NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
AXALTA ‘WE PAINT WINNERS’ 400
POCONO RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
JUNE 6, 2016
KURT BUSCH PUTS CHEVROLET SS IN VICTORY LANE AT POCONO
Team Chevy Finishes 1-2 at ‘Tricky Triangle’
POCONO, Pa. – (June 6, 2016) – The Axalta “We Paint Winner’s” 400 was postponed due to torrential rains in the Pocono Mountains on Sunday, but under sunny skies on Monday for the 32nd time in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series history, Chevrolet rolled into Victory Lane at Pocono Raceway. Team Chevy driver Kurt Busch put his No. 41 Monster Energy/Haas Automation Bowtie Branded machine in Winner’s Circle in the 14th race of the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series campaign. Busch earned his 28th career Cup Series victory and third overall at Pocono by conserving enough fuel to make it around the 2.5-mile track for the final 32 circuits. The 2004 series champion placed his name alongside NASCAR Hall of Famer, Rex White, for 25th-place on the all-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series wins list. The win locks Busch into this season’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. He joins fellow Team Chevy drivers Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick on that elite list.
“It’s tough to balance everything and when you have a fast car and an interim crew chief and the way that the fuel mileage played out, I didn’t know if we were going to have enough fuel,” said Busch in Victory Lane. “But, thanks to everybody at Haas Automation, Monster Energy and Stewart-Haas, this is a wonderful win for us. We have been so close all year. It’s a matter of just putting it all together, pit crew, engine, thanks to Hendrick engines, and Chevrolet and everybody that works on these bodies, the chassis’ you name it. It’s just so much fun to drive and to be competitive and to be up front. Thanks a lot.”
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. gave Chevrolet a sweep of the top spots by earning a second-place finish at the ‘Tricky Triangle’. The driver of the No. 88 Axalta Chevrolet SS was unable to hold off Busch on the final restart and had to settle for the runner-up spot. The effort marks Earnhardt, Jr.’s fourth second place finish of the season.
Rookie of the Year Contender, Chase Elliott, led 51 of the 160 laps, the most of any competitor. However, the 21-year-old driver of the No. 24 NAPA Auto Parts Chevy SS came up just shy of earning his first career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory and ended the day in the fourth finishing position. Elliott has placed in the top-five at the end of five out of the first 14 races in his rookie season tying him with the legend Dale Earnhardt.
Kasey Kahne, No. 5 Farmers Insurance Chevrolet SS and Kevin Harvick, No. 4 Jimmy John’s Chevrolet SS overcame early pit road speeding penalties to finish sixth and ninth respectively giving Team Chevy five of the top 10 overall.
Brad Keselowski (Ford) was third and Joey Logano (Ford) was fifth to round out the Top 5.
Next weekend the series head to Michigan International Speedway for the FireKeepers Casino 400 on Sunday June 12th.
POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPTS:
DALE EARNHARDT JR. NO. 88 AXALTA CHEVROLET SS – Finished 2nd
THE MODERATOR: We’re joined now by the driver of the No. 88 AXALTA Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. An exciting finish there. Take us through the last few laps, please.
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, 41 was up there trying to save some fuel. He couldn’t make it all the way running hard, and I didn’t know if we could. Greg was saying we could but I didn’t see how we were the only ones that could. We all pitted around the same time. Really we lost the race on the restart. The 24 and me were racing pretty hard. He was really trying to get his lead back, and he knew if he could get the lead, he was going to win the race. He got me loose a little bit. That slowed us up some. The 41 got a good run on him and I didn’t do a good enough job holding him off. I could have been a little more aggressively doing some things differently. But we ended up getting tight and not really having anything anyways right at the end of the race, and the 41 saved enough. We just sort of ‑‑ I just started backing my corners up trying to get through the center enough because Brad was catching us, and well, you know, it was all right. We certainly finished better than we should have. Our car wasn’t quite a second‑place car. We started off really tight and really slow, probably about a 15th‑place car. Greg and the guys made a lot of changes and made the car better. Don’t really know exactly how much better we got it compared to the competition, but we certainly made it more competitive. We just didn’t get any practice. The drivers have been asking NASCAR to take away the morning practice and add a little bit to the second one to make that Saturday practice an hour and a half, and we didn’t ‑‑ it was just an hour. It takes you a minute to run around this track. You can’t get but 13 damned laps in practice. I don’t know how you’re supposed to figure out what your cars are doing. So we came into this race with no idea. We made a lot of changes last night. We basically put in an old setup that worked in the past, and it started off missing the mark pretty bad, but we worked on it and got it better, and we’ll take the points. We’ve had a rough month, so this is a decent finish for us.
Q. Dale, I know you just said you weren’t really happy with your car throughout the day, but does the second‑place finish alone, do you think it’s still a positive you and your team can build off of coming off the rough month and coming into a track where you’re really good at?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, it certainly feels better than finishing 15th. You know, and the car wasn’t that bad. We just have such high standards after the last couple years we’ve had. Man, when you get just a little bit behind in this series, holy moly, it takes so much work to just regain what you lost, not really even to have an advantage, just to get back to where you were. A tenth out on that racetrack is impossible to find.
