WHAT DRIVERS SAID AFTER A CHAOTIC, FIVE-OVERTIME NASCAR CUP RACE AT NASHVILLE
Here is what drivers had to say after Sunday's race, which went a NASCAR Cup Series record five overtimes before Joey Logano won.
Joey Logano — Winner: “A lot of teamwork there. You have to give a lot of credit to our fueler, Nick Hensley, our engine department with Roush Yates building obviously some engines that could also manage fuel really well, and some guts – a lot of cajones made it happen. It’s been a hard season and being on that cutline, I tell you it sucks. It’s just not fun. It’s hard and you just want a little bit of relief of the pressure and with seven weeks to go until the playoffs it gives us a chance to breathe for a second and start just kind of working on our car a little bit differently and just sleep better, to be honest with you.”
Zane Smith — Finished 2nd: “I mean, obviously so happy with the result. But when you hear for like 10 laps that ‘He is supposed to run out, he is supposed to run out’, and then you see him shaking the car across the line and you just finished second, that hurts. The winning side of it hurts, but just appreciate everyone at Spire Motorsports and appreciate the strategy there. I appreciate Jockey Outdoors and Luke Bryan; having them on board here in Nashville, along with all of our other partners. It’s been a rough, rough year, but this is a great momentum booster, confidence booster, all of the above. So, hopefully we can carry this on, but it was awesome to sniff your first Cup win.”
Tyler Reddick — Finished 3rd: “I don’t know, the last set of tires didn’t give our Monster Energy Camry the balance it had all day long that allowed it to contend for the lead with Christopher Bell there. We just had a bad restart, I fell back and I could tell there in the closing laps we were wounded bad. The tires were chorded. When the caution came out, we were in a really bad spot. We were going to lose all our track position, but we had to put tires on as I don’t think we were going to be able to hold on during a restart, but it became the very thing that gave us an opportunity to win the race. It was a great call, a gutsy call by the crew chief Billy Scott. I was upset about the position we were in, but just kept being aggressive on the restarts and I mean we got ourselves all the way there. It's tough. Had just about everything go right into the last lap, I just didn’t get the job done.”
Ryan Preece — Finished 4th: “It wasn’t pretty. Track position was a tough thing and we seemed to always be on the other side of it, but for once when it mattered we happened to be in the right spot.”
Chris Buescher — Finished 5th: “We had the ability to run in the top 10 all night and got stage points and got a decent finish out of it. I’m still just frustrated. It was just chaos there at the end. I have to go back and watch what happened with everything obviously, but we just didn’t get a chance to race very much. We were in a good spot there. We had good speed after the sun went down and had tires, so just really wanted some laps.”
Kyle Larson — Finished 8th: “Just a lot of craziness there at the end. There were a lot of cars short on fuel and we were one of them. Just a lot of mess. On the first restart, I was just trying to get Denny (Hamlin) washed off the bottom so that I could get some clean air and give myself an opportunity to win. I felt like from the second position, I wouldn’t have a chance. I just tried to run in with him and got myself really tight and into Ross (Chastain), so caused that crash. And then on the next restart, I just got out of shape and almost caused a crash there. On the third one, we ran out of fuel taking off. We just had a couple of good restarts right there at the end. Happy to get a top 10, but a little bit bummed how it transpired.”
Daniel Hemric — Finished 9th: “Really today was just another example of our season. It’s been a roller-coaster ride. We struggled with short-run speed all weekend on the No. 31 Cirkul Chevrolet. After the rain delay and a couple of good adjustments, I thought if we could get track position, we would be OK. We finally got it and got caught in a crash. I thought every corner was knocked off the car. Somehow, some way, the seas kept parting. We were able to have a couple of good restarts at the end and cross the line in ninth. What a weekend, but I’ll take it.”
AJ Allmendinger — Finished 11th: “Long, hard fought day. I felt like as the race went on, we improved the race car. We weren’t able to get the track position there til the end. Unfortunately, that strategy didn’t work out. We were able to miss all the wrecks, get our lap back and make the most out of our day. Overall, something we can learn fun. Good finish for both cars. Good day for the race team.”
Denny Hamlin — Finished 12th: “We ran out under caution. (Chris Gabehart, crew chief) was monitoring fuel pressure. I let him know what the fuel pressure was. We were fine, just running out of gas and we did under caution. It was the right call. I was going down pitlane there out of gas. I’m surprised we lasted that many green-white-checkers honestly. Certainly, stinks being 15 seconds from a win at the end and then 10 seconds from a win, and then to finish 12th. It’s just part of it.”
Chase Briscoe — Finished 21st: “I was kind of the worst-case scenario the last 70 laps or so from a strategy standpoint with how it played out. We had to go back to 30th or something because of how the strategy panned out and the cautions fell and was able to drive back to 15th or so. There at the end, you don’t really expect to have three or four green-white-checkers, so we ran out of fuel taking the white flag. It definitely stinks whenever you're in contention there. I thought on the second-to-last one I had a good shot to potentially win the race and we finished 21st or something like that. It’s frustrating but that’s part of it.”
Josh Berry — Finished 26th: “Today was a tough day. We just started off really tight and couldn’t figure out the balance, but my team worked hard to get me the car I needed and we finally found it after the rain delay. We got a bunch of spots back and had a much more competitive No. 4 Ford Mustang Dark Horse. It was just chaos there at the end. We tried to navigate all of those restarts and eventually just got caught up in it. It was a bummer that we didn’t finish that well this week in Nashville, my home race, but we learned a lot.”
Kyle Busch — Finished 27th: “I’m proud of everyone on the zone team and at RCR for their effort today. We struggled early but our guys kept making changes to our zone Camaro throughout the race. Randall Burnett made great calls to put us in position to score a top-five finish. Those cautions at the end of the race and into overtime really worked against us because we were close on fuel. On that last restart, we were fourth when the No. 5 (Kyle Larson) ran out of fuel just ahead of me and I had nowhere to go. It’s frustrating for sure but we’ll bounce back next week in Chicago.”
Austin Dillon — Finished 32nd: “Our luck is unbelievable. We started off with a fast No. 3 BREZTRI AEROSPHERE® Chevrolet today at Nashville Superspeedway. Even though our handling started to go away toward the middle of the race, crew chief Justin Alexander and the entire RCR team worked hard to improve the balance of our Chevrolet and by the end of the race it felt pretty good. We were running 11th when the caution flag came out in Stage 3 and we made the call to pit for right-side tires knowing that it would be tight on fuel if we stayed out. A car got turned around directly in front of us on the restart and we had no where to go. It ended our night and ruined a chance at a top-10 finish. It’s not the finish we deserved or hoped for, but I am proud of this team for bringing a solid Chevy to the track. We’ll head to the Chicago Street Race next week and hope for some better luck.”
Michael McDowell — Finished 35th: “I just came off of Turn 4 and I thought maybe something had broke in the driveshaft or something like that, but it was actually in the transaxle. Something broke and shot a hole through the side of the case. That’s not what we wanted. We were salvaging a pretty decent day, so that was unfortunate.”
Christopher Bell — Finished 36th: “I just put myself in a pretty bad spot going into turn one. I got bottled up there and just lost my cool to make something happen and I put myself in a bad spot and spun out.”
Riley Herbst — Finished 37th: “It just felt like (Corey LaJoie) was kind of over-racing me, but I had fun. It was a fun day. It was cool. I learned a lot.”