TEAM CHEVY ADVANCE AUTOTRADER ECHO PARK AUTOMOTIVE 500 TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY FORT WORTH, TEXAS OCT. 17, 2021KYLE LARSON, NO. 5 HENDRICKCARS.COM CAMARO ZL1 ILE – Race Winner YOU SURVIVED SEVEN STAGE 3 RE-STARTS AND GOT IT TO VICTORY LANE. WELCOME TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP 4. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME EVER FOR YOU, KYLE“Yeah, this is unreal. I knew we had a good shot to win today, and our car was amazing. That’s probably the best 550 package, intermediate car, we’ve had all year. So, thanks to everybody on this No. 5 team, HendrickCars.com, Rick Hendrick, this is so cool; we had a lot of people from HendrickCars here. We get to go race for a championship in a few weeks. This is crazy.”
HOW ABOUT THOSE SEVEN RESTARTS YOU HAD IN STAGE 3? YOU NEVER ONCE FALTERED. HOW DID YOU KEEP IT TOGETHER FOR ALL OF THEM?“I just got good pushes from behind me, really. I tried to stay patient on the throttle to keep them to my back bumper. And thankfully, I was able to just barely clear them every time into (Turn) 1 and not have to fight off of (Turn) 2. So thanks to William (Byron) and Tyler (Reddick) and Brad Keselowski, anybody who was ever behind me (laughs), especially Brad there in that last restart. So, it was just awesome to win and hope we can get some more wins throughout the rest of the year.”
HOW BIG WILL IT BE TO HAVE TWO WEEKS NOW TO GET READY FOR PHOENIX AND FOCUS ON THAT RACE AND GO RUN FOR A TITLE?“Yeah, it’ll be cool. I don’t think we’re going to lose focus on Kansas or Martinsville, but I definitely think we can shift a little bit more to our Phoenix car and I really look forward to that. I love the West Coast. I love Phoenix. We’ve always been fast there. At least I was really fast earlier this year in the No. 5 and made a lot of mistakes. But I think we should have a good shot. Our team has been so strong all year long and we might as well close it all out.”