MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
TALE OF THE TURTLES 400
CHICAGOLAND SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY POST RACE NOTES AND QUOTES
SEPTEMBER 17, 2017

CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 NAPA BRAKES CHEVROLET SS – Finished 2nd
DESCRIBE YOUR RUN:
“Yeah, just a huge step in the right direction. Days like this are the days we are going to have to have. There is no way around that. I thought we had a solid day overall. Our car drove good, it had pace, our pit stops were good. I didn’t have anything for Martin (Truex, Jr.). I thought we made the most of our day without some luck I wasn’t going to get around him unless we had a late-race restart or something. I had a solid day and frankly, it is a lot better than we have been doing and we’ve got to have days like this to keep moving forward.”

YOU DID GET A STAGE WIN AND A SECOND PLACE FINISH. DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU REACHED THE POTENTIAL THAT THIS CAR HAD?
“Yeah, I thought we did today. I didn’t have anything for Martin (Truex, Jr., race winner) but our NAPA Chevy was solid. It was a lot better than we’ve been. I think that’s a testament to this team and the lack of quit that everybody has. This is the time of year to go, and we gave it our all today.”

TO COME AWAY WITH A SECOND PLACE WIN, HOW MUCH OPTIMISM DOES THAT GIVE YOU MOVING AHEAD?
“We had just a solid day all around. Our car was fast. We had good pit stops on pit road. I thought our restarts were good. They didn’t go our way, but they were good. Circumstances, I felt like, kind of kept them going the way they did. But overall, we made the most of what we could today. Without some luck, I wasn’t going to beat the No. 78 (Martin Truex Jr.). So, we did good today and we need to have more days like this.”

KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET SS – Finished 5th
HOW DID YOUR RACE CAR COME TO THE FINISH HERE TODAY?
“I mean I thought we were about a fifth or sixth place car all day. I didn’t start the race off very good. We were really tight, but worked on it and got it better at times. It was just really hard to pass for us. I know the No. 78 (Martin Truex, Jr.) was really good and he was able to cruise to the front no problem, but we seemed to and it looked like everybody really struggled in traffic except for a couple of guys. But, a solid day, got stage points and then a top five finish. That will be good going into Loudon.”

JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – Finished 8th
IT DID NOT APPEAR ANYONE COULD REALLY PASS TODAY. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR RACE?
“Yeah, the cars are all so equal at least the guys from third or fourth on back we are all so equal. If you could get by somebody on a restart that was really about it, but for me, my car just really wanted to run the bottom of the race track. The higher I would go the looser it would get. I knew there was a lot of real estate up there to try to take advantage of I just couldn’t make it work and had to chase the bottom all day long.”

JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 MCDONALD’S/CESSNA CHEVROLET SS – Finished 10th
A SPIN TO A 10TH PLACE FINISH THAT IS NOT A BAD WAY TO START THE PLAYOFFS:
“Nope, there were a lot of issues for people in the Playoffs it looked like. So, 10th-place isn’t bad. I think we finished 10th in one of the stages as well. I don’t know what happened on the backstretch. I think I just didn’t give the No. 31 (Ryan Newman) enough room and it got me turned around. We were lucky the caution kind of fell right and then we had a pretty fast car as well. We were faster probably at the beginning than we were at the end, but overall it was a good way to start the first race.”

AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 DOW CHEVROLET SS – Finished 16th
YOU DID A LOT OF RACING AT THE END FOR THE FREE PASS. WHAT WAS THE DAY LIKE FOR YOU?
“It’s just frustrating. I put ourselves in a hole speeding on pit road and just trying to get too much. You talk about not making mistakes, and we made one. We had a really good race car truthfully. It was a top 10 car for sure, maybe top 5. We got behind. We were two laps down. We got one back. Racing the No. 18 (Kyle Busch), he’s a hard one to beat for the Lucky Dog. I had him for a long time. But, there were just no cautions today. We needed more cautions. It went green a lot.”

TY DILLON, NO. 13 GEICO CHEVROLET SS – Finished 28th
“This wasn’t the day that we were looking to have in Chicago. We were too far off to start the first stage. I was way too loose and didn’t have any grip on entry and exit. My team made changes to get us handling better, but we had lost too much ground to the leaders by then. We’ve grown a lot as a team this year and the next step is to start these races stronger. We always get to where we need to be later in the race, but we need to be there from the time that we unload on Friday morning. This team grinds like no other, though, and we will take what we can from this weekend and use it to be better at this track next year.”