Manufacturer Quotes from Darlington MENC Race
FORD:
Ford Finishing Results:
1st – Brad Keselowski
2nd – Joey Logano
4th – Kevin Harvick
6th – Kurt Busch
12th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
14th – Aric Almirola
15th – Ryan Blaney
17th – Paul Menard
18th – David Ragan
20th – Michael McDowell
25th – Matt Kenseth
36th – Clint Bowyer
38th – Matt DiBenedetto
CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Carolina Ford Dealers Ford Fusion – “I hit the 31 really hard. I don’t know. I guess he was pitting or something and it’s a product of this place, I guess. There are lapped cars that are 50 laps down all over the damn place. That’s pretty frustrating. I’m about tired of that. This track is too narrow for cars to be that far off the pace. You’re in and out of those guys, diving all over the place, trying to navigate around them, trying to figure out where the hell they’re going, and then you come up on somebody trying to actually compete in the race and you’re not on the game -- he’s pitting or something and I run over him. I didn’t see him wave, but, like I said, when you come off of two and you pass 37 lapped cars and you get your bearings and everything else – maybe he waved, maybe he didn’t – I didn’t see it. He just stopped right in front of me and I hit him hard. I’m obviously pissed off and frustrated, but it seems to be that way for me every time I come here. We run decent. We had a frustrating night, just mistake after mistake and obviously we ended up wrecked.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI SWEEPS DARLINGTON; GIVES FORD SERIES-BEST 12TH MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES WIN OF THE SEASON
- Brad Keselowski claimed his first win of the season tonight.
- The win today is the 25th of his Cup Series career.
- Ford leads all manufacturers with 12 victories this season.
- The victory marks the 60th win all-time for Team Penske with Ford and the 16th for Keselowski.
- Of Team Penske’s 60 MENCS wins with Ford, 33 have come since rejoining Ford in 2013.
- The win is Fusion’s 101st Cup Series triumph since becoming Ford’s flagship vehicle in 2006.
- Today’s win is Ford’s 670th all-time in Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series competition.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Genuine Draft Ford Fusion – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – “I’ve got to give a lot of credit to my pit crew. We were running second and that last stop they nailed it and got us out in the lead. I thought Kyle was really good, and he was flat-out flying. I know how it goes. In 2015 we led a bunch of laps and lost it on the last pit stop and today my team won it on the last pit stop. Then it was just about me hitting all my marks and not screwing it up. How cool is this winning in Rusty Wallace’s Throwback car, the Southern 500, Throwback Weekend.”
HOW ABOUT THESE FANS? “The Southern 500 has always been a major deal and credit to the whole team that runs the track here at Darlington. They’ve made it even bigger yet.”
KURT BUSCH, No. 41 Haas Automation Ford Fusion – “We’ve got sixth through tenth covered. We had a good car, we just got pinned a lap down with 80 miles to go and that’s happened to me a lot here. We just end up on the wrong sequence and we got pinned a lap down. Then we had some overheating issues. I guess our grille screen – there’s an outer and an inner – and the inner got clogged, so we had to come in. Luckily, the engine held together over 300 degrees, so thanks to Doug Yates and those guys for building the durability and being able to salvage a top-10 finish. Otherwise, engines like that blow up, so thanks to Doug Yates and Ford.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “We had a good car. We were like a third-place car and whether it was a short run or a long run it didn’t really matter. We made some adjustments there at the end to take off a little bit better, but I didn’t get by the 42 in time to try to run down the 2. We were just matching lap times, so I couldn’t catch him enough. I was just hoping lap traffic would screw it up enough to try to catch him, but one-two for Team Penske, that’s pretty cool. Brad sweeping the weekend, that’s awesome for him to do at Darlington. That’s no easy feat, so congratulations to them. I just keep going back to two restarts to the end. I didn’t have the best of restarts and if I got to second our pit stop was good enough to get us to the lead and give us control and that’s what ultimately won Brad the race was his pit crew that got him out in the lead. Once he was out in the lead, he was gonna be hard to catch. I had a lot of fun on the Throwback Weekend. It’s really cool to drive Steve Park’s car and give it a good run. I wish I got to celebrate with him in Victory Lane and hold up the 1 that he used to drive.”
