NASCAR CUP SERIESTEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY O’REILLY AUTO PARTS 500 TEAM CHEVY POST-RACE NOTES AND QUOTES JULY 19, 2020
TOP TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS:POS. DRIVER1st AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 BASS PRO SHOPS / TRACKER OFF ROAD CAMARO ZL1 1LE2nd TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 CAT OIL & GAS CAMARO ZL1 1LE8th KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 MONSTER ENERGY CAMARO ZL1 1LE12th CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 NAPA AUTO PARTS CAMARO ZL1 1LE14th BUBBA WALLACE, NO. 43 CASH APP CAMARO ZL1 1LE
TOP FIVE UNOFFICIAL RACE RESULTS: POS. DRIVER1st Austin Dillon (Chevrolet)2nd Tyler Reddick (Chevrolet)3rd Joey Logano (Ford)4th Kyle Busch (Toyota)5th Kevin Harvick (Ford) The NASCAR Cup Series season continues at Kansas Speedway with the Super Start Batteries 400 Presented by O’Reilly Auto Parts on Thursday, July 23, at 7:300 p.m. ET. Live coverage can be found on NBCSN, NBC Sports Gold app, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
TEAM CHEVY NOTES AND QUOTES (INCLUDING TYLER REDDICK PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT):AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 BASS PRO SHOPS / TRACKER OFF ROAD CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Race WinnerIT’S BEEN 88 RACES SINCE AUSTIN DILLON GOT TO DO THIS – CELEBRATE WITH A WIN IN THE CUP SERIES. MAYBE THIS ONE A LITTLER SWEETER. YOU HAD TO DO IT ON THREE DIFFERENT RESTARTS WITH GUYS LIKE KYLE BUSCH, JOEY LOGANO AND KEVIN HARVICK BEHIND YOU. AUSTIN, THERE’S FANS THERE CHEERING YOU ON. HOW ABOUT THAT?“Not bad for a silver spoon kid, right? I’ll take that. Have to thank everyone at RCR, ECR, Bass Pro Shops. Tyler Reddick, he raced me clean. 1-2 for RCR – this has been coming. We’ve had good cars all year. Justin Alexander and my whole crew. I got my baby Ace back home and my wife, I love them so much. I’m just so happy – thank god.” WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE FOR RCR? WE STARTED THE DAY ASKING YOU ABOUT THE CUT LINE. NOW, YOU’RE ABOVE THE CUT LINE AND IN THE 2020 PLAYOFFS. “To tell you the truth, it means a whole lot. Just for the family, for everybody, all of our partners. Truthfully, I’m out of breath right now. I’m about to go down, I need a drink. That was fun.” HOW ABOUT BEATING THE BEST IN THE BUSINESS? THREE STRAIGHT RESTARTS YOU HAD TO DO. YOU HAD TO EARN THIS ONE AUSTIN! “Yeah, I had to change it up a couple of times. Definitely had to earn it. I changed it up. I waited the second one and I went on the last one. So, it worked out for me good.” TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 CAT OIL & GAS CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 2nd“What a great day for Richard Childress Racing. This organization is working so hard and to have a 1-2 finish like we did is incredible. It felt like we had everything happen to our No. 8 Cat Oil and Gas Chevrolet, but strategy was king today. We had good speed overall and earned some stage points at the end of the first stage, but we got shuffled back for the majority of the second stage when we took two right side tires. That really messed with the handling of our Chevrolet and trapped us a lap down for a while. There were a couple major wrecks later in Stage 3 that we were able to miss and that helped us get our lap back to be able to contend at the end. My crew chief, Randall Burnett, made a great call to take fuel only during the caution with about 30 laps to go and that put us up front for those final restarts with our teammate, Austin Dillon. We really couldn’t ask for much more than what we got today. One spot better would have been great, but the recovery this No. 8 Cat Oil and Gas team made today was huge. We’re racing for the big picture of making the playoffs, so we have to race smart. Days like this will help us get there.”
