MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
KANSAS SPEEDWAY
HOLLYWOOD CASINO 400
TEAM CHEVY POST-QUALIFYING NOTES AND QUOTES
OCTOBER 19, 2019
TOP TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL QUALIFYING RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
1st DANIEL HEMRIC, NO. 8 CATERPILLAR CAMARO ZL1
5th KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 CREDIT ONE BANK CAMARO ZL1
9th AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 ROLAND CAMARO ZL1
10th BUBBA WALLACE, NO. 43 VICTORY JUNCATION CAMARO ZL1
12th JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 ALLY FUELING FUTURES CAMARO ZL1
TOP FIVE UNOFFICIAL QUALIFYING RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
1st Daniel Hemric (Chevrolet)
2nd David Ragan (Ford)
3rd Ryan Blaney (Ford)
4th Brad Keselowski (Ford)
5th Kyle Larson (Chevrolet)
NBC will telecast the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway live at 2:30 p.m. ET Sunday, October 20. The NBC Sports Gold app will stream the race and live coverage can also be found on MRN and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
TEAM CHEVY NOTES AND QUOTES:
DANIEL HEMRIC, NO. 8 CATERPILLAR CAMARO ZL1 – Pole Winner
GOOD JOB BY THE WHOLE TEAM! THIS IS YOUR FIRST CAREER POLE. HOW DOES IT FEEL?
“Yeah, it’s pretty special. I kind of just feel crazy. I got out of the car and I thought I’d be maybe fifth to eighth but man, these guys on this Caterpillar Camaro ZL1 have done a great job all year of no matter what’s thrown at us, kind of just rising to the occasion and showing back up at the race track every week ready to work. And, with all that going on, there’s so much going on around us, that you can get lost in the distraction of things. But, to know these guys have continued to have my back through all that stuff has meant the world to me. So, congratulations to ECR and RCR. They’ve been doing a great job for us all year. It’s cool to be the guy to steer it around the line there and get the quick time.”
HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL YOU HAVE TO THANK?
“A lot of people, man. Kyle Larson was kidding around last week and said man, I’m not sure what car you’re going to be in every week. We were doing a thing on stage and he brought that up. So, that being said, everybody you see on the suit has given me an opportunity to Cup race this year and hopefully there are many more years of my future down the road.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 ROLAND CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 9th
“That’s where you want to be. I feel like the magic number is 8th to 12th when it comes to downforce. Some of the guys obviously have more downforce that are further back. I didn’t want to be on the pole. I feel like you get out there and it’s hard to maintain when you have all the drag out of the car. I’m happy with it for what our car drove like yesterday. It got better, we did a good job going into today.”
BUBBA WALLACE, NO. 43 VICTORY JUNCTION CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 10th
“It was just like last week, a little boring. It’s not as windy as yesterday, so that’s nice. It was just one lap. We had a good qualifying run here in the spring. We qualified 12th, a lot of cars got disqualified and I ended up 7th. We were 20th or 25th by lap one. So, not a good day for us. We have a good car. I think it’s better than what we have been, so that’s good. We’re shooting for a top-15 for our Victory Junction Chevrolet. It should be solid for us. Kansas is always tricky with the weather. I think it’s to be the sun shining tomorrow and windy again. I talked to a couple of people in the garage; they were just sideways from the wind. I didn’t really put that into a factor after the first practice until I was watching Xfinity practice and they talked about it on the broadcast. So, we tried to tighten it up a lot and it still didn’t really knock a dent in it. The wind is going to be a pretty big effect here. We’ll see what we can do for tomorrow.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 ALLY FUELING FUTURES CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 12th
“It’s too early to know really where we’re going to end up. I know we picked up from yesterday, but outside of that, I’m not sure. Our approach this weekend was a lot different for ourselves than when we were here in the spring. We’re eager to get in the race and see if we made it better.
HOW MUCH OF A CHANGE IS THERE FROM THIS RACE IN THE SPRING TO NOW?
