Here is what drivers had to say after Saturday night’s NASCAR Cup race at Daytona International Speedway.
Harrison Burton — Winner: “I cried the whole victory lap. Obviously got fired from this job. I wanted to do everything for the Wood Brothers that I could. They’ve given me an amazing opportunity in life. To get them 100 on my way out is amazing. We’re in the playoffs now. Let’s go to Darlington and see what happens. … It’s been the hardest three years of my life, obviously the hardest three years for some of these guys’ lives. To win the way we just did, beat the best in the business, Kyle Busch, across the line, it’s pretty fantastic.
Kyle Busch — Finished 2nd: “It’s just frustrating. We’ve led races here at Daytona going into the last restart and haven’t been able to pull off a victory. Not sure what it is; what I’m doing wrong or what it is that I’m missing. It seems like the energy broke up off of Turn 2 and the No. 20 (Christopher Bell) got crooked and wasn’t on my rear bumper the way we needed to be. The outside lane just went by. I wanted to get up in front of the No. 21 (Harrison Burton) because I knew the momentum was coming there. But I knew the No. 20 was a better friend. It just didn’t work out.”
Christopher Bell — Finished 3rd: “I’m bummed about it – you want to push the leader out and have a shot to win it yourself. I just never really felt in control. I was always chasing my Interstate Batteries Camry – so I was never confident behind the 8 (Kyle Busch) and pushing him. Disappointed with that last green-white-checkered, but overall, a great day. It is one of those races where when we look back it, we will be happy – but right now it stings.”
Ty Gibbs — Finished 5th: “I’m glad that we got to finish this race. It just got kind of messy there at the end, which is similar to what happens at all of these races. I just was happy to have a good, clean day – good points day.”
Bubba Wallace — Finished 6th: “Not good enough. Simple as that. Easiest way to put it. We had a fast Columbia Toyota Camry – just not good enough. You have one car (at 23XI Racing) fighting for a regular season championship and another car right around the bubble. It is unacceptable. I’ll take all of that weight on my shoulder – should have won multiple times this year and we haven’t. We don’t deserve to be here, and we are – I’ve got to go win next week. That’s it.”
Parker Retzlaff — Finished 7th: “Yeah, it was definitely a good run for the No. 62 Funkaway Chevy team. I’m happy with a top-10 finish. I came in here today saying I wanted a top 15. Coming out of Turn 4 there, knowing I was third or maybe fourth to the No. 20 (Christopher Bell), I knew I had a shot. I’m happy we gave this team a shot. We had an amazing car. Thank you to Darren (Shaw, crew chief) and everyone at Beard Motorsports; the Beard family for everything they’ve done and the support of Funkaway. I’m happy about it, but I still want more.”
Daniel Hemric — Finished 9th: “Speedway racing. It was chaotic. I thought we lined up pretty well there for the green-white-checkered and tried to formulate something going into (Turns) 3 and 4. I made a move to separate and I got shoved. Luckily, I got a big shot coming to the line to even get back forward and get spots back into the top 10. All-in-all, it was a decent day for the No. 31 Cirkul Chevy team. Appreciate Cirkul and all they do for us; all the people we have here supporting us. Looking forward to going to one of the coolest race tracks in the country next weekend.”
Ross Chastain — Finished 12th: “I look at it like we have another chance to go win the Southern 500. That’s what I’m focused on this week. The points, they give them out at the stages and end of the race. If you run good, they give you a lot of them. I just get excited for a chance to go win the Southern 500. … (On the accident he was involved in) I was just hoping it would stay running, keep the water in it and be able to keep up with the pack. Looking at the car, it was amazing it did. The whole splitter is off of it; dragging the ground. Yeah, it’s pretty incredible that we were even able to finish. I thought the radiator was going to be gone. We’re fortunate to finish, but yeah, as I’m riding around – mainly in Stage Two when I dropped back from the pack and was going to be the free pass, I thought through all of it then. And then the whole final stage, it was all about trying to execute and maximize what we could.”
Austin Cindric — Finished 18th: “Obviously, we had a really fast Ford Mustang Dark Horse. The Menards/Tarkett Ford was good enough to win tonight. We were in position there to win and I just got turned and that’s how it goes sometimes here. I’m really happy for Harrison and everybody at the Wood Brothers. They’ve been waiting a long time for win No. 100. I love those guys. I love Harrison. He’s a great dude and deserves this spot in the limelight. It’s awesome. … (On incident with Michael McDowell) I don’t know fully who was pushing who with the wreck with McDowell, but I was trying to back out of the gas and not run over the 34. I’m not sure he knew what lane he wanted to be in, but between that and how we got turned from the lead it’s just how it goes. You’ve got guys trying to win the race and that’s the nature of the beast.”
Austin Dillon — Finished 22nd: “I’m proud of this Richard Childress Racing team and ECR. We were able to run up front … and avoid the early crashes to put us in a good position towards the end of the race. We were solid with fuel mileage. We ended up with suspension damage in a crash with three laps to go, which took us out of contention for the win. I just had no where to go. It’s part of speedway racing, but we’ll regroup and give it our all for Darlington.”
Todd Gilliland — Finished 23rd: “We had a really fast car. I thought we could go about anywhere and we had a lot of speed. It’s disappointing when you feel like you kind of waste one, but it is Daytona. We missed the first wreck, but weren’t so lucky on the last one. That’s racing for you and our car is really fast.”
Josh Berry — Finished 26th: “It just looked like (Austin Cindric) got pushed into me and, unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of these blow overs lately, but I mentioned on the TV broadcast – obviously paving that section helped keep me from really barrel rolling. As bad as it looked, they made a big improvement over what Ryan had last year. I just can’t believe we flipped two of our Stewart-Haas cars in a row like that, but it was just a great job by Rodney (Childers) and this whole 4 team. We were in contention all night and had a hell of a race car and had a shot at it.”
