Here is what drivers had to say after Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway:
Austin Cindric — Winner: “It takes everything and we’ve had it so many races here and you’ve got to have a little bit more. I’m just so proud of everybody on this race team. Team Penske, the entire shop deserves wins at these racetracks with how fast our race cars are and I’m just so proud to be able to win for John Menard and the Menards team – to get this yellow car in Victory Lane and get in the playoffs. … You’re waiting for it to go wrong (on the final laps), but you’ve got to stay in the zone. There are so many times at the end I was just focused on the feedback (spotter) Doug Campbell was giving me and what I knew about our car and maybe other cars I observed throughout the field today, so just an absolutely fantastic job by everybody involved.”
Ryan Preece — Finished 2nd: “We did all we could. I felt like we executed stage three exactly like we needed to. We came out in the front of our group and worked our way through that traffic. We had the opportunity to get to the top lane and then from there it was just managing those cars behind us and not giving up what we gained. I’m really proud of everybody at RFK for this race car. I’m just really super appreciative from Jack, Brad, the Fenway Group for this opportunity. Honestly, without Kroger and BAM and Celsius and a lot of the other partners today, I’d probably be back in Connecticut. I’m really excited about the rest of this year. It’s a great day, but I wanted to win.”
Kyle Larson — Finished 3rd: “There wasn’t really much I could do the final five laps. I wanted to go to the outside lane when we got clear of William (Byron), but I felt like the gap was too big to move up and the No. 60 (Ryan Preece) was able to fill it. I was still happy to be second row on the inside lane, obviously happy to be front row, but I just didn’t know how it was going to play out from there. There at the end, you’re just trying to give the right pushes to get clear and then maybe he starts blocking lanes and something would open up for me. I was just kind of jammed up there. I will take a third-place finish. We had a great day, points-wise, for this No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet team. Winning the first stage was a bit unexpected, and then finishing third in the second stage from where we were on the final restart was also unexpected. Just a really good day, overall, for the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevy.”
William Byron — Finished 4th: “I don’t know about that. We had the No. 48 (Alex Bowman) behind us and he was doing a good job pushing. It just seemed like we couldn’t get enough help from the third guy in line and that’s what it takes. For whatever reason, the top lane just couldn’t get the runs off the corner at the right time to get connected. We’d get connected too late and then get a little bit squirrely and lose our momentum. I wish just that one time, we could have connected a little better to stay even with the bottom lane, but we were working really hard to do that with the No. 2 (Austin Cindric). It just seemed like it took a lot of effort for us to maintain the track position on the front row. Live and learn. The No. 24 Valvoline Chevrolet team did a good job today. We had some issues and had to work on it. We got it better and then we were able to race there in the final stage, so really happy with that. We always want a little bit more. I feel like we were in the perfect position there with 10 laps to go.”
Joey Logano — Finished 5th: “Yeah, it’s all about the cycle and then once it got two-by-two there you’re kind of there just watching it all happen in front of you and you really don’t play much of a part. You just hope that your lane clears enough to where you can possibly make a move, but there are no lanes to make a move there. We just got beat on the cycle there. I’m not even really sure exactly how yet. I have to go back and look at it, but, overall, it was a solid day for the Shell/Pennzoil Ford. We almost had a stage win and a top five, so I can’t be too frustrated with that I guess.”
Noah Gragson — Finished 6th: “We were in the third row on the outside and was trying to keep Cindric out front and keep the outside lane that I was in from getting there and then the 60 (Ryan Preece) was able to pull up and we had two Fords out front. I’m happy for Ford and Penske for the win, but this is a good reset and good points today after the first 10 races of the season. We haven’t had the results we want, so it’s a good reset after the off weekend and a good way to start off the next part of the season.”
Bubba Wallace — Finished 10th: “I don’t really know what to think as I think we were all waiting for a big wreck there at the end and it never happened. We ended up 10th, so that’s a good day for us. We didn’t need a new winner, but congrats to Austin (Cindric). All-in-all, our Leidos Toyota Camry was pretty solid today. Was nice not having to riding around, running half throttle and save fuel. We did at times, but not as much. Clean race and now, onto Texas.”
Daniel Suarez — Finished 11th: “It was an up-and-down day for the No. 99 Wendy’s Frosty Chevrolet team. I wasn’t in love with the balance of the car. I thought the speed was decent, but I just felt like the balance of the car, we have a little bit of work to do to fight consistently at the front. We made a couple of mistakes on pit road, but when it counted the most at the end, we executed well.”