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Beer Ford Fusion – “Darlington just has a lot of ups-and-downs in general just because of the fact that it’s a tough old race track. As a driver, it’s a challenge and a lot of fun. For us, we just could not make the front end of our car work all night and everything we did to try to help it just undid the back and just never could get it right. Track position was bigger here than I’ve ever seen, so we all got to figure that out as a sport.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT LONG RUN AND WHAT IT’S LIKE TO HANG ON FOR SO LONG? “It’s not really that much fun just because of the fact that you’re probably about two seconds slower than every other car. We didn’t pit and everybody else pitted and you just literally just try to stay out of the way. We saw a wreck down there with I think the 14 and the 31 trying to pit. It’s such a huge speed variance, but that’s part of the challenge of this race track – all the different speeds, there are tire strategies and things like that.”
DAVID RAGAN, No. 38 Citgard 700 Ford Fusion – “I felt like we struggled a little bit when they dropped the green flag. Our car just wasn’t balanced as good as it could have been, but as the track cooled off we made some pretty good adjustments. We had a little different strategy too and I think it all played out. I’m proud of our Citgard 700 team for overcoming some adversity in practice. We didn’t get a lot of practice, but that was a good recovery and a top-20 finish. We would have liked to gotten a little bit more, but that was a lot of fun.”
RICKY STENHOUSE JR., No. 17 John Deere Ford Fusion – “Overall, it’s our best career finish and really running the whole race at Darlington. I kept it out of the fence, which was goal number one. We got off two or three runs, which was a bummer because I felt like we were really good the rest of the race. Those three runs just caught us off-guard. That’s a little lack of laps here because I haven’t run many, but it was a good finish for us. I was real happy we were able to get back on the lead lap and pass some good cars and race some good cars there at the end. All in all it was a good weekend.”
CHEVROLET:
TOP TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
3rd KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 DC SOLAR CAMARO ZL1
5TH CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA THROWBACK CAMARO ZL1
9TH JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 MCDONALD’S 50 YEARS OF BIG MAC CAMARO ZL1
13TH CHRIS BUESCHER, NO. 37 BUSH’S BEST SINCE 1908 CAMARO ZL1
16TH AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 AMERICAN ETHANOL E15 CAMARO ZL1
TOP FIVE UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
1ST Brad Keselowski (Ford)
2nd Joey Logano (Ford)
3rd Kyle Larson (Chevrolet)
4th Kevin Harvick (Ford)
5TH Chase Elliott (Chevrolet)
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season continues next weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with The Big Machine Vodka 400 at the Brickyard on Sunday, September 9th at 2 p.m. ET on NBCSN, IMS, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
TEAM CHEVY NOTES & QUOTES:
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 DC SOLAR CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 3rd
YOU LED 284 LAPS BUT LOST THE LEAD ON PIT ROAD. WHAT HAPPENED ON THAT LAST RUN? IT SEEMED LIKE THE CAR WAS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
“It’s always important to come out the leader off pit road or be the control car on the restart. I felt like if I could have been in clean air, I would have been all right. All day when I would get in traffic I’d get loose. There on that last run I was just really loose and allowed Joey (Logano) to get by. I knew the only really weakness we would have throughout the race was a short run and that’s what it kind of came down to. On long runs, I was just really, really good all race long. That was good. Hat’s off to everybody back at our race shop. This car was extremely fast. We had the dominant car and we proved it. We just came up a little bit short. Thanks to DC Solar and everybody, like I said. It’s nice to show some dominant speed like that and a 1.5-mile like this leading up to the Playoffs.”