“With the new rules package, the rate in which you learn is just so quick. Although it’s a few months earlier, it has changed quite a bit. The evolution of us adapting to this rules package, you couldn’t even show up with the same car.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 14th
“It was alright. We went a little better than I expected, so I guess that’s good.”
WILLIAM (BYRON) SAID HE FELT LIKE HE WAS LACKING STRAIGHT-LINE SPEED. DOES THAT APPLY FOR YOUR TEAM?
“I guess according to qualifying, yeah I guess it depends how aggressive you want to be on that for tomorrow and how much you can get out of your car today to be able to adjust it to get some downforce back tomorrow. I would think you would want some of that downforce in the race tomorrow, but we’ll see. There’s a lot of different numbers at the top of the board, for sure.”
KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 ADVENTHEALTH CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 15th
“I feel like the car has been strong in practice. This is a sister track to Kentucky, where we won earlier this year. We have nothing to lose, really nothing to gain on points because Talladega didn’t turn out all that well for us. It’s like win or bust for the rest of the year for the No. 1 car.”
IS THIS MAYBE THE TIME WHERE YOU TRY SOME THINGS FOR NEXT YEAR?
“Right now, I think we are just all pushing hard for right now. It’s Kansas this weekend, we’ll be in Martinsville next week, Texas after that. We just need to push, push, push for race conditions and races this year. We are 15th right now in points and that’s not all that great. So, let’s just grab wins. We can’t even really point our way back up in the points right now.”
ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 16th
“We aren’t where we want to be and not where we wanted to qualify. It drove fine in qualifying, just wide open. But it’s not the speed we need to have. We didn’t really have the handling that we needed to have yesterday either. I’m pretty bummed with how we’ve been throughout the weekend, especially with how strong we were here in the spring. We have a lot of really smart people working hard to make it better.”
ARE YOU WORRIED?
“Yeah. We were a 30th place race car yesterday in practice, so I’m pretty worried.”
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THAT WORRY?
“We have what we have now. We made some good changes last night and, obviously, Greg (Ives) and the guys are doing all that they can. The new tire is kind of throwing us for a loop a little bit. We’re just trying to figure out exactly what we need and lean on our teammates. The 24 I thought looked really good in practice yesterday, at least compared to us. Hopefully we can lean on them and just try to get all four of our cars better than where we were yesterday.”
WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 UNIFIRST CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 25th
“It hasn’t been a super easy week, it’s been pretty stressful. But, we kind of know what we have to do and we didn’t really do anything different this week. We just spent our normal time in the simulator. I feel like this is a good track for us as a team, hopefully that pays off tomorrow. It’s hard to say. We don’t have the straight-line speed this weekend, but we’re kind of hoping that pays off.”
CAN YOU PICTURE A SCENARIO?
“Yeah, for sure. You kind of have to feel it throughout practice. I felt like I felt that way throughout practice, in terms of how the car felt and how confident I could be with my moves. I feel like I had that feeling that I had similar to when I ran the truck here. Hopefully, that’s the confidence that we need. Honestly, even if it’s not really there, you just have to go for it. It’s just going to be all hands-on deck to try to go out there and win. If we can do that, that would be awesome. It’s honestly what our approach is for the rest of the year. If we make it through this round, we’re going to have to win in the next one anyways.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, NO. 37 KROGER SIMMER LIKE A WINNER CAMARO ZL1 – Qualified 26th
“It was a low in first practice, but the second practice got a lot better. We’ve come a long way with our race car this weekend. We’ll see how qualifying goes here. The weather is a lot different. The race track is pretty green after the Xfinity cars have been on track after that rain shower overnight and this morning. We’ll see. We’ll have a good race car. That’s something that we’ve had a strong suit all season long; not qualifying the best, but being able to race well. That’s our plan. It’s a fun track, I do like this place. I like to be able to move around. You can run the fence, you can run the white line on the bottom, and really anywhere in between. It’s a cool race track and we enjoy coming here.”
Team Chevy high-resolution racing photos are available for editorial use.
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