What Drivers Said: Phoenix edition
Courtesy: Dylan Bauerle
Here’s what drivers said after Sunday’s Ruoff Mortage 500 at Phoenix Raceway:
Chase Briscoe – No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford – WINNER: “That’s unbelievable. I was crying the whole last lap. I mean, this is definitely a team win. I got to thank everyone that has gotten me to this point. Seven years ago, I was sleeping on couching, ready to give up. They gave me an opportunity and it’s led to this.I am so blessed to be driving at the organization, the team, the car that was my hero growing up. To get this 14 back in Victory Lane, to do it with Mahindra Tractors, their first year in the sport, everybody that’s believed in me. It’s unbelievable.”
Question: You have dreamed of driving in your idol Tony Stewart’s race car. You looked a lot like Tony Stewart today.
“Yeah, those restarts, I mean, we were sliding, everything else. I hope the race fans enjoyed the race. It was unbelievable from my point. Thank you, guys, for coming out. We missed you the last two years with COVID and everything else. So thankful to have guys back. Without you guys, we don’t have a sport, don’t get to race, do what we do for a living. I wish my wife and baby were here. Definitely special and one that’s going to be remembered forever.”
Ross Chastain – No. 1 K1 Speed Chevrolet – Finished Second: How would you sum up your day?
“Like a day at the K1 track. That was so much fun to get to race like that at this level. Trackhouse Racing believes in me and AdventHealth and The Moose, these people they believed in me early in the season when stuff wasn’t going great. That’s so cool to race with Tyler (Reddick) and Chase (Briscoe). I mean that’s like everything I’ve ever wanted and my crew chief Phil Surgen, like people don’t know how good he is. His adjustments this year have been so incredible and gave me exactly what I needed. Just came up one spot short. I’m so happy.”
Tyler Reddick – No. 8 Guaranteed Rate Chevrolet – Finished Third: Tyler, good race car all weekend long, all day long. Just a little bit short at the end.
“I thought we got a good launch considering all things going right there into one. I know about how deep I could drive it in turn one all day. I thought I got pretty good heat in the tires. I still overstepped it. I couldn’t have drove it any deeper than I did. I still thought I was going to get him in the fence. Chase was able to drive it off in there, clear, high, take the lead. It was a lot of fun. Great to claw back from the hiccup we had earlier in the race. Everyone on this No. 8 Guaranteed Rate team did a really good job all day. One little miscue that took us from second to 12th. My pit crew did an amazing job, had a good restart at the end to put ourselves in position. It was a fun day. Nice way to recover from a mistake that late in the race, be battling for the win. Great day. We’ll see what else we can learn from this and see what lies ahead.”
Ryan Blaney – No. 12 Menards/Maytag Ford – Finished Fourth: What more did you need today?
“It is hard to tell. I lost the lead there on pit road and just could never get back. I don’t know. I just didn’t have quite the speed and was kind of too tight. I could drive up through the field and make good spots and nobody could really do that. You would just get really tight behind people. Not a bad day. A good recovery from last week. We had a fast car, just a shame we couldn’t contend more for the win. It is cool to see Briscoe get his first win and we will go on to next week.”
Kurt Busch – No. 45 MoneyLion Toyota – Finished Fifth: You battled back for a top-five, can you tell us about your day?
“It was a little loose on corner exit. That turn two was a battle – a couple of guys spun right in front of me over there. We gave it our best. Once we got that sorted out in turn two, some of the other parts of the track got tight for us, but my car really surprised me on the refires. We were okay on older tires – usually, I’m a sticker guy. My crew chief, Billy Scott, said ‘No, you are going to stay out buddy.’ Really happy with the run. Thanks to MoneyLion, Toyota, everybody that was on our team this weekend. That’s a really good top-five, checked box for 23XI.”
Where did you come from, Kurt?
“It was surprising, and it was fun. I’m normally a sticker guy. I need sticker tires and this car reacted really well to scuffs today, so that’s good for our notebook at 23XI. The restarts – I was able to find the right spots to be. Thanks to MoneyLion, Toyota. We were the top Toyota today, which is somewhat of a surprise. We were just trying to get to 10th, but we will take a top-five. It’s really cool for our program, this car number, number 45. To get a top-five, check mark done. This was a good West Coast swing. Not so much on points with stage one and stage two, but our finishes were there, and we will keep chiseling away.”