AS DOMINANT AS THE CAR WAS TODAY, HOW DO YOU DIGEST THIS ONE AS A TEAM?
“It stings, for sure, to not win at a prestigious race like this. I want to win every race, but I want to win a Southern 500 really bad. So, it would have been cool to win that. But, at the same time, to bring a car to the race track like we did this weekend is something to be proud of and a big confidence-booster going into the next 11 weeks.”
HOW BAD DOES IT STING WHEN YOU DON’T COME OUT ON TOP?
“Yeah, I mean it sucks. I don’t know, I mean, last week sucked we had a terrible car and ran second and that sucked, so this week we had the best car and run third. So, I mean it obviously… everybody who doesn’t win isn’t happy. But at the same time, we haven’t had a car like this all year. I was extremely happy about that and looking forward to the next couple of months.
DOES THAT GIVE YOU A LOT OF HOPE WITH A CAR THIS GOOD GOING INTO THE PLAYOFFS?
“Yeah we learned some stuff at Richmond I thought and gained a lot of speed, a lot of grip and implemented that into this week’s car and it really showed.”
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END OF THE RACE THERE?
“I was definitely better on long runs. I felt like long runs is where we were really strong. Guys could stay with me for probably, I don’t know, 15 or so laps and then I would start pulling away by quite a bit. We didn’t come out the leader, so I wasn’t the control car on that restart and that is important at the end of the race. So, we lost our advantage there and then I was pretty loose there the last run.”
WHAT WAS THE MOST FRUSTRATING PART ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO PULL OFF THE WIN?
“I don’t know not winning is enough to be disappointed about. Like I have been saying, I’m still really happy about the car that we brought. We haven’t shown speed like that all year. That is probably more speed than we showed at some of the races we won last year. So, I’m happy about the car for sure, but I guess disappointed we didn’t win.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA THROWBACK CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 5th
HOW MUCH DID YOU WORK ON THE CAR AND DID YOU MAKE PROGRESS ALONG THE WAY?
“I thought we got it better as the night went along and got to a pretty decent place there and we just so happened to get into a decent place when we had track position as well. Circumstances were pretty good for a course of that run when we ran second and was trying to pace Kyle (Larson) and just felt like I was probably having to work a little too hard to pace him and was really hard on my rear tires and then by the end fell off pretty bad. Have a little work to do, but mistake free night, which is nice and we just got to find the next little step to keep up with that crowd.”
JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 MCDONALD’S 50 YEAR OF BIG MAC CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 9th
A ROUGH START TO THE WEEKEND FOR YOU, BUT YOU ENDED THE WEEKEND WITH A TOP 10 FINISH THAT’S PRETTY SPORTY:
“No, I got caught… I missed the commitment line I guess on one of the green flag stops, so we had to fight to get back on the lead lap like two or three times, but had a really good car. Both of our cars were… Kyle (Larson) was really fast tonight. We had a great car too we just could never get the track position that we needed, but yeah, a really good day.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, NO. 37 BUSH’S BEST SINCE 1908 CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 13th
BEST CAREER FINISH FOR YOU HERE AT DARLINGTON, THAT’S NOT SO BAD FOR THIS TEAM:
“No, not at all. That is a good day for us there. I’m proud of this team and everyone on this Bush’s Best Since 1908 Camaro ZL1. I mean that was a good race. It’s a long race and it’s always fun when you get to run the whole thing and be there at the end. Kind of a wild one with the way it played out with everybody all over the place, but we had a good run. We had one set of tires that corded on us really early and that was strange. Got a little behind there. I think we should have had a better day. Everybody did an excellent job. Everybody with Kroger Clicklist, JTG Daugherty Racing they are putting solid efforts in and we are starting to get some results and even though Bristol didn’t end up the way we wanted to they knew we were there and we were definitely fast. We are sneaking up on it.”
WILLIAM BRYON, NO. 24 AXALTA THROWBACK CAMARO ZL1 – Sidelined on lap 329 with a mechanical issue
WHAT HAPPENED?