You know, it’s a good step in the right direction. I felt like we could come in here and run good, and I think we learned a lot that we can understand how to get better for the next race here. I’m looking forward to Michigan, and obviously it’s going to be a different package, but I think we’ll run good on that track, too, and anticipate having a good run at Kentucky. We’ve always done really well on the repaves, so for whatever reason our cars hook up pretty good, or as a driver I just like that. I don’t know.
Q. Kurt (Busch, race winner) was able to obviously save a lot of fuel today, and he didn’t have his crew chief. Is it any different for a driver when you don’t have the normal guy you listen to to kind of know whether you really need to save fuel or not?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: You know, these teams are so deep and there’s so much talent. The crew chief is on the pit box but he’s got four or five other guys with him, and they’re up there every week and they understand how the races are working out. They’ve got guys within their organization that can step in in situations like that. You’d probably be surprised at how involved the crew chief is in the race weekend even though he’s suspended. Them guys find unique ways to be able to communicate and be involved and be on top of everything the car and the team are doing with the car even though he’s not there to see it with his own eyes. So it’s pretty impressive. There’s a lot of technologies. They can sit back in the shop and have all the computers and everything and see everything happening on the fly.
You know, you definitely don’t want it ‑‑ six weeks would be a little worrisome, but one race is not a big deal.
Q. Can you explain the importance of having a good spotter, especially during big restarts like we saw today, five and six wide? How important is a good spotter here?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, I agree. Both our spotters are really good guys, really talented and understand exactly what a driver is looking for. You get to working with the same guy for a long time and you sort of get to where you speak the same language and he knows what you want and don’t want. You get it ‑‑ as a driver it just gives you confidence having somebody that you trust and believe in and you know is going to give you good information. You can drive the car with more confidence. You’ve got confidence to do things out there.
Q. Junior, you had a battle with Chase Elliott. Chase led the most laps today. Can you talk about how he’s matured in this first year? Did you expect him out of the box ‑‑ I know he’s with a great team, but the maturation he’s shown is pretty incredible.
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, you know, I don’t think you get hired by a team like that unless you’re good. I didn’t expect him to struggle. I thought that he’s got a lot of laps under his belt, he’s been to a lot of high‑pressure situations, whether it’s running his late models somewhere, or I mean, the competition is tough in the late model series, on those small tracks, and in the XFINITY Series, the Truck Series. He’s been in so many scenarios if you look at his career over the last four or five years. He’s been through it all. Certainly learned a ton, got a real good attitude, really calm, doesn’t get excited about much, and he’s got a really, really good crew chief, a guy that I think really is wrapping his arms around the idea working with Chase and grooming Chase. The team is doing an amazing job. They were always fast with Jeff, and I think the transition couldn’t have been better. Jeff really set that team up for the transition and all that where it’s so smooth. Just a perfect storm situation for Chase, and he’s doing a great job. He’s become a great teammate.
Q. Dale, there’s been a lot of talk about Toyota’s domination over the last really season now. We come out today and 300 cars beat all the Gibbs cars. It looked like the Chevys had a lot of speed today and had some good fuel mileage there at the end. Do you think today was an outlier or a sign of good things to come?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: At the start of the race the Toyotas were up there running good. I saw the 11 struggling a little bit, but I didn’t think that would last all day. The 19 was pretty quick, the 18, 20 was good. Just track position late in the race. We lined up in some good lines, and did the right things instead of the wrong things down in Turn 1 and didn’t lose any positions, maybe gained a position or two here and there. It’s just so tough on them restarts to take advantage of what’s going on around you even if your car is great. You’ve just got to have everything work out for you. But I don’t think that the Toyotas have lost anything. We certainly are getting a little bit better and we’re working hard. I know the whole series is working hard to catch the Gibbs stuff.
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 NAPA AUTO PARTS CHEVROLET SS –FINISHED 4TH:
THE MODERATOR: We’ll begin our post‑race driver availabilities here. We’re joined now by our fourth‑place finisher, driver of the No. 24 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. Chase, you led a whole lot of laps there, very exciting restarts, a number of times there where you are holding off challengers. Tell us a little bit about your run today.
CHASE ELLIOTT: Yeah, just definitely really proud of our team and the work that everybody at Hendrick has put in. I felt like we had really four really fast cars today. I hope that’s a good sign for races to come. We certainly had I feel like one of our best days of the year personally. I thought for us to be able to contend and lead laps all day and have a car that could fight for the lead the majority of the day I thought was great. Obviously I made a big mistake there behind Dale in the tunnel after that restart. I wish I had been a little more patient and given ourselves a better chance, but you live and you learn.
Q. It looked like on restarts any time you started out out front you were able to really pull away pretty easily there. Take me through those restarts because obviously behind you they got pretty wild.
CHASE ELLIOTT: I mean, yeah, definitely. The lead is the best place to be. If you can clear those guys before you get to Turn 1, you kind of have whatever lane you want and you hope that the guys behind you are still two wide, and if that’s the case they just don’t have the air they need to run as fast of a corner. Just a big aero advantage to be out front. We see that every week.