Winners and losers at Talladega Superspeedway
What drivers had to say after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway:
Kyle Busch — winner: “Sometimes you got to be lucky. Some of these races come down to that. You got to take them when they come your way. The seas kind of parted there when they (Bubba Wallace and Ryan Blaney) went up the racetrack. They were trying to push draft. These cars are just not stable enough to do that. I saw the 23 (Wallace) just turn a little bit sideways. I was like, ‘Get out of the way, just miss it.’ Tried to see if I was ahead of the 12 (Blaney) by the time it was called. It shut off right here when I was trying to do a burnout. Maybe it’s out (of fuel). I went left instead of going right. Fuel pickup is on the right. Maybe it ran it out. I’ll see. We were sweating it being close. … We got to gamble. You’re up here, got to take the track position when you have it, give it what you can on the restarts, see what happens. Lo and behold, it worked out. Knock on wood for this one.”
Ryan Blaney — Finished 2nd: “It’s just you get big runs, take them when you can. I’m glad everyone’s okay, but in my mind you kind of triple move like that, triple block, you can’t block three times. I don’t know. Runs are so big. As a leader, with Bubba trying to block, which is the right thing to do. But I think a lot of those, I mean, I got to go somewhere. I hate that cars got torn up, I hate for us being so close to the win. I’m not blaming anybody. Just hard racing at the end of this thing. Unfortunate cars got tore up and we missed out on another win. The Fords were quick. We did a good job working together, but it’s unfortunate we got a little separated there with the No. 4 (Kevin Harvick) having to pit and the No. 10 (Aric Almirola) having a right-front flat. I think we worked great together… just I think someone ran out of gas at the restart zone and kind of hurt our lane. By the time we got back up there, we tried to make every run we could. It’s a fast car, just a shame not to win. This is a completely separate race than anywhere else, so you take it for what it’s worth, get ready to go for the next speedway. Hopefully, the momentum carries over.”
Chris Buescher — Finished 3rd: “It was a good finish for our Fastenal Mustang. It was not as much fun on the day as I expected. Just really hard to make any moves – lanes just stalled out, handing didn’t seem to come into play. I don’t know if it was temperatures or what. Just not as much movement as we hoped… just thought we’d have more opportunities there. Everybody worked hard and got us up there in the end. We had enough fuel and threw some good strategy in there. We were in the hunt for it. I wanted to see the lap play out. I felt like we had a good run up-top, but looking back I don’t think we had any help, either. I don’t know. At the end of the day, it was a good finish. The race itself wasn’t as much fun as I was hoping for, for us.”
Chase Briscoe — Finished 4th: “Wild day. I made a huge mistake coming to pit road. We’re two laps down, and then we were one and was going to get the lucky dog at the end of Stage 2, and then (Joey) Logano had that speeding penalty and barely got us for the lucky dog. It was a battle all day long – very similar to how we kind of were at the end of last year, just continuing to fight and keep doing everything we could to try to maximize our day. At the end, find ourselves up there and in the top five. I would have loved to have a little bit more, but if you told me we were going to finish fourth there — at any point of the race really — even there with 20 to go. We were so stuck in the back and couldn’t really do anything. So, cool to get this Mahindra ‘Old Goat’ car in the top five and looking forward to next week.”
Brad Keselowski — Finished 5th: “We could just never get track position. Felt like we had a car that could win this race if we could get to the front, but we could never get to the front with all the pit cycles and everything. It just kept cycling us back, and it was really frustrating. Toward the end when we got to the front, I feel like if the No. 23 (Bubba Wallace) didn’t spin, we were in a spot to win the race, pushing 8 (Kyle Busch) down the backstretch. It’s just not the way the cookies crumbled.”
Erik Jones — Finished 6th: “It was kind of an up-and-down day. We weren’t really running how we wanted to during the day. But obviously there at the end some attrition got us toward the front. I felt like our car was good and that the Air Force Chevy had speed. We just weren’t up there to show it. We’ll take it, though. A (top-six) is obviously a strong run. I was hoping to come here and have a good day for us and get us rolling with some momentum to Dover and forward. We’re on to some good tracks for us, so hopefully we can repeat the same next week – bring a good car and kind of keep this momentum rolling.”
Daniel Suarez — Finished 9th: “It was an up-and-down day for the No. 99 Tootsies Orchid Lounge Chevy team. I felt like we had a very, very fast car. The guys did a very, very good job with that. This is probably one of the best cars I’ve had at a superspeedway. We did a good job in the first stage. In the second stage, we just couldn’t recover on track position, and the final stage was the same story. It’s part of it. We will learn from it and see what we could have done differently. But the positive is that we finished in one piece for the most part and the car was very fast.”
Todd Gilliland — Finished 10th: “Long race for us out there. We never had any good track position, so we were constantly fighting all day for one or two spots at a time. With a team that doesn’t do it every week and starting from the rear, I’m proud of our result.”
Justin Haley — Finished 19th: “This one stung a little. We had a fast No. 31 LeafFilter Gutter Protection Chevy and had really good pit strategy all day. We thought we would set ourselves up for the end there and avoided all the wrecks, but we just couldn’t quite get the track position back that we had all day.”
Aric Almirola — Finished 22nd: “There’s so much to be proud of. We had a great race car and ran up-front – led, was in position all day, and then just Ross (Chastain) doing Ross things on that restart. Wiped out the right side of our car, and either broke something in the right-front suspension or had the right-front tire go flat. So, it took a race car that had a great shot to win and crashed. That part is frustrating. But we have a lot to be proud of. Drew (crew chief Drew Blickensderfer) and these guys gave us an unbelievable speedway car again, and we keep showing up to these places with an opportunity to win. The last few weeks we’ve had really fast race cars and ran up-front, so at some point we’re going to convert and win us one.”
Noah Gragson — Finished 32nd: “It was a really solid day for our Wendy’s Biggie Bag team and Legacy Motor Club. This 42 team was really on top of it today. Good pit stops and a fast car there in the race. I felt like we were in a good position restarting on the front row on a green-white-checkered. I got kind of shoved out there and bobbled a little bit by the 1 (Ross Chastain). I just gotta look back and see what I could do better. Obviously, not let the 1 get inside me. Overall, it was a good day until it wasn’t. The results have sucked here lately, but we’ve been running strong. We ran in the top five, the top 10 all day, and I’m really proud of that. I appreciate Wendy’s and everybody coming out to Talladega and all the fans. We’re close. We’ll get there one day.”
Kyle Larson — Finished 33rd: “Thankfully I’m OK, but my car is absolutely destroyed. The cockpit’s a mess. I’m just thankful that I’m all right and all that. It’s just a bummer. We put ourselves in position once again on a superspeedway, and the results don’t show it. Another wreck not of my doing on a superspeedway. I just hate it, but we’ll keep getting better, and eventually it’ll have to work out I would think.”
Harrison Burton — Finished 36th: “Proud of our team. Always fun to put the 21 in the wind. Sorry didn’t work out, but we’re working.”
Source: NASCAR on NBC Sports
