MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
AXALTA PRESENTS THE POCONO 400
POCONO RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY RACE NOTES & QUOTES
JUNE 11, 2017
TOP TEAM CHEVY FINISHERS:
POS. DRIVER
7TH KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVY SS
8TH CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 SUNENERGY1 CHEVY SS
13TH AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 DOW CHEVROLET SS
14TH RYAN NEWMAN, NO. 31 KALAHARI RESORTS & CONVENTIONS CHEVROLET SS
TOP FIVE FINISHERS:
POS. DRIVER
1ST Ryan Blaney (Ford)
2nd Kevin Harvick (Ford)
3rd Erik Jones (Toyota)
4th Kurt Busch (Ford)
5th Brad Keselowski (Ford)
The next stop for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule is Michigan International Speedway for the FireKeepers Casion 400 on Sunday, June 18 at 3 pm, ET. Live coverage can be found on FoxSports1, MRN and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
POST RACE QUOTES:
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS – Finished 7th
YOU WON STAGE 2 AND YOU FINISHED 7TH. TALK ABOUT YOUR DAY
“It was a decent day. I would have liked to finish better, obviously; I just didn’t get the best restarts. It seemed like if I was on the top I was behind guys that were on no tires and they’d be three-wide into (Turn) 1 and I’d be on the very top. And, when I’d restart on the bottom, I’d just get slowed down too much and then I couldn’t have a very good run off the corners. So, my restarts weren’t great. But, our car was a lot better than I thought it would be after practices. So, I’m happy about that. Chad (Johnston, crew chief) and everybody on this Target team did a good job making a lot of adjustments overnight. So, I can’t thank them enough for that because I really didn’t think we were a top 10 car all yesterday.”
DID THAT LAST CAUTION CHANGE YOUR STRATEGY?
“Yeah, I mean I don’t know. We could have taken two tires. The No. 77 (Erik Jones) made it work, but usually with me on four, I can be really aggressive and make some gains. I normally have good restarts here but today maybe we didn’t have the right gearing for the restarts. We tried different gearing in practice and I just couldn’t leave the pit stall with it. But, I guess we’ll just work on it and get better.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 SUNENERGY1 CHEVROLET SS – Finished 8th
A FEW OF YOUR TEAMMATES HAD BRAKE ISSUES. DID YOU HAVE ANY OR WORRY ABOUT THAT?
“I wasn’t real pleased with it. That’s not a comforting feeling if your brakes are going away. But, mine weren’t bad enough. I could manage it. I could kind of keep them in check. I knew kind of when I was pushing them the pedal would fade, but if I took it easy on them they’d come back. So, it was on the edge but manageable.”
WHAT DID YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO CONTEND FOR THE LEAD TODAY?
“I never really got to Kyle Busch. I thought we could race around the No. 4 (Kevin Harvick) and the No. 42 (Kyle Larson) and some of those other guys that were up front all day. Really, I was pleased with how our car drove all day long. I didn’t really ask for any adjustments much; I thought it was pretty close. We just kind of needed things to go our way and the way the cautions fell and the way the guys played their strategy was really smart there. And we just got a little too far behind.”
TY DILLON, NO. 13 GEICO CHEVROLET SS – Finished 18th
“There was so much strategy in today’s race at Pocono. In the first stage, we worked to get our No. 13 GEICO Chevy dialed in. Once we got close to what we needed, we started playing with a strategy to make up track position in the final two stages. It’s so important at this track, but so hard to get once the field spreads out. It worked how we needed it to, and our car really started to come around there at the end. I took off on that last restart and picked off a couple other cars in the short amount of time that I had. Now I’ll focus on our plan for Michigan next weekend.”
KASEY KAHNE, NO. 5 FARMERS INSURANCE CHEVROLET SS – Sidelined with a brake issue on lap 141 – Finished 34th
WALK US THROUGH WHAT HAPPENED:
“Yeah, I was going down the front stretch about halfway and the right front popped. I had been fighting serious brake problems for a while. So, I’m guessing it had something to do with that. But, it happened in the middle of the front stretch so I just kind of rode the wall, blew my brakes off, rode the wall to the backstretch, which was actually was a very easy ride for where it happened. Just disappointed that happened, that is three weeks in a row we have had issues. Been in the care center and man, haven’t done anything wrong yet, just keep having issues. That is a struggle.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – Sidelined with brake failure on lap 95 – Finished 36th
HAD YOU HAD ANY KIND OF BRAKING ISSUE BEFORE THAT? OR IT JUST WENT RIGHT TO THE FLOOR?
