CHEVY MENCS at Phoenix 1: Post Race Notes and Quotes

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series – ISM Raceway
TICKETGUARDIAN 500
Team Chevy Post Race Notes and Quotes
TOP TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL FINISHING RESULTS:

POS. DRIVER
6th Kyle Larson, No. 42 McDonald’s Camaro ZL1
7th Kurt Busch, No. 1 Global Poker Camaro ZL1
8th Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Ally Camaro ZL1
14th Chase Elliott, No. 9 Hooters Camaro ZL1
15th Ty Dillon, No. 13 GEICO Camaro ZL1

TOP FIVE UNOFFICIAL FINISHING RESULTS:
POS. DRIVER
1ST Kyle Busch (Toyota)
2nd Martin Truex, Jr. (Toyota)
3rd Ryan Blaney (Ford)
4th Aric Almirola (Ford)
5th Denny Hamlin (Toyota)

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season continues next weekend at Auto Club Speedway for the Auto Club 400 on Sunday, March 17 at 3:30 pm ET. Live coverage can be found on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

TEAM CHEVY NOTES AND QUOTES:

KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 MCDONALD’S CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 6th
NICE TOP 10 FINISH FOR YOU GUYS TODAY BOTH YOU AND YOUR TEAMMATE COME OUT OF HERE WITH TOP 10’S. TALK ABOUT YOUR DAY OVERALL:
“Yeah, it was a clean day for us, so I was happy about that. Had some really good restarts that kept us in the game. We worked on our balance throughout the race, tried to free it up and got too free and then had to go back on changes to tighten us back up. So, yeah to come away with a sixth is nice after the last couple of weeks we’ve had of just making mistakes and even this week we made a big mistake in qualifying, but thankfully, we were able to work through it.”

HOW HARD WAS IT MOVING UP FROM THAT 31ST STARTING SPOT TO WHERE YOU FINISHED?
“You had to take advantage of the restarts for sure. I felt like I did a good job of that today going to the very top when I was in the outside lane and passing four or five guys at times. Yeah, that was important and then just being able to pass some cars and get in line and just kind of try and maintain and not make any mistakes.”

KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 GLOBAL POKER CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 7th
THOUGHTS ON YOUR RACE OVERALL:
“I’m glad we got a top 10. We had to battle hard for this one. We didn’t do really good on pit road and we didn’t really do good on restarts, but overall with the Global Poker Chevy it was nice to have a read on some looseness and tightness at a short track and get more notes under our belt. That is key for me and Matt McCall (crew chief). Awesome, fun, running with (Kyle) Larson. The two of us got a pretty good read on each other on when we are holding each other up or if we are helping each other and then at the end they told me I was about a lap shy on fuel, so I had to save and I just let Larson go and it worked out. To have two Ganassi cars sixth and seventh, top Chevy’s that is good stuff.”

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 8th
GREAT RUN FOR YOU TODAY. TALK ABOUT YOUR DAY:
“Yeah, definitely a strong performance. We need more. We need to find more, but on a short track where grip is so important our guys did a nice job all weekend long of bringing a little bit more. Excited about that. We weathered the storm on two tires, on four and ended up with a nice top 10.”

IS THIS RUN KIND OF A VICTORY FOR YOU GUYS?
“No, it’s not a victory, but it’s definitely a solid day for the Ally Chevrolet. These guys have been working so hard at Hendrick Motorsports to get us more and more and we took a good step in the right direction. I even think at Vegas we were better than where we finished. Once we lost track position, we struggled the second half of the race. Atlanta was terrible, can’t say anything different there. We are learning each week and I still think we have some catching up to do, but certainly a solid performance. Kevin (Meendering, crew chief) called a great race, it was really tricky with strategy, two tires, four tires, our pit crew had to adjust mid pit stop one time and go from four to two and everybody responded really well.”

TY DILLON, NO. 13 GEICO CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 15th
“Today was a great day for our GEICO Racing team. We consistently ran inside the top-20, kept making adjustments to fine tune the handling, and then got ourselves in a position to run inside the top-15. I know this is what our Germain Racing team can do every single week and I’m proud of all the hard work that is going into building faster race cars. We will keep building on top-15 finishes like this and I know good things will continue to happen for our team.”

RYAN PREECE, NO. 47 KROGER CAMARO ZL1 – Involved in an on-track incident on lap 233
“That was definitely an unfortunate ending to our weekend at ISM Raceway. We’ve been fighting a tight center through the corner most of the weekend, but today in the race we were really making big swings at it to get our Kroger Camaro ZL1 to turn better. I’m really proud of the hard work our guys put in throughout the week and weekend. The west coast swing can be tough with the limited time you have to work on the cars during the week, but Tristan (Smith, crew chief) is always open to suggestions and we work really well together to come up with solutions. All we can do is look forward to next weekend at Auto Club Speedway, where I know everyone at the shop has put in a lot of work to getting our speedway track program better every week.”

ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CAMARO ZL1 – Sidelined by tire issues on lap 186
WHAT DID YOU FEEL THERE THE FIRST TIME AND THEN THE SECOND TIME?
“We have just been too tight since we unloaded and couldn’t figure out how to fix it. We were pretty good as long as there was air on the nose, but get buried in traffic and we were just way too tight. It’s unfortunate, obviously, finishing that first stage fourth we had a good race car just had to have clean air and without that we were way too tight.”

THIS PLACE IT TOUGH ON TIRES, TALK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU:
“We were just too tight and these tires are pretty finicky when you are tight like that it creates a lot of heat and it’s easy to pop one.”

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