MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
MONSTER ENERGY ALL-STAR RACE
CHARLOTTE MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY RACE NOTES & QUOTES
MAY 20, 2017
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS – Finished 2nd:
WAS THE RESTART THE DIFFERENCE AT THE FINISH?
“No, I think the difference. My pit crew has been awesome all year and I don’t want to take anything away from them. We came down pit road the leader and three people passed us, that was pretty much the difference there. But, in ten laps, track position is huge. We just didn’t have it there at the end. We had the best car out there, for sure. In traffic I thought it was really good. I thought we had it most of the race but that’s how racing goes. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. But I think we had a really fast car today. We’ll go onto the 600, that’s a long race, and try it again.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – Finished 3rd
LOOKING BACK, WOULD ROW 2 HAVE BEEN A BETTER PLACE TO RESTART?
“Yeah, I made a lot happen for row 2 tonight. When you’re the second place car, you can’t jump the leader. But everybody in the second, third, and fourth row is going to jump and do what they can to roll-up on the situation. So, I was really hopeful of old tires and being on the bottom. They’d be able to hold that lane back, especially Kyle (Busch) and how good he is on race starts. And it just didn’t happen. He got in there. I had a decent start. They weren’t able to push me and get me going. And I had a couple of shots at him. He wasn’t handling too well at the start of the run, but I just drove too hard. I could see a million dollars out the windshield and I just drove this Lowe’s Chevy way too hard in the corner a couple of times and gave up some ground. We learned a little bit tonight and we’ll come back next week and have some more fun.”
JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 MCDONALD’S CHEVROLET SS – Finished 5th
“The racing was great. The restarts were awesome. It’s interesting how the tire strategy worked out where no one had the greens at the end because track position was so important. But overall our McDonald’s Chevy was really good. I got us behind with missing my pit stall on our qualifying because our car was probably a little bit better than where we finished. But, pretty pumped for next week. I thought we were the best car on the long run, even though you only had 20 laps tonight, but next week we will have lots of that. So, yeah, I’m really excited. I’m happy with our car, both the Ganassi cars were really fast again.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 MOUNTAIN DEW CHEVROLET SS – Finished 7th
ON FINISHING SEVENTH:
“Yeah, I was happy we made that last round. I guess I was the only car of the open guys to make it to the last round, so that was kind of cool. Just hard to start in the back and expect to move that far forward. Had a good car, though, I was happy about that. Hopefully, we can take some of that toward next week.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE FORMAT AND THE OPTION TIRE?
“I thought it was good. I thought it offered guys options and opportunities to do different things, which is nice.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENT STRATEGY WISE?
“I think we played our cards the best we could at least. I’m happy about that and appreciate Mountain Dew and their support this weekend. Cool to have them on the car, cool car this week and I’m excited to get back for the 600.”