Michael McDowell — Finished 13th: “Not the day we were hoping for at Talladega. Our No. 71 GUNK Chevrolet was fast. Early on in the race, we were able to get to the lead and kind of control the lanes. We just lost track position there at the end and never could really get it back. It was unfortunate, but we learned a lot this weekend. We’ll keep plugging away at it. Not what we hoped for, but we’ll take a solid finish and move onto Texas.”
Erik Jones — Finished 20th: “It’s hard to win from 15th or 20th, but we had a plan to organize and couldn’t get it going. So from there, I just rode in line. It would have been nice to see if we could have gotten the top going, but we didn’t. Not much you can do about it.”
Ty Dillon — Finished 25th: “We were having a pretty smooth day with our No. 10 Sea Best Chevy and our car was fast. We did our job on pit road pretty much and on the track, we put ourselves in position and where we needed to be at the end. We were running in seventh and ran out of the gas. We’ve got to get that cleaned up. Running out of gas has robbed us of a lot of finishing positions and points over the last two weeks. We’ve shown a lot of really good speed on the super speedways, and that’s been really good. It’s nice to see the hard work paying off when we show up at the track. We’ll keep grinding and the finishes we deserve will come.”
AJ Allmendinger — Finished 26th: “Overall, our day was going well. We were racing our own race there of hanging back and going at the end of the stages. That worked out for the first stage, almost worked out for the second stage and I thought we were in a decent position in the third stage. We ended up with a combination of bad luck and not a great last stop at the end, just having to go around the No. 1 car and everything that happened there. That cost us there at the end and that’s disappointing.”
John Hunter Nemechek — Finished 32nd: “Overall, we just didn’t execute all day. We win and lose as a team. We’ll go back and review what we need to do better, the things that were positive, and try to get our superspeedway packages better.”
Cody Ware — Finished 33rd: “I think that today we showed from green flag to checkered flag that we were a race-winning contender today. I’m really proud of the pit crew and the road crew and everybody back at the shop for building a super fast Arby’s Barbeque Ford Mustang. I’m really dejected with how the day ended. I sped leaving pit road, but we also ran out of fuel, too, so our fate was kind of sealed after that last pit stop no matter what. I’ll work on the things I need to work on and I know the team is going to work on the things they need to work on and we just need to move forward knowing that we can do this. We just have to keep digging.”
Hard hits for Bell, Buescher coming up to speed
Christopher Bell gets a bump from teammate Denny Hamlin with the field coming up to speed at Talladega, but the No. 20 gets sent into Chris Buescher, and both drivers suffer hard impacts.
Chris Buescher — Finished 36th: “Everything was great out the windshield. I have no clue what happened yet. I imagine it was a bad push. That’s all it can really be. I know we’re all going for it there at the end. We’re in a great spot with our Travel Centers Ford Mustang. We had our teammate behind us. We had fuel to go wide-open and not worry about it all the way to the end of that stage and it certainly didn’t work out. I don’t know what happened at this point. I’m assuming we were just two-wide. I have no clue to really say, but we had worked really well with Preece early on in the race and had been really smart about how we linked up and got to pushing and it worked really well for us. We were right there off the corner, just kind of backing up to him to receive that first big push down the back and just seen the 20 come across the nose. Until I dive into it, I don’t know anything else yet.”
Christopher Bell — Finished 37th: “Whenever you’re the car getting pushed, you’re completely at the mercy of the guy behind you. You know, Denny (Hamlin) didn’t do anything wrong. You have to push, you have to push to be successful. It’s a product of the cars we race with this rules package.”
Pit road mess collects Keselowski, Busch at ‘Dega
The first yellow of the Jack Link’s 500 waves for Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch as both drivers check up coming to pit road during the first round of green flag pit stops.
Brad Keselowski — Finished 38th: “It was just a stack of guys trying to come to pit road as fast as they could and we were kind of the ham in the sandwich that got squeezed. I waved down the backstretch to let everybody know I was gonna pit and I came off of four and everybody was so tight behind me that I didn’t even have a chance to turn left. I hate that it ruined not just our day, but several other people’s day. I don’t think I could do anything different.”
Ryan Blaney — Finished 39th: “We just broke too many pieces in the right-rear. That took all the damage. The right-rear wheel and it broke everything. We couldn’t fix it, unfortunately, but I don’t really know. I kind of saw a little bit of a replay. It looked like a group of guys trying to get to pit road and maybe some guys not knowing that they were coming to pit road and not giving them any room. I saw the 8 (Kyle Busch) and 6 (Brad Keselowski) kind of get hooked together and they were going up the track, so I kind of picked the bottom and tried to get out of there and I think they clipped someone outside of them and the 6 came back into me and I got clipped in the right-rear. Oh gosh, man, another DNF. It just sucks. Just when we were kind of getting our momentum and didn’t even get to race today. We’ll just move on to Texas.”