Ryan Blaney — Finished 29th: “I don’t really know what caused that wreck in Stage 2. We were all just saving gas. I don’t know how we all wrecked saving gas. Maybe some guys weren’t, but I feel like it’s pretty normal. I was really hoping to make it to the end of this. I haven’t finished a Daytona race in like two years, so I was looking forward to it. I thought Joey and I were in a decent spot to go forward, but it’s just chaotic like normal.”
Michael McDowell — Finished 30th: “I’m fine. I don’t know what it looked like. I closed my eyes. Anytime you get turned in front of the field while leading it, you know somebody is gonna hit you. There’s no way you’re getting out of it. I’m just bummed. We had a really fast Long John Silver Ford Mustang. I’m really proud of everybody at Front Row. We had a ton of speed with both cars this weekend and with a few laps to go we put ourselves in position to win the race and that’s what we wanted to do. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to the end and that’s part of this racing. I haven’t watched it in detail to know exactly what happened, so I don’t want to throw any opinions out there because Lord knows that I’ve made plenty of mistakes at superspeedways and I want to make sure it wasn’t me. But I felt like I got turned getting down into turn one. The wrong angle at the wrong time, but Austin was doing a great job of pushing me. We had a good run and you’re at the end of these races, so I’m not faulting him. We were trying to do what we could.”
Joey Logano — Finished 31st: “It’s speedway racing. It’s a lot of fun until it’s not. We did a good job keeping our car in position all night, up in the top five the whole race. We got a stage win, which is great. McDowell just got turned and came down in front me with nowhere to go. I think he’s OK as well. Some pretty big hits there, and then horrible to see Josh Berry there a second ago upside-down into the wall. We’ve got to figure out how to keep the cars on the ground. We’re not doing enough to fix that.”
Justin Haley — Finished 32nd: “You know it’s gonna happen, but you just have to keep going. That’s just part of it. It’s unfortunate. We’ll keep digging and go the next one. The last few laps is just speedway racing. It was a good run for us. I appreciate everyone at RWR for their hard work. We had a good car and led some laps and we go to one of our better tracks next week. We got lucky to flip one of the stages there and were able to get up front, so we had a good run.”
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — Finished 33rd: “I was just running the middle there. Kind of saved our car all day. Actually made our way to the front a little quicker than I thought we were going to be able to. That caution kind of killed us. We’d been saving a ton of fuel. In the spot we were in, I felt like we were going to gain some track position on that green flag pit stop. Obviously, we didn’t get that, and were mired back there in 20th, and so we got the third row in the middle there, and it looked like the No. 2 just turned the No. 34 and then we piled in there. Just part of it.”
Shane van Gisbergen — Finished 35th: “Unfortunate circumstances today. Our No. 16 SafetyCulture Chevy was a solid car and had a lot of speed. I hate it for our Kaulig Racing team, but something we can’t control. Ran up front there for a bit and showed our potential, but not the finish we hoped for. Get another shot at it next weekend in Darlington”
Chase Elliott — Finished 36th: “I just think that everybody was kind of playing games. Nobody wanted to lead, and it just kind of puts everyone in a tough spot. We were all just kind of stacked up there. Somebody was switching lanes, it looked like, and got out of shape. It’s a bummer. It was so early in the race. I would just like an opportunity to get a little deeper into it and just see where things shook out. We’ve been pretty lucky these last couple of trips down here to Daytona. It’s just unfortunate, but we’ll try to have a good weekend at Darlington.”
Noah Gragson — Finished 37th: “I haven’t seen what happened yet, but we kind of struggled at the beginning of the race with the front balance and then we made adjustments out of the first pit stop and felt like we had it decent. We had the bottom lane rolling and were up to maybe the top 10 or the top 15 on the bottom line. I got up to the middle and I was behind the 1. He looked real darty, real squirrely so I was trying to bail out of there and get out. I haven’t seen what happened yet, but I was trying to get out of that line. I don’t know if I got ran over or what the case was, but once I see it I’ll see more. If it was my fault, I want to apologize to the other guys, but I don’t really know yet. It’s just a bummer.”
Denny Hamlin — Finished 38th: “Stage one, everyone was kind of going all out – because we are inside the fuel window where were able to run 100 percent to get to the end of the stage, and then stage two, there was kind of a little bit of fuel saving going on, so there was a little stack up – just seemed like some guys wanted to go, some guys didn’t and it caused a little contact there.”
Ryan Preece — Finished 39th: “I don’t know what happened. We were all kind of riding. We were all saving fuel, so I’m kind of shocked it happened, but I checked up. I got hit from behind and, I don’t know, the car didn’t even look that damaged. It was just we couldn’t change the toe link. We ran out of time and that was it, so kind of a tough deal.”
Daniel Suarez — Finished 40th: “I was doing my pit stop just like every single weekend. The No. 11 (Denny Hamlin) was right behind me and the No. 21 (Harrison Burton) was right in front of me, so unfortunately I got boxed in. We know that every single time we do a pit stop, we drop a little bit of fuel and that’s completely normal. Unfortunately, the No. 11 was leaving his pit stall right behind me, and because he was waiting for me to leave, his exhaust fired up the little fuel I dropped. Because I was still parked there, that went up the back of my car where the fuel cell is and it just grabbed it. It was a very unfortunate situation. I don’t know what we could have done differently. Just sad that we’re out of the race this way, but I’m glad I’m fine and the entire team was fine.”
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