TOP TEAM CHEVY FINISHERS:
POS. DRIVER
4TH AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 AMERICAN ETHANOL CHEVY SS
7TH RYAN NEWMAN, NO. 31 CATERPILLAR CHEVY SS
10TH JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 MCDONALD’S CHEVY SS
11TH CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 NAPA CHEVY SS
12TH JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVY SS
13TH TY DILLON, NO. 13 GEICO CHEVY SS*** MATCHES CAREER BEST MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES FINISH
14TH KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 CREDIT ONE BANK CHEVY SS
TOP FIVE FINISHERS:
POS. DRIVER
1ST Denny Hamlin (Toyota)
2nd Kyle Busch (Toyota
3rd Kurt Busch (Ford)
4th Austin Dillon (Chevy)
5th Erik Jones (Toyota)
PLAYOFF PICTURE:
Chevy Driver’s Locked Into the 2017 Playoffs:
Jimmie Johnson – 3 Wins
Kyle Larson – 3 Wins
Ryan Newman – 1 Win
Austin Dillon – 1 Win
Kasey Kahne – 1 Win
Going into Richmond Chase Elliott is the highest driver in points without a win. There are currently still two positions open as there have been 14 different winners thus far in 2017. Elliott is seventh in the standings, two points ahead of Matt Kenseth (Toyota), who is the second highest driver in points without a win. Jamie McMurray ninth in the standings and only one point behind Kenseth. Elliott and McMurray will both have to finish ahead of Kenseth in order to claim the final two Playoff spots.
The next stop on the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule is at Richmond Raceway for the Federated Auto Parts 400 – the deciding race on which driver’s will compete for the 2017 championship title – on Saturday, Sept. 9th.
POST RACE NOTES AND QUOTES:
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 AMERICAN ETHANOL CHEVROLET SS – Finished 4th
“I’m just really proud of this team for bringing out this Dale Earnhardt scheme out and making it run good like that… it means a lot to me and all the RCR guys. I’m proud to represent tonight. It was a good time, for sure. The American Ethanol Chevy was good. That long run was like torture; those guys were coming on (newer) tires so we had to be really smooth and it worked out for us.”
DESCRIBE WHAT IT’S LIKE TO RACE DARLINGTON ON OLD TIRES:
“I can’t think of a description. It’s like not having enough milk in your cup when you have a Chips Ahoy cookie left. You want a little bit more milk in there to make the cookie good. We were out of milk!”
HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO CONTINUE TO WORK YOUR WAY THROUGH THE FIELD:
“I like these long races, it takes me awhile to get going on restarts. That’s something we’ve been working on really hard. Our American Ethanol Chevy was really good on the long run, and that’s what we needed at the end. That last long run where we didn’t take tires… that was like water torture in the car. That’s a long run at Darlington with no tires. It’s been a fun year and hopefully we can take this into the playoffs and run really well.”
HOW MUCH PROMISE DOES THE SPEED YOU’VE HAD THE LAST FEW WEEKS GIVE YOU GOING INTO THE PLAYOFFS?
“It’s great. You want the momentum going into the playoffs. We have a great team at RCR… a big family team that works hard. This was such a cool weekend to bring this Dale Earnhardt scheme out. I’m glad we represented well tonight.”
RYAN NEWMAN, NO. 31 CATERPILLAR CHEVROLET SS – Finished 7th
“We had a pretty good car and a couple of bad pit stops. We had one great pit stop, but just never got the track position that we needed for the short run to be able to show what we were capable of on the long run.”
JAMIE MCMURRAY, NO. 1 MCDONALD’S CHEVROLET SS – Finished 10th
ON HIS RACE AT DARLINGTON:
“Well, we had a fan go out that cool the rear-end and so we had to come in and work on that. We went to the back, but we could still only get back to about like, I think we got up to sixth in the first stage and then ran somewhere between sixth and 10th or sixth and 12th and we finished 10th. So, probably didn’t really hurt our night. A lot of long green flag runs and we weren’t very good on the short run, but we were really good at the end of a run. So, that kind of worked out to our favor.”
LOOKING TOWARD RICHMOND:
“Well, I don’t really know. I know the No. 77 didn’t win tonight, which is the one that I think everyone…at least we’ve talked about, but one more night. I don’t know where I am versus the other guys.”
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 24 NAPA CHEVROLET SS – Finished 11th
ON HIS RACE:
“Yeah, you know we just weren’t very good all day and really just as an organization really struggled, so we need to step up. This is the time of year to get it going and it was a hard-fought night. I thought we made the very most of what we had and somedays that’s all you can do.”
THOUGHTS ON RICHMOND?
“I just hope we can have a clean race and not have any issues next week.”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET SS – Finished 12th
ON THE RACE:
“Our car had respectable short-run speed and then it would just get so loose. With all the long runs that really didn’t work out well for us and I actually blew a tire with like 20 laps to go and fortunately was on my way into pit lane or almost to where I could turn into pit lane. So, fortunately I got lucky and I was able to get back out there on tires and drive back up to 12th, but blew a tire at the absolute right time if you are going to blow one and got to pit lane.”
TY DILLON, NO. 13 GEICO CHEVROLET SS – Finished 13th
Matches His Career Best Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Finish
“It was a good day. My first Southern 500, I enjoy it. I love this race track. I just love when you come to a track and the tires get worn out and you’ve got to be patient. And you’ve got to treat that throttle pedal like an egg and you can really make a lot of difference on a long run. That was what we were able to do tonight with our GEICO Chevy. I’m just proud of the guys. We had a good piece in practice and it was nice just to have a really solid weekend through and through. When you add in the honor of representing a race car from years past that was driven by Johnny Rutherford and fielded by Smokey Yunick – it really adds to the great night for our GEICO team here at Darlington. Good momentum going back to Richmond another track that we ran really well at. Excited for the end of this year.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, NO. 37 CHEERIOS CHEVROLET SS- Finished 17th
“Well, an eventful very long race at Darlington. Awesome to have Cheerios on board in our Patty Moise throwback. Overall, just a tough start. Kind of knew that the daylight was going to be difficult and then as the night fell I feel like we made some gains on it and got it a little better by the end and was able to move around. I think that is all you can ask for is to make steady improvements through the day. We got a decent finish out of it. I wanted a little bit more, but not bad.”
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 NATIONWIDE CHEVROLET SS- Finished 22nd
“They pulled me over because I’ve got some loose lugnuts on the right-rear. Yeah, I mean when they saw they picked right up on it. I had a really bad vibration that last run and there was a bunch of them loose on the right-rear. They must have just kind of had a screw up. It wasn’t intentional they wouldn’t leave two loose like that when they are not even tight up on the wheel. So, something must have happened on the pit stop because those guys have been great all night. Just had a really bad vibration, came in and got tires, we had a flat at the very end. Something was going, the right-rear was going down for a very long time and finally it went flat. Came in changed that and went back out and it was so loose you couldn’t go so we had to abuse those tires too much at the end. Twelfth to 15th is where we all ran and I’m not too disappointed because we sat there and ran right with our teammates all night.”
