Notes and Quotes from Phoenix Cup Race 3/8/2020

JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang -- Finished 1st

WHAT DID YOU LEARN TODAY THAT YOU COULD TAKE INTO NOVEMBER BY WINNING THIS RACE, THE PERFORMANCE YOU HAD, BECAUSE THIS IS WHERE THE CHAMPIONSHIP IS GOING TO BE WON? “You think I'm going to tell you that (laughter)? Definitely, everybody learned something out there today just whether it's racing, the way this traction compound is, the awesome sauce up there, how that worked out, played throughout the race.  There's a lot learned, for sure. We learned that this No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford team is just stout and is not going to get beat if we have the opportunity.  We tried everything we could to regain our track position and get control back of the race.  I knew that last restart was going to be crazy. I have to thank my partners, Moneyline, Auto Trader, AAA, Ford, Coca‑Cola, Snap‑on, everybody that helps this program at Team Penske.  Roush‑Yates motors.  It was cool to see two Fords on the front row at the end of a race like that.  This is a motor racetrack as much as we don't think it is. Proud of the team effort today to make this one come.”

KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Mustang - Finished 2nd 

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE 22 MAYBE HAD JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE OF? “He just had control of the race.  After we pitted there, I got stuck behind a couple of cars there, lost five or six spots.  He got by and got control of the race.  He got to restart where he wanted to. Our Jimmy John's Ford was better, especially when we could put it in front of his.  We just didn't get the control of the race back there, and he was able to get by us on that restart where I got hung up.”

CLINT BOWYER, No. 14 Mobil 1 Ford Mustang - Finished 5th 

“As you go through this west coast swing, you are lying in the bed you made. We saw that all the time and it really is true. You come out here and these cars are prepared before we get out here. Certainly we are looking forward to getting back home and reevaluating some things. I can’t seem to figure out how to get the front end to turn. There is a new mentality with John and all his engineers. All in all to grind it out on Sunday when the money is on the line, it was a good effort and some momentum going into Atlanta, a fun race track for me that I really enjoy. The Mobil 1 Ford is beat up a little bit as I look over your shoulder there. Hell, that is what this track is all about.”

ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang - Finished 8th 

“That was a decent day for us. We scored stage points in both stages and ran competitively. I thought after practice we were a fourth to eighth place car and quite honestly that is about where we ran all day. The pit crew did a good job there the second half of the race keeping us in the game. I am proud of that. We just continue to build. We just keep knocking off these top-10’s in a row after last weekend and this weekend. Then you slowly progress to trying to run in the top-five and that is where you find yourself in position to win races. We need to continue to build on this. I am really proud of Bugga and all the guys on this Smithfield team. They have been bringing some nice Ford Mustangs for me to drive the last couple of weeks.”

WHAT HAPPENED WITH YOU AND THE 19? “Honestly it was just a mistake. We got down into turn 1 there and he checked up slightly sooner than I expected him to and I was literally an inch or two off his bumper through the dogleg getting down into 1. Just the slight delay from the time that he got on the brakes to when I got on the brakes, I got into the back of him and crashed him. We race around each other a lot, all day. We raced around each other and raced each other clean and I had fun racing with him. We swapped positions back and forth and never touched each other and then had that mistake right there. Certainly not intentional but that doesn't help him.”

COLE CUSTER, No. 41 Haas Automation Ford Mustang - Finished 10th 

“This was huge. It is a huge boost in our step to have a really solid day and fast Mustang. We overcame obstacles all weekend and hopefully we can continue to carry that all through the year. I think we get better every single race, so it is just a matter of continuing that and doing that every single weekend.”

RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Tarkett Ford Mustang (Retired due to accident on lap 65)

WHAT DID YOU SEE FROM THE CAR BETWEEN THE 2 AND 11? “From the car I couldn’t really see. A couple of us were three-wide. I was happy to be on the top. I thought we were going to roll the top pretty good through three and four there. It looks like the 11 tried to send it in there below the 2 and got loose and hit him and then overcorrected and got us. We got up in the dirt and we just ran right into the fence. Just an innocent bystander there. It sucks to have it end so early like that and have that happen so early in the race. I do really hate it for Menards and Tarkett and Ford. We didn’t even have a chance to work on our car. We weren’t great the first run but we made a big swing at it and we don't know how that change was. It stinks when you are taken out like that. We will just go on to Atlanta and see what we can do.”\

TEAM CHEVY NOTES AND QUOTES:   KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 MCDONALD’S CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 4th

IT LOOKED LIKE YOU TRIED TO DIVE TO THE BOTTOM THERE. DID YOU THINK THAT YOU’D BE ABLE TO PULL OFF THE WIN? “No, not really. I was just hoping that I could do something and maybe they’d mess up. The 18 (Kyle Busch) went really low and I was just trying to run the bottom, and didn’t make up much ground. If they were to get bottled up at the top, I would have enough momentum I could drive in front of them. But it didn’t work out that way, obviously. We still got a top-five, so it was a nice day for us. We fought back from a really bad car from the first run and tuned on it to come away with a top-five, so that was good.”   

DID YOU LIKE THE WAY THE CARS WERE RACING WITH THIS PACKAGE? “Yeah, I thought it was better racing than we had last year. Maybe they can work on it some more and get the racing even a little better, and have a great championship race to end our season.”   HOW IMPORTANT WAS THIS RUN FOR YOUR TEAM? “It was good. The first handful of laps, I thought we weren’t as bad as I thought we would be. I just continued to get tight. I was thankful the cautions came out to allow us to work on it. We got it closer, but it still wasn’t where we needed to be. But we were close enough that we could race.”  

KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 GEARWRENCH CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 6th “I feel like we battled the best that we could have. We didn’t have much for any kind of spectacular stat, other than perseverance. We didn’t have good short run speed or long run speed. Sixth is better than we ran all day, so we’ll take that with our GEARWRENCH Chevy. We really have to look hard at what we believe led to all of this. But at one point we were running 17th without a scratch on the car.”   “With Larson fourth and us sixth, that’s better than what we ran all day. I feel like we struggled quite a bit, so we’ll take that. Any time you can finish better than where you run, you have to cash those points. We survived all those last restarts, we just weren’t on offense. We just couldn’t attack. I was just kind of slip-sliding around a bit too much today.”  

DID YOU LIKE HOW THE CAR WAS HANDLING COMPARED TO LAST YEAR’S PACKAGE? “Yeah, for sure. You just still have to find that right balance and I think we, at Ganassi, had some things that weren’t quite set right for anything. I didn’t have short run speed, I didn’t have long run speed, but we finished sixth. So, I can’t complain. We have to put that in the bank, learn from it and then head to the short tracks later on at Bristol, Martinsville and Richmond coming up.”  

TWO SOLID TOP-TEN’S IN A ROW. HOW DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR TEAM IS PROGESSING? “Yeah, we were just inches away from another top-five. There are things that we have to face ourselves with on what led to the lack of speed today. Even though we finished sixth, we’ll cash that in. But we have to learn from.”  

YOU AND (KYLE) LARSON SEEM TO BE RUNNING PRETTY CLOSE TOGETHER. DO YOU THINK THE CARS ARE PRETTY EQUALLY PREPARED? “Chip (Ganassi) has two really good drivers getting everything out of those two cars that we can. It’s fun. Larson and I have a really good read on each other on-track and we just have to get a better read communicated to the engineer staff to help our handling.”  

CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 UNIFIRST CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 7th YOU HAD A STRONG CAR. DOES THIS GIVE YOU CONFIDENCE GOING INTO THE FALL RACE HERE? “Yeah, certainly. We will build off of it for sure. Kevin (Harvick) was probably a tick- better than us I thought. But we’ll go to work.”  

