NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
COKE ZERO 400
DAYTONA BEACH INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY RACE NOTES & QUOTES
JULY 2, 2016
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S PATRIOTIC CHEVROLET SS
WHAT WAS GOING ON AS YOU WERE FOLLOWING THE NO. ONE?
“I was in the middle and something happened to the No. 1 (Jamie McMurray) and he went to the right and then he chased it…and was in a slide and came back down in front of me, hit the No. 42 (Kyle Larson) door-to-door – kind of light contact. I thought we were fine, but I eventually turned him sideways and the whole thing happened. I don’t know what happened to the No. 1 to change lanes as fast as he did from the outside, but we are all dealing with a matter of inches and once that started, it just collected everybody.”
WHAT HAPPENED OUT THERE?
“I don’t know exactly know. The 1 car was on the outside and I was in the middle and his car came across my nose and went down and got into the 42 a little bit. We were all straight and fine but they slowed up more than I really could and my momentum carried me right through the back of the 1 and around we went. It was just hard racing and the cars were definitely slipping and sliding a lot. The track is aging and handling is becoming an issue. So I am excited about that a lot and I think its going to put on a good race. But one of those little slips turned into a big crash for everybody.”
MOST OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE RACE WAS PRETTY CALM BUT THERE WERE 22 CARS AFFECTED IN THIS WRECK
“Yeah, we were all in a big wad. I could tell how many cars were in it because of how many times I got hit in the crash. You hate seeing that much equipment getting torn up. We were trying to race hard and we all wanted to be at the front but the only way you could advance was by being aggressive and trying to make a third lane work. We were going around the outside and the bottom seemed to just drop back. If you wanted to play it safe and ride on the bottom……before you knew it you were 20th. So you kind of had to move up and get in that pocket of air and push forward.”
IN THE DRIVERS MEETING THERE WAS A MENTION ABOUT BLOCKING, AGGRESSIVE DRIVING. IT WASN’T REALLY A WARNING BUT IT WAS A MENTION, RIGHT?
“It was. And I wouldn’t really say that blocking created this. The 1 car kind of drifted down off the wall in front of me and got into the 42 and I don’t know what caused that for him or what started it for him. He was clearly in a slide and something was going on, so I don’t really think that the blocking like we saw in the XFINITY race caused that one.”
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 4 BUSCH BEER CHEVROLET SS
WHAT HAPPENED?
“Our Busch Chevrolet…we started in the middle of the pack and dropped to the back and as we pitted there and we knew we wanted to work our way back to the front. We stayed connected to that front pack and then we had a little bit of a handling problem that we had to address during the next pit stop. Those guys got tangled up there in front and we were in the middle of it. We had one car on our roof and everybody else just kept piling in. I don’t know who that was. It was just one of those things that just doesn’t take much for it all to go south here at these superspeedways.
It is what it is.
DID YOU HAVE A SENSE THAT WAS COMING RUNNING IN THE PACK?
“You really think it is going to happen from Lap One. It is hard to make ground so you have to be pretty aggressive when you start making ground. Just kind of riding there just maintaining until that next pit stop so we could get my car off the ground and then really start being aggressive. I really couldn’t be aggressive and unfortunately I was in the back of that front pack and ended up getting in the wreck.
JAMIE MCMURRAY NO. 1 CREDIT ONE CHEVROLET SS
WHAT HAPPENED FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE?
“I think somebody might have gotten into my left rear. I don’t know if that cut the tire down or what but after I felt that happen, I just didn’t have any control any more. It seemed like a tire maybe went down and it actually felt like I hit oil. So, once you get to that point you just don’t…I think the contact with the No. 42 (Kyle Larson) might have cut the tire because I just didn’t have any control of the car there. It is unfortunate but it is just part of plate racing. I rode back in the ambulance with all those guys and we just talked about it is part of plate racing.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 SUN ENERGY 1 CHEVROLET SS
WHAT HAPPENED OUT THERE?
“I don’t really know what happened because I was in the top lane and just saw everybody start checking up and starting to come up in our groove. So I was just kind of along for the ride.”
THEY TALKED ABOUT AGGRESSIVE DRIVING IN THE DRIVERS MEETING. WHAT DID YOU SEE OUT THERE?
“Yeah, I just saw Daytona racing and that is just part of it. We were all trying hard and you have to go up in those top lanes and make tight squeezes to make ground. If everybody was content on riding where they are, we wouldn’t be racing. That is why we try to move forward and to move forward you have to put the car in tight spots and that is just life.”
“Once you see everybody start checking up you really can’t see much when you are in the pack like that. So you just kind of try to slow down and hope that there might be a way to get out.
“Unfortunately we were getting in the corner obviously everything is going to go straight at that point. I hate it. I had such a good car tonight. I felt like by far that was the best-ever plate car I have ever had at either Daytona or Talladega. So, really proud of that.
“We will just have to get our stuff ready to go to Talladega. We took what we had here in February and re-think some of the things we had going on. We made our car drive a lot better tonight. The cool temperatures were helping that.”
REGAN SMITH, NO. 7 GOLDEN CORRAL CHEVROLET SS
WHAT DID YOU SEE?
“Not really anything. It looked like somebody up front got crossed up and by the time they came across the race track from the outside groove. There isn’t much you can do unfortunately at these places. I was disappointed because I thought our Golden Corral Chevrolet was pretty good tonight and certainly had a chance to get a top ten and kids would eat free and it was going to be a happy place. It didn’t quite work out. It’s definitely frustrating because it’s an opportunity for the smaller teams when we come to these tracks to try and get as many points as we can at these places. But we will see if we can get back out there and salvage a few points here or there and move on.”
IS THIS JUST PAR FOR THE COURSE AT DAYTONA WITH THESE MULTI-CAR CRASHES THAT TAKE OUT HALF THE FIELD?
“Well, I wouldn’t say its par for the course. We raced the entire 500 here pretty clean I thought and its just that everybody has to be so aggressive up front on their blocking that its not up front where it’s a problem, it trickles back into the field and that is where you get into a situation. The blocking is getting a little crazier than it has been, and it may be just this package, but you have to do what you have to do to stay up there. Nobody is to blame, just somebody eventually messes up and a lot of cars crash.”
PAUL MENARD, NO. 27 DURACELL/MENARDS CHEVROLET SS
WHAT HAPPENED FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW? “I saw the No. 1 (Jamie McMurray) get squirrely over a couple hundred yards down the tri-oval. I don’t know if Jamie had a problem, he thought maybe he might have had a tire problem. He wasn’t sure. Typical plate racing. We had a really fast Menards Duracell Chevy. Got up to second. Took a stab at the lead. Just waiting for our next pit stop to work on the car a little bit more. I felt pretty good about the car, but this is Daytona.”