Kevin Harvick – No. 4 Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford – Finished Sixth: “It was a good day for us. Restarts weren’t 100{54200d265998863b76fd4ce36c7d4cb67028262ee579cdcba83d47ef416fdf44} our strong point. We had a bit of a brake shake issue that kept pulling the car to the right under braking so I couldn’t get into corners like I wanted to. Still a good day and the car ran good. I just couldn’t really connect all the corners altogether through the day. Putting a SHR car in victory lane and running inside the top-five all day for us is always a good day.”
Daniel Suarez – No. 99 Commscope Chevrolet – Finished Ninth: “It was a rollercoaster, up and down. I don’t feel that we had the greatest speed, probably top-15 somewhere in there. I made a mistake on pit road, the speeding penalty. We had a couple slow stops. I feel like it was just ups and downs. We were able to recover a little bit. Travis (Mack, crew chief) made a good call right there with the right side tires only and we were able to get a couple spots back. Overall, it wasn’t a good day, we have to learn and come back stronger.”
Chris Buscher – No. 17 IT SAVVY Ford – Finished Tenth: “That was a really solid day. Phoenix is self-admittedly not been my best track, probably one of my worst. To have a day where we come out of here with a top-10 is a small win. I want to be better but definitely a strong Phoenix for us. I am proud of everyone in this group. It was a tough weekend again with just a 150minute practice and not uch time to work on it but we were able to dial it in and be competitive in the race. I think we learned some good stuff for our short-track program and we have a lot of those coming up shortly.”
Alex Bowman – No. 48 Ally Chevrolet – Finished 14th:
Cole Custer – No. 41 Haas Tooling Ford – Finished 16th:
Justin Haley – No. 31 Leafgaurd Gutter Protection Chevrolet – Finished 17th: “Our No. 31 LeafFilter Gutter Protection Camaro ZL1 started off building tight but were able to make some positive gains during our first pit stop. Track position here is crucial. I think we had a solid run overall and learned some things we can really build on for our short track program.”
William Byron – No. 24 Axalta Chevrolet – Finished 18th:
A.J. Allmendinger – No. 16 Action Industries Chevrolet – Finished 20th: “We fought some more handling issues today – I lacked rear grip and stability. We made a few major swings on pit road, but just couldn’t quite get the No. 16 Action Industries Camaro ZL1 feeling the way I wanted it to with the speed we needed. It was frustrating for sure, but we learned all we could and salvaged a top 20. This is a track we have been spending a lot of time putting our focus on, so hopefully the gains we made today carry over to the next time we come here in the fall.”
Austin Dillion – No. 3 Get Bioethanol Chevrolet – Finished 21st: “This No. 3 Get Bioethanol Chevrolet team continues to work so hard. We had a top-five run going today so I hate that our day ended the way it did. During the race, we fought a tight-handling condition that caused our tires to chatter and made us snappy loose on exit to the corner in Turn 2. Solid adjustments all day had us running in the top-five by the time we got to Stage 3. We were as fast as anyone in clean air. Our pit crew fired off great stops all day. On the last restart we were running sixth when the field went three-wide and someone tagged our right-rear. We got collected and it ended our day. Not the way we wanted to end the race after having such a strong run. It’s unfortunate to get tangled in someone else’s mess, but we’ll regroup and head to Atlanta Motor Speedway with even more fire underneath us.”
Brad Keselowski – No. 6 Violet Defense Ford – Finished 23rd:
Austin Cindric – No. 2 Autotrader Ford – Finished 24th:
Christopher Bell – No. 20 Rheem Toyota – Finished 26th:
Cody Ware – No. 51 Nurtec ODT Ford – Finished 31st:
Garrett Smithley – No. 15 Jacob Companies Ford – Finished 32nd:
Kyle Larson – No. 5 Valvoline Chevrolet – Finished 34th (mechanical): Anything you did to lead to that that you know of?
“I don’t know. I felt it four or five laps before it, well it was just getting worse. Hate that. Our Valvoline Chevy was pretty good, I thought that we were a fourth or fifth-place car. Just was just hoping to be a little better than that. I know they’ll address the issue that seems like we have had the last couple of weeks with some of the engines. We’ll come back strong and reliable. The good thing is we have fast cars, fast engines and great drivers driving these Chevys, so we’ll get some more wins here.”
Martin Truex Jr. – No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota – Finished 35th: What happened out there?
“We had been getting really loose all day on the longer runs. I was just out there trying to take care of it, and we gained a few spots on the restart and I was just trying to take care of the rear tires. Coming off of turn two there, I’m kind of neutral free and then all of a sudden it shot straight into the fence. I cut a right front down running up there in the glue or something.”