YOU GO FROM 41 BACK OF THE CUTLINE, TO 14 BELOW NOW, ENTERING THE NEXT RACE. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE TODAY?“It was not strategy in our Cat Oil & Gas Chevrolet. We had good speed in our Chevrolet ZL1 1LE, but we just couldn’t get our Camaro back in contention after we took right-sides (tires). It really shifted the balance of our Camaro. That just put us behind, and we had to catch a few breaks. Some cars got collected in carnage. We avoided it, but you can’t ask for much more than we got there. Me and my teammate (Austin Dillon) on the front row there in those last couple of restarts and you know, he’s done this a little bit longer than I have, and I’m a little rusty. I haven’t been on the front row in a while and he just snookered me those times. Kyle (Busch) was doing a really good job of pushing me, but that last one I put us in a big deficit and I just couldn’t get back out of it.” WAS IS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND THAT YOU REALLY WANT THIS BUT MAN, THIS IS MY TEAMMATE AND THIS LOOKS GOOD TO RC?“Well, I knew it was going to be important. There was one restart where I probably could have went to his inside and I just wanted it to be between us. I didn’t want to bring other cars into it and make sure we could fight it out. We just got the restarts that kept giving us the opportunities. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t get it done today. But, hats off to the No. 3 and all those guys. They’re working hard. It gets one RCR Chevrolet to the playoffs and now we’re below the cutline. We’ve got to keep fighting. If we can keep running like this, we won’t have to worry about points.” KURT BUSCH, NO. 1 MONSTER ENERGY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 8th“We had one of our best points days so far this season with the Monster Energy Camaro. We scored stage points in the first and second stages, followed by another top-10 result. I really battled a loose handling car all day, it was really difficult on the restarts and short-runs, so I really had to work my butt off there at the end with all the cautions”. BUBBA WALLACE, NO. 43 CASH APP CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 14th “A top-15 day for the Richard Petty Motorsports No. 43 Cash App Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE team at the Texas Motor Speedway – a long, hot day that’s for sure. Proud of the efforts from our team. Cash App was on the car for the first time, so that was cool. We got Cash App a really good first finish. I thought we had a chance there. If that last caution had not come out, we maybe could have held on for a top-10 finish. But all-in-all, a great effort. Good bounce back from our last two weeks and we’ll just keep pushing to get our cars better. Shoutout again to Cash App for jumping on-board. Being a part of the sport, how cool is that? Get them their first top-15 finish and go onto the Kansas Speedway. We’ll see what we got there.”
MATT KENSETH, NO. 42 MCDONALD’S MCDELIVERY CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 18th“The results unfortunately don’t show it, but the No. 42 team worked really hard today to get the McDonald’s Chevy in a position to be competitive. We started the race way too loose and it was really hard to make any passes with the car handling that way. Chad (Johnston) and the guys kept working on it, and the handling got much better during the second stage, which allowed us to race up to just outside the top-10 at the end of the second stage. We were in a good spot to start the final stage, but got some damage that affected the handling when we were caught up in that big wreck on the frontstretch. We worked as hard as we could following the damage to make the most of our day, so, proud of the team for all the effort today.” ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 88 CHEVYGOODS.COM / ADAM’S POLISHES CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Sidelined by accident on lap 318; Finished 30th“That was not the way that we needed to finish Texas. We struggled some, but overall, our ChevyGoods.com/Adam’s Polishes team was good today. Our team worked really hard on the car today and the changes during our pit stops. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we will move on to Kansas this week.” TY DILLON, NO. 13 GEICO CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Finished 35th“I bummed the way today ended for my Germain Racing team. Our GEICO Camaro ZL1 1LE was really good. We battled being loose at the start of a run, but it would get better and better as the laps clicked away. My guys worked extremely hard to turn this car around from Kentucky and we were putting ourselves in position to have another solid finish. My car jumped out on me under the No. 24 and I hate it for William and his guys too. I had a little damage on the left rear and just wasn’t expecting the car to jump out on me like that. We will rebound and get after it in Kansas on Thursday. On to the next one.” WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 AXALTA CAMARO ZL1 1LE – Sidelined by damage sustained in an accident on lap 250; Finished 37thYOU STARTED THE DAY 15TH OUT OF 16 DRIVERS TRYING TO MAKE IT INTO THE PLAYOFFS. NOW, HOW TOUGH WILL THESE NEXT EIGHT RACES BE WILLIAM?“Honestly, it’s going to be tough. We just have to find speed first. We’re not really running good at all and we’ve got to figure that out. Obviously, the 13 (Ty Dillon) got up into us there and took us out, but we were pretty far back anyway. Thanks to Axalta and everybody on the team. We’ve just got to figure it out and figure it out quick before the fall.”