“No, it went right to the floor and I saw a replay inside the medical center. The smoke, I think, is the brake fluid coming out of wherever failed and onto the rotors. I can only speculate that I got the brakes too hot and when I went to the brakes they just traveled straight to the floor. I didn’t even have a pedal to push on. At that point, I threw it in third gear and I was just trying to slow it down. I was heading to the grass and I was wondering why I didn’t turn right and get to the wall sooner, but I’m fine. Certainly, a big scare. I haven’t had a scare like that since 2000 at Watkins Glen. So, just want to let my wife and kids and my mom know that I’m okay and I will go change my underwear and get ready to go home.”
A GREAT MOVE TO TRY TO CATCH THE APRON TO TRY TO CATCH THE GRASS TO TRY TO SCRUB OFF SOME SPEED, BUT ALSO CHANGE THE ANGLE OF THAT SIGNIFICANT HIT:
“Yeah, I told myself if this even happened again I would turn immediately into the outside wall and try to slow myself down, but my instincts, you are looking at the corner, you look at all that real estate to the inside and I pointed it down to the infield. Once I was in the grass, I was like, man, I’ve been here before, I should have just turned dead right into the wall and got to the wall right away. You have a split-second decision to make there. Fortunately, this one turned out well for me, just an exciting ride.”
“I didn’t have a long pedal or anything to tell me to not use my brakes like I had been. And when I went in the corner and hit the pedal, it travelled immediately to the floor and I could see a little puff of smoke and I knew I was in big trouble. I quickly stuffed it into third gear and tried to slow the car down and got into the grass. Fortunately I had a decent angle when I hit the wall in Turn 1. Outside of scaring myself pretty good, all is well.”
YOU WERE SITTING AGAINST THE WALL AFTER THE CRASH…TALK ABOUT THAT
“Yeah, when the brakes fail like that, there’s so much time to think about the crash and I just needed a minute. I thought it was going to be a lot worse than that. And to have it turn out where I basically just scared myself and got out of the car and walked away, I just needed a second to sit down and catch my breath. But, honestly, I have no sore spots or aches. I feel fine.”
JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 CESSNA CHEVROLET SS- Experienced a brake issue on lap 95 after trying to stop for a crash in front of him – Finished 37th
WALK US THROUGH WHAT HAPPENED:
“So, I didn’t really even see the No. 48 (Jimmie Johnson) car wrecking until I just went down and I got on the brake pedal and my pedal started to go to the floor and I had a little bit that I could kind of pump it and I thought I was going to be okay. And then, I don’t know if I got into some oil or what happened, but I just started spinning and didn’t have any brakes. So, it was really weird that we kind of both had the same thing happen at the same point on the racetrack, but fortunately, we are both okay and yeah, move on.”
DALE EARNHARDT JR., NO. 88 AXALTA CHEVROLET SS – Sidelined on Lap 58 with blown engine after missing a shift – Finished 38th
WHAT HAPPENED? WAS THERE ANYTHING DIFFERENT WITH THE TRANSMISSION THIS WEEKEND?
“No. Just something in my motion, I mean there really isn’t anything different. The shifter is not different, the handle is not different, the location, everything is the same. I don’t know. It’s something about my motion that’s not… going in the wrong gear. I wish I could blame it on something else, because this is awful, it feels awful. The car was fast. We drove up into the top 15 there running great lap times. Really, really happy with the car. Wasn’t really running that hard backing up the corners big time and just cruising forward, really happy. It’s just my fault. I don’t know what else to… I wish I could say that the shifter is different and something is out of line or not something I was doing last year as far as where we had the shifter mounted for Pocono. This really concerns me coming back here and the road courses you know. But, we haven’t had any problems all year long, but at places where we do a lot of shifting I don’t know what is going on, what I’ve got to do or why this is really happening out of nowhere. I don’t know… we don’t really have an answer to it other than me just having to pay more attention, but I mean I’ve been doing this all my life and this isn’t a common issue, but it has been this weekend.”