DO YOU LIKE HOW THESE CARS RACE? “Yeah, it seems like it was a little better.”  

YOU LEAD THE COMPETITION IN STAGE POINTS FOUR RACES IN. HOW IMPORTANT IS THAT? “Stage wins are really important this time of year, so those are what you want.”  

DID YOU GET ANYTHING OUT OF THIS RACE THAT YOU CAN TAKE TO THE LAST RACE OF THE SEASON? “Yeah, it’s just something to build off of. Hopefully we can come back and we’ll be better.”  

WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 HERTZ CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 10th “I’m really proud of the effort by the team. We didn’t have the best execution, but we had pretty decent execution throughout the day. I hate that we got into the 6 (Ross Chastain) there. We had a little bit of damage, but overall, not bad. We fought really hard. A top-ten is good for how the day was overall. We’ll move on from it and go to Atlanta.”  

WHAT’S THE BIGGEST LESSON YOU LEARNED TODAY? “We just have to work on our car turning. We just couldn’t really ever get the car to turn, especially on a short run. We just have to work on that. But it seemed like it was OK after that.”     DID YOU LIKE HOW THE CARS WERE RACING? “There was a lot of tire fall off. For us, it really just created vibrations because we were wearing the right-front out so hard. I think, overall, it was getting better and closer to 2018.”  

TALK ABOUT THIS RACE. “Yeah, a top-ten is good from where we ran. I think we ran 12th to 17th all day and to finish tenth is a good result for us. I’m proud of that, for sure.”  

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 12th “Definitely not the day we wanted but we fought like hell all day long. The guys had a great pitstops and got this 48 Outlaw Chevy positions and the pits and we have a lot to build on. I am so proud of this team.”  

TYLER REDDICK NO. 8 I AM SECOND CAMARO ZL1 1LE- Finished 33rd

WHAT ESSENTIALLY LED TO YOU HITTING THE WALL? "Well, we lost a tire there in (Turns) 1 and 2. I really don't know what led to that. I don't know if I just caught something on the race track or it just wasn't meant to be. Our I Am Second Chevrolet was really, really good today. I just made a couple of mistakes there that cost us track position. I don't know if that's what ultimately would have kept us from cutting a tire, but we were in really good shape there and I just made a rookie mistake and fell back to the back half of the top 10 and from there we had our flat tire, and that was the end of our day unfortunately."   “I lost some track position there. I was trying to get a little bit of room in a tough, three-wide situation. We put tires on and re-racked them after that. I don’t know if we just caught something on the race track, a piece of debris. With this traction compound, debris blows up to the wall and it seems like it’s sticky up there. So, some of the stuff that falls off these cars might be sticking to the track too. I don’t know if that’s what did it or not and it’s going to be really hard to say.”  

YOU PUT ON A SHOW TODAY. WHAT DO YOU TAKE AWAY FROM IT? “We were pretty down after practice Friday and qualifying. We were fighting a lot of things in our car on Friday and we didn’t really understand it until the day was over, and we couldn’t get anymore laps. Saturday, we finally got our car better and we went too far. We had it pretty much just right it seemed like for most of the race when the traction compound was really good there in the middle of the race. It’s a tough part about it. This is where we’ll end our year and if you’re in the championship, this is where you have to win and it’s nice to know we have some speed. But we can most-certainly make our car better too

OYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS

1st, Joey Logano*

2nd, Kevin Harvick*

3rd, KYLE BUSCH

4th, Kyle Larson*

5th, Clint Bowyer*

20th, DENNY HAMLIN

21st, DANIEL SUÁREZ

24th, CHRISTOPHER BELL

28th, ERIK JONES

32nd, MARTIN TRUEX JR.

38th, TIMMY HILL

*non-Toyota driver 

TOYOTA QUOTES

KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Sport Clips Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing

Finishing Position: 3rd

What is your takeaway from this package here this weekend?