TYLER REDDICK, NO. 8 CAT OIL & GAS CAMARO ZL1 1LE, PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT: THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us, Tyler. As excited as I’m sure you are for an RCR victory, it’s probably a little disappointing to come up a little bit short. Take us through the last few restarts, what was going through your mind. TYLER REDDICK: Well, it’s just one of those deals where it’s risk versus reward. For us, to race against my teammate, as much as it’s my responsibility to win for this Cat Oil and Gas Chevrolet, I don’t want to take a win opportunity away from either RCR car. Just trying to race as hard as I can without getting the 3 in a position where he lifts, slides up, makes me lift, the cars behind us have an opportunity there to win that race. I just tried to do it as best as I could. I’m not going to lie, he did a really good job in the restart zone of keeping me from getting into a rhythm, being able to work with the 18 behind us, who is one of the best. Had me all jacked up. Kyle couldn’t give me the pushes that he was wanting to give me for himself to battle with the 3. Just got to continue to work on that. A lot of these restarts throughout the year, we’ve been in mid pack, we haven’t had the opportunity to play with that on the front row. Just came down to that launch. That’s something that I didn’t do a great job of during the last couple restarts. THE MODERATOR: We’ll take questions for Tyler. Q. You’re really in the thick of this Playoff race now. Does that change anything you’ve been doing? Do you have to be more conservative going forward? How do you approach these races as the homestretch comes?TYLER REDDICK: This further cements what I really pressed to my team before starting this race. We have nine races. We have 42 points to make up. Hopefully we can make up more than that. Seems like we already did that one race. Now it’s about beginning to press and try to be in position to win these races, but not go all in and take a top five day and crash out and lose all those points. We got to keep being aggressive like we are to get up there with strategy call. Randall Burnett did a great job. Had a fast car. Made some bad adjustment on it. Hurt us, lost a lap. We were in dire situations, two laps down at times. Between catching the right breaks, getting our car back where it was at the beginning of the race when we had good pace, what it took to get our Caterpillar Oil and Gas Chevrolet back up there. It allowed us to take fuel only at the end, really mix it up, and really put my teammate right next to me. It was between us. Q. Do you feel this was a little bit of an upset for you guys going 1‑2 or have you been strong enough this year that if you got yourself in position you could do this?TYLER REDDICK: Well, it’s been really difficult. I mean, last two races I’ve drawn 24th. It makes it really hard to get that track position. The pit stall you get isn’t the greatest. The odds are kind of stacked against you at the beginning of the day. The guys that are in the top 12 in points, they draw pits from the race before. You get what I’m saying? They get the track position at the beginning. It helps them get the race going. If your car is off a little bit, you make a small mistake, it can really upset the outcome of your race in general. Yeah, we got up there and we stole some track position at the end. Austin and I had good pace on our cars when we had track position. That’s the name of the game at tracks like that that are repaves, have a little bit of age, but the tire falloff isn’t quite there. That’s what makes track position king. Q. What can this do for the organization?TYLER REDDICK: Hopefully push it in the right direction. We’ve been looking for validation for a long time, what’s the right way to go, which direction we need to take our cars and team. It’s been really hard to search and find that with how much the track position plays into the handling of your vehicle. Today we saw the capability of both of these cars. Once you got our Chevrolets in that better track position, clean air, it showed itself. It’s going to be a big confidence booster for myself, Austin. It is going to push the guys back at the shop, the men and women back at the shop, to work hard to give us fast racecars, from the upper management all the way down. A nice little uplift to take us into the next race Thursday at Kansas, a good track for me. Q. How challenging was it with the tires? Did that play any role in the difficulty in firing off and doing what you wanted on restarts?TYLER REDDICK: It was my understanding the 3 was on no tires like we were. But it’s possible he took two. There’s a lot going on there. You know, it’s possible it hurt the initial takeoff. Austin was really able to eat some ground on me there, really execute well there. Maybe that was some of it. I’m not going to make excuses and say it was. I got to do better. I got to really focus on the things that could have potentially taken away from this race, what can we do to change them from hopefully keeping it from happening in the future. All in all, great day for our team. Q. Unofficially you’re about 14 points out of the final Playoff spot. How significant is that with the number of races left at this point going into a Kansas, track you feel good about?TYLER REDDICK: We’re not where we need to be at. But with eight races, 14 more points to get, having Austin locked in I think could be a benefit to us. We just got to keep running races like this. We’re not going to get lucky every single day, every single outing we have, get cars caught up in messes that we stay out of. We will continue to stay vigilant and keep our Caterpillar Oil and Gas Chevrolet out of those messes, keep finishing these races. Name of the game, we were two laps down at one point. We never gave up. We had some luck go our way. We had some things fall at the right time and it got us back into the game. Q. Can you talk about how intense it was dealing with the heat today, how hard it was? Also what kind of goes into hydrating and training?TYLER REDDICK: It’s just your preparation of the week, the week leading in. Just taking the thought, maybe I should drink a little bit of water. Especially if you’re outside doing yard work, working on cars, whatever it might be that you do. Being outdoors, rehydrate your body, keep that replenished. A little bit harder than I expected. Once you’re in it, you’re kind of stuck with what you got. You can bring some fluids, bring some bags of ice. It can help. You really have to stay on top of it going into the race. A little harder than I expected. We got some cautions at the right time and whatnot that kind of cooled it back down rather quickly. I’d say the last hundred laps weren’t too bad at all. THE MODERATOR: Tyler, we appreciate your time. We wish you the best of luck later this week in Kansas. TYLER REDDICK: Thank you all very much.
