in the second and third stages and I felt like that allowed me to take care of my tires better; come out in fresher air and just not stress the tires too badly. It helped us on the long run, for sure. Yeah, there’s one more race until the playoffs start. Anybody has a shot to win at Daytona (International Speedway), so hopefully we can go there and have a good race, a good points day and get ready for the playoffs.”
Daniel Suarez — seventh: “It was a good night for the No. 99 Chevrolet team. I wish it was a win, but overall, it was a decent night. There’s a couple of things we maybe could have done better, but our Chevrolet was a top-five or top-10 car all night long and that’s where we ended up. It’s good to get two top-10 finishes in a row.”
Josh Berry — eighth: “It was an up-and-down day. I thought we did a really good job managing everything, but we would have liked to have been a little bit better. We just struggled with the balance a little bit. It got better the second half for sure, but would have liked to have been a little bit better towards the end, but, all in all, a really good job for these 21 guys. This is what we know we’re capable of, but we’ve had some misfortune. Maybe we had a couple races where we weren’t as fast as we wanted, but we’ve had a lot of bad luck. Tonight is what we’re capable of. We know that going into the playoffs, so it’s nice to have a solid run and, like I said, we’ll go to Daytona and get ready for the playoffs after that.”
Denny Hamlin — 10th: “Yeah, just kind of a missed race. We were really bad on pit lane. I sped. Team had a lot of bad stops, and this track – you can’t give up track position, and we did. I thought we were fortunate to get back to the top-10 there. The only reason we did is we had a fast Camry.”
Byron ‘feels really good’ after Richmond Cup race
William Byron was all smiles after finishing 12th in the Cook Out 400, staying positive even though he was involved in an 11-car wreck 198 laps into the race that began with contact between Kyle Busch and Ross Chastain.
William Byron — 12th: “Yeah, I was kind of losing my mind there for a minute. Just felt like there was so much going on and just such a balance of trying to manage tires all night. It just got crazy on those couple restarts. That one restart was kind of the tipping point. We had some really good runs tonight. I was happy with the end of stage one and the beginning of stage two. Throughout stage two, we were pretty good. Beginning of stage three, we climbed up; had that one set of tires that we put on and we fell way back. It just feels great. It’s really the best 12th-place finish I’ve ever had. The No. 24 Chevrolet team came in here and really just did a solid job. We qualified solid. We always want more, but this is definitely our toughest racetrack. We just kind of came in here, had a solid plan and executed it. All the guys have worked hard through the summer months. I feel like this has been the best summer we’ve ever had, speed-wise. We had a lot of tough things happen throughout early July. We had a lot of speed, but some crashes in practice and qualifying. Just some car issues and things that happened. But yeah, it’s just really, really cool. We’re looking forward to the playoffs.”
Shane van Gisbergen — 14th: “That was fun! A good recovery and great result in my first Cup start at Richmond. Tire strategy was huge tonight and my No. 88 team did an awesome job executing. Some good momentum for us as we get closer to the playoffs. Looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish at Daytona.”
Night ‘slowly unraveled’ for Elliott before crash
Chase Elliott gets a view of the nasty crash that took his No. 9 Chevrolet out of the NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond and explains how a hot start to his night “slowly unraveled,” culminating in the 11-car wreck.
Chase Elliott — 36th: “I have no idea what happened. Obviously, I saw them crashing, and we were all just stacking up trying to get stopped and then after the wreck was over, I thought we were done wrecking. I was just trying to squeak by, and I guess Kyle (Busch) just didn’t know I was to his left, and we were, so I hate that. We had a good start to the night, and it just slowly unraveled until it finally fell apart. So hopefully we get on a better stretch starting next week. … I think Kyle just didn’t know that we were trying to squeeze by the wreck on the bottom. He was kind of angled back towards the bottom of the racetrack, and I was just coming through. It’s just unfortunate. We had a good start to the race. We kind of got on the wrong end there in the beginning and lost some track position. We got behind (Chase Briscoe) and got a penalty. I thought we were in a pretty good spot right there. We finally got on some better tires and we were making our way through there well, so I was excited to see where that was going to go, but unfortunately, we didn’t get the chance.”
