MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES
O’REILLY AUTO PARTS 500
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
APRIL 6, 2018
JAMIE MCMURRAY PILOTS CAMARO ZL1 TO THIRD-PLACE FINISH IN TEXAS
Jamie McMurray was Chevrolet’s highest-finishing Camaro ZL1 in Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) race at Texas Motor Speedway (TMS) ending the day with a third-place finish.
The third-place effort was the best finish thus far for the No. 1 Camaro ZL1 team in 2018
The run marked McMurray’s 11th top 10 finish in 29 races at TMS
Darrell “Bubba” Wallace was the highest finishing rookie with an eighth-place effort in his No. 43 Camaro ZL1
Team Chevy ended the 334-lap O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 at TMS with three drivers in the top-10. Following McMurray were, Darrell “Bubba” Wallace, No. 43 Click N’ Close Camaro ZL1, eighth and William Byron, No. 24 Liberty University Camaro ZL1, 10th
POST RACE PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT:
JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 CESSNA CAMARO ZL1 – Finished 3rd
ON HIS RUN:
“Yeah, it was basically just a really good day for us from the start of the race. The car was pretty good, especially on the long runs. And then fortunate to miss a lot of the wrecks that happened and survived and then had good pit stops. So, all around just a pretty solid day for our team.”
HAS YOUR CREW EXPERIENCED ANY DIFFICULTIES WITH THE PIT GUNS?
“Yeah, I think there is a huge adjustment to get used to the pit guns that we have used in the past. There was a lot of work that went into those to get them to the level that they were at. The pit guns that we get from NASCAR they are not even close to that same level. I think there is a big adjustment for the teams. Personally, I don’t know if we have had any problems throughout the year with the pit guns.”
WHAT DID YOU GUYS DO TO REGROUP DURING THE OFF WEEK?
“We ran okay at (Las) Vegas and Phoenix and blew a right-front at Vegas and then I had to pit with like 10 laps to go or eight laps to go at Phoenix and ended up losing a couple of laps because of another tire issue. Then had to pit again at Martinsville because of a left-rear tire rub with like 10 laps to go. We have run okay. We certainly haven’t run as well as we did today. But, we have run okay this year, but today certainly was our best performance. We had some different stuff in our car. You try to learn in the off season and some of the stuff that we tried at the beginning of the year didn’t work out. So, we went back to similar to what we had last year and we ran really well on the 1.5 miles and our performance was way better today than it has been all year long. So, hopefully we can continue to work with that set-up and those parts and perform each week.”
HOW DID YOU WORK YOUR WAY UP TO END UP WITH A THIRD PLACE FINISH?
“Well, it’s hard to pass. So, it takes a long time. You work on guys. Our car, fortunately, was pretty good on older tires. We didn’t have as much fall off, but still it’s hard to pass. Part of the reason it took me so long to get up there as well is I got stuck on the outside on the restarts. Maybe you would get up to 10th or 12th and then have a restart on the outside and lose four or five spots. You might spend the next 60 laps trying to get those positions back. The outside got better as the race went on, but it was really bad at the beginning of the race.”