MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
COKE ZERO 400
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
JUNE 29, 2017
PAUL MENARD GIVES TEAM CHEVY A THIRD PLACE FINISH AT DAYTONA
Six Chevrolet SS Race Cars in Top 10
DAYTONA BEACH, Florida (July 1, 2017) – In a typically wild race at Daytona International Speedway, Paul Menard brought his No. 27 Moen/Menards Chevrolet SS across the finish line in third place in the Coke Zero 400 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race (MENCS). It marked his fifth top 10 finish in 21 races at Daytona International Speedway.
Michael McDowell, driver of the No. 95 WRL General Contractors Chevrolet SS was right behind in fourth position, and Ryan Newman finished fifth in the No. 31 Velveeta Shells & Cheese Chevy SS.
Brendan Gaughan was seventh in his No. 75 Beard Oil Distributing Chevy SS, AJ Allmendinger finished eighth in the No. 47 Kroger Clicklist Chevrolet SS, and Chris Buescher brought his No. 37 Coffee Mate Chevy SS home in tenth place to give Team Chevy six of the top 10 in the final order.
Kyle Larson, who was sidelined in a multi-car crash on lap 154 and finished 28th in his No. 42 Credit One Bank Chevrolet SS, continues to maintain the series point lead by 18 points.
Ricky Stenhouse (Ford) was the race winner and Clint Bowyer (Ford) finished second to complete the top five finishers.
The Series moves to the 1.5-mile Kentucky Speedway for Round 18 next Saturday night, July 8th.
PAUL MENARD, NO. 27 MOEN/MENARDS CHEVROLET SS – Finished 3rd
POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
THE MODERATOR: We will go ahead and start tonight’s post‑race media availability for the Coke Zero 400, and we are joined by the third‑place finisher Paul Menard, driver of the No. 27 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing. Paul, wild, wild race as it always is here at Daytona. Congratulations on third-place finish. Could you walk through how you got there?
PAUL MENARD: Yeah, I mean, on Thursday when we practiced I knew that we had a really good handling car. Sucked up pretty good in the draft, but I knew it was going to handle well tonight, and it did. We wanted to race hard all night long, but I forget who wrecked up in 1 and 2 but we got in the wall pretty hard and had to work on some damage so that put us back right at the end of the first stage and couldn’t go anywhere, so kind of bailed out of the stages and was a bunch of attrition obviously, and we kind of passed some cars that way, but got some really big runs towards the end and made up a lot of ground and Bowyer pushed the hell out of me the last lap. I just couldn’t get a run off Turn 4 coming to the checkered. I guess I used it all the lap before. All in all, really good weekend for us, for RCR, for ECR. We had a lot of RCR race cars up front with ECR horsepower, so a lot of speed this weekend.
Q. I know it seemed like everybody had a chance there at the end, but with the way Ricky had won Talladega, was he kind of the guy to beat or was he kind of the guy that you were watching there?
PAUL MENARD: I mean, track position means something at Daytona. It’s kind of crazy to think about.
Q. A lot of the drivers who exited early all kind of said the same thing ‑‑
PAUL MENARD: Wrecked.
Q. All sort of said the same thing, that this was a wilder Daytona race than normal even by Daytona standards. Did you guys get a sense of that, and why was that?
PAUL MENARD: Well, if I remember, the Daytona 500 we weren’t three wide very much. It seemed like we were three wide all night tonight. Why that is, I have no idea. Before the race I was trying to figure out if it was going to be a wild race or not, and I knew it was going to be a wild race for some reason, night race, sparks flying, had a crazy XFINITY race a couple hours before. You know, why some races are wilder than others, I don’t know. It’s pretty damned hot out there, not a lot of grip, and cars are sliding around.
Q. The RCR cars did pretty well tonight. Can you talk about y’all’s program?
PAUL MENARD: Yeah, as far as us, we had a lot of cars up front. Ty led for a while. Austin was pretty strong until he got wrecked. But we had a lot of RCR cars and affiliates and ECR horsepower and all that. It was all really cool. Really hoped that we could have gotten a win there, got all three RCR cars in the Chase. We definitely had a shot, just couldn’t get that run off Turn 4.