“Yeah, we blew up. Not really totally sure why or what happened. We started to lose oil pressure the last run or so. Everything seemed to be getting hotter and hotter and kind of accelerating higher and higher temps wise and also oil pressure was kind of flashing at me, which was odd. Yeah, just blew up, but we had a pretty solid day going. The car looked awesome and we will keep working hard.”
DID THEY INDICATE IF THIS IS AN IDENTICAL ISSUE TO WHAT YOUR TEAMMATE JIMMIE JOHNSON HAD?
“Yeah, I mean it’s hard to hear, but they don’t really know what happened yet. Overall, we were trying a couple of different strategies out there. The track was really slick. I felt like our car was capable of finishing probably 10th or 11th, which was kind of where we were running. Overall some good positives, tough race track, but wanted to definitely finish this one.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S THROWBACK CAMARO ZL1 – Sidelined on Lap 227 with mechanical issue
WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED THAT HAS TAKEN YOU OUT?
“It was something about the oil pump, I believe. I’m not sure if it’s through the belt, of something else went on. But, the amount of time it takes to get the engine apart and the oil pump out to put a new one on, it just takes too long. Thankfully, the engine is okay, we think; but it just takes too long to get the oil pump out.”
YOU’VE SHOWED SOME SPEED. YOU GUYS CERTAINLY SEEM TO BE IMPROVING IN THAT DEPARTMENT. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE BAD LUCK, THE MISTAKES, AND THE MISFORTUNES THAT HAVE KEPT YOU FROM GETTING SOME OF THOSE RESULTS?
“It’s just about cleaning things up. I didn’t have a great lap in that second round of Qualifying that put us back. Unfortunately, we had a loose wheel; and then I missed the commitment line coming in. We’ve just got to clean those things up. Our cars are much better. I just have to thank everybody at Hendrick Motorsports for working so hard. We just have to minimize mistakes; and I think we can run a Top 5 pretty easily.”
WHAT HAPPENED?
“Something with the oil pump. I’m not sure if it’s the belt or the pump itself, but it would take too long to kind of pull the engine a part and fix it. I think the engine is okay, but something with oil pressure. I had zero oil pressure and the engine went into protection mode and wouldn’t run.”
ARE YOU CONCERNED FOR NEXT WEEK THE LAST WEEK OF THE REGULAR SEASON?
“Our engine shop is so rock solid, if anything I would be a little nervous for my teammates out there right now that have the same stuff. Sometimes we have material issues and things out of our control that we have seen when one engine goes a bunch go. So, fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen with my teammates. These guys are the best in the business we will be fine next week.”
IS IT UNSETTLING AT ALL TO GO INTO INDIANAPOLIS WITH A MATHEMATICAL CHANCE OF MISSING THE PLAYOFFS?
“Yeah, I mean it sucks. I don’t want to be in this position. We have been around this spot for a while. We have seen it coming. We just need to transfer and honestly, I think our cars are capable of running in the top five. If we can just start minimizing mistakes, my own included, we will be much better off and have a shot.”
WHEN WAS THE INDICATION THAT SOMETHING WAS WRONG?
“It was just instant. Something with the oil pump. And then the engine has an oil protection system, so when the oil pump did its thing the engine just shut off. We think the engine is fine, but it would take too long to change the oil pump.”
HOW WILL YOU APPROACH THE RACE NEXT WEEK?
“Yeah, I don’t even know really the situation I’m in. But yeah for sure. Tonight, we were racing the No. 88 and trying to beat him to make sure we would be okay next week. We were both two laps down and kind of racing each other. I would assume that would be the same thing next weekend.”
YOU KIND OF JUST HAVE TO ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES RIGHT NOW DON’T YOU?
“Yeah, there is no need to flip out now. We have had a pretty rough year to this point. We have been working hard, unfortunately just haven’t had the results. We will keep working hard. There is no quit in myself of this team.”
