NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
FOLDS OF HONOR QUIKTRIP 500
ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY RACE NOTES AND QUOTES
FEBRUARY 28, 2016
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – RACE WINNER
THE GUTSY CALL BY CREW CHIEF, CHAD KNAUS, WAS THE GAME WINNER
‘Yeah, definitely a gutsy call. It was just a great team effort. The No. 4 (Kevin Harvick) car was awfully tough and it was going to take some strategy to get by him. When he told me to whip it as hard as I could there, I just felt like I was going to take too much life out of the tires. But, it worked. And I got rolling around the top and got to where I got this Lowe’s Chevy in Victory Lane. I’m so happy for Hendrick Motorsports and for everybody at Chevrolet.”
SO MANY MILESTONES IN YOUR CAREER, BUT TODAY YOU REACHED ANOTHER ONE. YOU TIED DALE EARNHARDT WITH 76 VICTORIES. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR YOU AND FOR YOUR CAREER?
“It’s such an honor. With the chaos at the end and the crash and wondering about overtime and how it worked these days, I kind of lost sight of that. I remembered it on my victory lap coming down, and I had to come by and throw a ‘three’ out the window to pay my respects to the man. There’s a huge void in my career that I never had a chance to race with him, but at least I was able to tie his record.”
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 2ND
ALL DAY YOU SEEMED LIKE YOU WERE PRETTY DARN GOOD. YOU ADJUSTED A BIT HERE AND THERE. WHAT’S YOUR OVERALL IMPRESSION OF TODAY?
“I loved it. We were sliding around and driving the hell out of the car. I had a blast. I had some good races there on the track with the No. 2 (Brad Keselowski) and the No. 18 (Kyle Busch) and a bunch of guys. Man, it was so much fun. And I post old pictures online all the time of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s and that’s when racing was racing. That’s when it was good. That’s what they saw today. So, I’d like to thank the Nationwide guys. We had a great car. It was fun to drive. It was hard, hard, hard, to drive; but man. I’m glad we didn’t have a ton of restarts today because sometimes those don’t really show the true ability of the car. You get lucky on some restarts and sometimes you don’t, depending on the lane you’re in. And a lot of times you can’t make heads or tails of what to do. Just like at the end we gained a few spots and got lucky. But you ain’t always going to be lucky. I’ve been on the other end of it where you lose spots in late, late restarts and you get so mad. But, there wasn’t no debris cautions, those were legit ones today.”
KURT BUSCH, NO. 41 MONSTER ENERGY/JIMMY JOHN’S CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 4TH
ON HIS DAY:
“It was hard driving with the lower downforce. We had a really good car short run speed; we just didn’t have it on the long run speed. That is sometimes what happens to a pole sitting car. You are feeling confident like ‘hey alright’, but we were just too aggressive on the tires. No biggie. It exemplified itself because we were great on short run speeds on that green-white-checkered. We gained from eighth to fourth. So, a long day, but I’m really happy with the Monster Energy/Haas Automation Chevy the effort, the guys, everybody. A couple of pit stops issues. I think we might have had a clutch dragging and it was actually rotating the left-rear tire so the pit stops were slow because I had the car in gear. I have to fix that. All-in-all real happy with the guys.”
HOW DO YOU EVALUATE THE DAY TODAY?
“We had a pole sitting car and sometimes that is tough. You want to leave the set-up alone. Today it just seemed to chew up the tires a bit too aggressively. We ran good early on in the race and then when the track rubbered in I just lost both ends of the car. But we were able to maintain we were hanging in there running eighth, top group, so to speak because we were on the lead lap. Then a green-white-checkered we went from eighth to fourth. That shows our short run speed, but it doesn’t work here at Atlanta when you are running 500 miles on long runs. Thanks to Monster Energy, Haas Automation, Chevrolet and everybody that works on this team. Really good group of guys, we just need to fine tune some small things.”
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 4 JIMMY JOHN’S CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 6TH
YOU LED THE MOST LAPS TODAY AND IT CAME DOWN TO THE VERY END. YOU TALKED ON THE RADIO ABOUT HAVING A SOFT BRAKE PEDAL. HOW LONG WERE YOU HAVING ISSUES?
“We had issues about the last three runs. I had to start driving the car different. It just required a little bit different handling. And then we had a slow pit stop there. We got way behind and the No. 48 (Jimmie Johnson) was way out front and I had to drive the car really hard and got the right rear burned up. We just didn’t execute today but everybody on our Jimmy John’s/Busch Chevrolet hung in there all day and we’ll keep at it.”
WHAT’S YOUR TAKEAWAY ON THE NEW LOWER DOWNFORCE PACKAGE AS WE MOVE TO LAS VEGAS FOR ANOTHER 1.5-MILE TRACK?
“Don’t worry about how fast you are in practice. Make sure it drives good.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 NAPA AUTO PARTS CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 8TH
ON THE LAST LAP EVENTS:
“I guess the No. 4 (Kevin Harvick) spun his tires and it got wild there. I wish I hadn’t lost those spots there. I just kind of got loose on the bottom and didn’t get going like I wanted to. I am really proud of the effort today. Really really solid NAPA Chevrolet. Just happy to be a part of this team everybody fought awfully hard. We are excited about today. I think it is something to build off of. It’s not perfect, it’s a start.”
HOW ABOUT THAT LONG GREEN FLAG RUN AT THE START?
“Yeah, that was crazy man. That was by far the longest green-flag run I’ve ever been a part of. I’m definitely going to sleep good tonight for sure.”
HOW GRUELING IS THAT ON A DRIVER?
“It’s very, I’m worn out. That is as tired as I have been in a long time racing these cars. That was a long day.”
ON DOING WELL AT HIS HOME TRACK:
“Like I said it was a solid day. I felt like on pit road, everything, Alan (Gustafson, crew chief) made good adjustments, the race went smooth. Obviously, not a lot of restarts, so a lot of it was green flag runs, which was different. That is something that you don’t see a ton of. Like I said, just happy that we finished today and that is a first for the year. Better than last week.”
WHAT WAS THE HIGH MOMENT OF THE DAY FOR YOU? IT DIDN’T SEEM LIKE THERE WERE ANY LOW MOMENTS:
“I wish I had a better last restart there. We had an opportunity to get a couple more spots there and every spot is valuable in this deal. You look at it as need to do a better job.”