CHEVY NCS DARLINGTON 3: Race Notes & Quotes

AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 AMERICAN ETHANOL CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 2nd - “Man, it would have been nice to get that win and lock ourselves into the next round, but it was a heck of a finish for our entire No. 3 American Ethanol Chevrolet team. I’m proud of our second-place finish, especially after dropping to the rear of the field at the start of the race and recovering from that setback. We battled. We had a really good long run car and Kevin Harvick was getting tighter and tighter. I caught him earlier in the run, but he took my low line in Turns 1 and 2 and that was where I was really good. I’m really happy that we had a great run for Junior Johnson during NASCAR Throwback Weekend. He’s one of my heroes so it was an honor to run a tribute paint scheme to him this weekend. We showed up when it mattered. A lot of people count us out, but I don’t count myself out, or this team. I feel like we’ve brought good race cars all year and have been able to progress throughout races to make good changes. Sometimes things don’t fall our way, but we got that win at Texas and it provided the momentum that we needed. We’re just going to keep doing our thing. Chevy has been awesome, along with Dow, AstraZeneca, Bass Pro Shops, RigUp and everyone else involved with RCR. I can’t thank American Ethanol enough. We’ve been running with E15 and it’s great for our engines. It’s been fun. We just have to keep plugging. Richmond Raceway is next week, and we have a good short track car for them.”

ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 88 CHEVYGOODS.COM/TRUCK HERO CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 6th
“Sixth place isn’t terrible, but man we had a fast Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE tonight in Darlington. We had some issues on pit road that hurt us and we had to recover from that. I really feel like we were a car capable of winning. We just got buried there, but thankfully recovered from it. Sixth place isn’t the end of the world, but you know you had a fast car when you are bummed about sixth. This car looked amazing tonight and hopefully we can go to Richmond next weekend and do the same thing. It is a good feeling to have a good start to the Playoffs.”

KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 MONSTER ENERGY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 8th
“I’m happy with our run tonight with the Monster Energy Chevy. I know it’s not a win, but we got everything out of the race that we were hoping for; except maybe the alternate strategy that we were trying with one stop in the final stage. I was hopeful for the long run. I like dancing with the Lady!”

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 ALLY THROWBACK CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 18th
“That was not the result we wanted, we had a fast Ally Chevy until that last stage and it just kept getting tighter, but my guys just keep fighting. We will just focus on Richmond.”

CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS THROWBACK CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 20th
YOU WERE IN PERFECT POSITION. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE RACING WITH MARTIN TRUEX, JR.?
“He (Truex) had a run on me there, off of four and he just kind of cleared himself into one. He was close, but he wasn’t all the way clear, obviously. I hate it, obviously we had a fast NAPA Camaro - fast enough to contend. We needed a little pace there to extend our lead instead of playing defense, but regardless I thought we were in a good spot. I ran the bottom in three and four to see if there was anything left down there, that’s what kind of gave him the run and then he just slid up in to my left front, I felt like and on we went.”

TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 CAT POWER CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 23rd
“I’ve gotten to run a lot of cool races, but the Southern 500 has always been towards the top of the list for me, so it was really special to be able to make my first start in it tonight. I love NASCAR’s Throwback weekend, and our No. 8 Cat Power Chevrolet honoring Jeff Burton’s No. 8 scheme that he accepted Rookie of the Year honors with looked great out there. We fired off really fast tonight and was just a touch loose. My team made some good adjustments early in the run to tighten me up, but then the rear security of our Camaro became really unstable, which made it tough to manage the handling through the turns on both sides of the track. During the start of Stage 3, the field got really stacked up on the restart and I received some damage to the nose of our car, right above the grill. That affected the handling a lot for the rest of the night; and kept the temps up high too. We kept digging though, made repairs when we could and tried to get every spot possible out there. It just wasn’t our night tonight, but we’ll keep after it. There are still nine more races for us to go out and challenge for a win.”

BUBBA WALLACE, JR., NO. 43 CASH APP CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 38th
“Coming into tonight, there was a lot of optimism. We were looking forward to running the Southern 500 in our Cash App Chevy. It just didn’t work out for us. We had some back luck on our side. I don’t really know what the main issue was that ultimately led us to not finish the race. But we started out decent. Our guys made some good adjustments on the car and then got it better, and I was really happy with it. After we had our mishap and went to the garage we came back out and I thought our car was really good. We just had to survive until it went to night time and I thought we could have put a decent race together by that time, but it didn’t work out. So, we’ll go on to Richmond and try to claw back what we lost tonight.”