TOYOTA:
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Brad Keselowski*
2nd, Joey Logano*
3rd, Kyle Larson*
4th, Kevin Harvick*
5th, Chase Elliott*
7th, KYLE BUSCH
8th, ERIK JONES
10th, DENNY HAMLIN
11th, MARTIN TRUEX JR.
29th, DANIEL SUÁREZ
34th, JEFFREY EARNHARDT
37th, TIMMY HILL
40th, JOEY GASE
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA DRIVER POINT STANDINGS**
1st, KYLE BUSCH 1038 points
2nd, Kevin Harvick* 999 points
3rd, MARTIN TRUEX JR 883 points
4th, Kurt Busch* 835 points
5th, Joey Logano* 818 points
10th, DENNY HAMLIN 738 points
13th, ERIK JONES 679 points
20th, DANIEL SUÁREZ 487 points
*non-Toyota driver
**unofficial point standings
- Kyle Busch (seventh) was the highest-finishing Toyota driver in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) race at Darlington Raceway.
- Camry driver Erik Jones (eighth) also finished in the top 10 while Denny Hamlin, who started from the pole position, logged a 10th-place result.
- With his top-10 finish, Hamlin clinched a spot in the 2018 MENCS Playoffs, joining fellow Toyota competitors Busch, Martin Truex Jr. and Jones.
- Busch continues to lead the regular-season point standings with one race left before the playoffs commence on September 16.
TOYOTA QUOTES
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Skittles 1998 Retro Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 7th
Talk about your race tonight.
“We never are very good here. I don’t know what the problem is. Just fought a lot of things and tried to make the most of the effort. We made some good changes on pit road, but just nothing there at the end could free us up for the short run to make our Camry very fast. Hard to make lap time at the end.”
ERIK JONES, No. 20 Sport Clips Throwback Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 8th
What happened tonight?
“We had a really good car. It’s funny, you look at the last lap time and we were the first or second-fastest car. We just needed a long time to come in. I mean we needed 15 laps to get going and that’s just kind of how it was. I knew if they came down to some short restart stints, it was going to probably hurt us quite a bit unfortunately. The Sport Clips Camry was good. You can’t complain. We worked hard on it all night and had a fast car – had a car that I think if it would’ve stayed green, maybe we could have contended with (Kyle) Larson. You know Larson didn’t win either, so sometimes it’s just not your night to have a shot and tonight wasn’t ours.”
There was one lap where your crew chief Chris Gayle said your strategy would’ve been perfect, but it didn’t work out. Was it that kind of a night?
“We were on a different strategy than most of the other guys in the top three. We came a lap early because we were just trying to get out of that mess of cars with tires were in. It just didn’t work out. The caution came out and we got trapped a lap down and had to take a wave around and got stuck back in traffic, so along with that and not being good on the short run, it was kind of a big mess. Unfortunate we didn’t get a better result. A good night overall.”
Two top 10s at Darlington now. Do you get this place?
“I don’t know about that. I like it for sure. I enjoy coming here and I’ve had two really good cars. I’m looking forward to getting back next year. I really want to win this race someday. That’s the ultimate goal, so we’ll keep working at it. I thought today we were very close to being a car that was capable of it and just needed some longer runs and some more things to work our way and maybe we could’ve had a shot.”
MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 78 Bass Pro Shops/5-Hour Energy Toyota Camry, Furniture Row Racing
Finishing Position: 11th
You had a fast car at the beginning of the race, but didn’t quite finish where you wanted. Talk about your night.
“It’s really disappointing to have a car that good to be up front and have that many troubles on pit road. It’s pretty disappointing. We have to clean it up. Playoffs are coming. We do that in the playoffs and we’ll be out in the second round.”
Ron Fleshman
RIS NASCAR Editor. Has been with RIS since the middle 90's. Writes on each of the three main series of NASCAR.