“I don’t know. Just really want to thank my guys. We unloaded and we weren’t very good. I didn’t think, I wasn’t too optimistic for the race and rightfully so. I think we probably had a sixth or seventh place car, but we had a lot of strategy there at the end with tires and all that sort of stuff – good restarts and being able to make time up on the bottom. Once you get that close to the front, you can’t make up that time anymore so that’s kind of where we lost our ground there. It’s good to come home third with this Sport Clips Camry. Really appreciate Sport Clips and having them on board with us here this year. One-off deal for them. Hopefully we got everything we can get for them. I’m going to go get a haircut this Monday – get a haircut and also focus on what we have to do next week. We need to come back here with a better piece.”

How was the race today?

“It was okay, just different. There at the end obviously, making up some good spots on the bottom when everybody would get bottled up there mid-pack, but once you get closer to the front, it’s hard to make up those spots anymore on the bottom anymore like we were. Just want to thank everybody on this Sport Clips Camry. The guys did a great job.  We weren’t very good when we unloaded, we made a lot of ground, but still not enough ground as I would have wanted to race with some of the top guys. I felt like we were a fifth or sixth place car probably and we were able to come out with a third. Good for us with that effort. We need some points right now. We have to climb the ladder back and get back where we need to be.”

Did you feel you were working better lower in the dogleg of the track?

“I was just trying to go where they weren’t. If I follow them into the corner or don’t give myself enough slide room, I’m going to get into them so I was just trying to get enough out of the way and see if I couldn’t make anything happen down there. It seemed to work a couple times.”

Did you have a shot for the win at the end and restarts not go your way?

“I wouldn’t say we had a shot, we never had fire-off speed today. We were really slow to fire-off and later in the going we were getting better with longevity, but still we were a ways off. Felt like that when we unloaded and we made some ground on it and got it a heck of a lot better, but just couldn’t get it where we needed it there throughout the race. The 2 (Brad Keselowski) was probably the fastest car. The 22 (Joey Logano) was pretty quick and the 4 (Kevin Harvick) was pretty quick.”

Do you feel you could race with this package compared to last year?

“You could definitely follow a lot closer. You could get up into a guy’s left-rear and be close enough to their left-rear and follow them close enough that you could try to make a move on them or make a run on them up off the corner. Get them a little loose to be able to make a move on them. I felt like there was certainly some positives. I felt like some of it was also kind of the same as what you get. When you get strung out, you get strung out. I don’t think you’re going to be able to captivate these cars close enough together for three-and-a-half hours at a time at one-mile race tracks when your very grip limited.”

How intense was the racing and was it more intense than usual?

“It always is, and it is on restarts just with the trajectory of the race track and what all you’ve got going on there. We made some big moves and a lot of ground, but once you get close enough to the front to try to overtake the front row, you really can’t do it down there on that bottom side like that. (Kevin) Harvick was close off of two there on that restart, but we got such a bad restart that we were too far behind with too much ground to make up on the 22 (Joey Logano). He got a good launch.”

Did you learn anything for the fall championship race?

“I don’t know. Learned that we have to be a hell of a lot better than we were.”

DANIEL SUÁREZ, No. 96 CommScope Toyota Camry, Gaunt Brothers Racing  

Finishing Position: 21st

How does it feel to finish the race on the lead lap?

“The result looked really good, on paper. We just need to keep working to get more speed. The balance of the car wasn’t even close to what we wanted, so we have a lot of work to do. It was a crazy race, but that’s short-track racing. We did the best with what we had. We just need to keep working and find some more speed.”

MARTIN TRUEX JR., No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing

Finishing Position: 32nd

What happened on the track?

“I just got ran over. He ran into the back of me earlier getting into (turn) one. I hung on to it. These restarts are crazy, it’s fanned out. The 48 (Jimmie Johnson) was in front of me. I wasn’t sure if he was going to come up in front of me on the short shoot or not. Then the 10 (Aric Almirola) ran into us. Can’t finish a race, it sucks.”