Kyle Larson — winner: “This one’s definitely for Jon. He’s just a great guy here. We’re going to miss him. Wish he was going to be here with us to celebrate, but I know he’s celebrating with us in spirit. Just a flawless race at Bristol for the 5 team. Really good car. That was a lot of fun. … A little bit out of breath. Just so high-paced here. Heart rate’s up. Really cool. … It’s fun. I love this place because it is just so high-paced and with traffic; just dicing it up and picking the right lines at the right time while conserving your tires. It’s like a 500-lap sprint car race. It just suits me and my style with quick decision-making. I just love this place. I think a lot of us do here in this series. Just had another good race.”
Denny Hamlin — second: “”You’ve got to give that team and Kyle his due for just a dominant performance. Pretty flawless day for him. That was all I had to try to keep up there. Glad I was able to give him a little bit of a run. This weekend we’re all thinking about Jon Edwards’ family, Al Pearce, Shigeaki Hattori. We’ve lost a lot of great people in our sport over this past week. Our thoughts are with them. I wish we could have got one more spot, but I was just trying to keep him honest.”
The Hendrick Motorsports star led 411 of 500 laps three days after his former PR rep died.
Ty Gibbs — third: “It’s definitely really nice. We had a really good clean day. Really happy to have that. It’s been a pretty chaotic start to our year. I think we’re back to where we’re going to run. Really excited for the future. We’ve got great guys around me. I know we’re capable of winning. I don’t think I’ve worried about it all too much.”
Chase Briscoe — fourth: “It’s nice. Whenever you have a run like last week, you can dwell on it or move on from it. Good solid day for us. What we needed to do was have a good solid day and clean finish, and that’s what we had. It’s definitely nice to have some momentum going into the off week.
Ryan Blaney — fifth: “It was a good risk to take. I thought Jonathan did a good job taking a chance. We weren’t going to win. I was already running fifth. At the end of the day, we got back to where we were running, which was good. Took a chance trying to get a yellow and trapping a bunch of guys a lap down. Really good effort. Honestly a really good weekend by the 12 boys. I thought we got better and better from practice. I didn’t think we were very good yesterday in race trim. They did a great job of getting us where we needed to be and getting us better. Blue-collar day. Good to have a race where we finished where we should.”
William Byron — sixth: “Overall, it was just a long day having to come from the back. It didn’t seem like many people could pass, but I felt like we could slowly work our way forward. Bristol Motor Speedway has sort of been a tough place for us, so just trying to get our footing back and put some consistent runs back together, and I felt like we did that today with the No. 24 Chevy. I was really happy about that. We were close to the top-five, but we just needed a little bit more.”
The 2021 Cup Series champion led 411 of 500 laps.
AJ Allmendinger — ninth: “Overall, really good race for our No. 16 group. I’m proud of the team and how we executed this weekend. We had a pretty consistent car, we were able to run in the top 12 all day so I’m really proud of that. We’ve had good momentum over the last few weeks that we’ll take into the off week and get ready for Talladega.”
Austin Dillon — 10th: “We really came on strong there at the end. Our No. 3 Chevrolet was just too tight to start the race, and then when it kind of moved up, we had something to race, for sure. I wish we could have made our way forward a little sooner because I think our Chevy had runs in it that were capable of a top-five finish. But overall, that was big for us right there.”
Kyle Busch — 14th: “Our Chevrolet was definitely better today than when we raced here last fall. We’ve still got work to do but we are making steps in the right direction. We survived a speeding penalty on pit road today and crew chief Randall Burnett did a good job keeping up with changing track conditions. I’m bummed we couldn’t win a free No. 8 special for all the fans. Everyone at RCR continues to work on things and I’m confident that our time will come.”
Crew chief Cliff Daniels says the past two races have proved valuable to the team in different ways.
Austin Cindric — 17th: “With a lot of unknowns going into today with the tires I felt we adapted pretty quickly in the first stage. We made up some spots and stayed on the lead lap. I think being able to recover from having to pit twice there after the pit stop and kind of come back up through the back and get a decent finish. I still feel like we needed a few more adjustments there to get this Ford Mustang where we wanted it, but I’m proud of the no give up effort there. It’s a hard place to do it at and it was cool to drive the car with all the folks here this weekend.”
Joey Logano — 24th: “Tough day for overall for us with having to fight for track position all day. The long runs didn’t fall in our favor and forced us to take a shot with the wave around at the end of Stage 2. We’ll reset in the off-week and look ahead to Talladega.”
Jesse Love — 31st: “I felt really comfortable today at Bristol Motor Speedway to be honest. I feel good physically after 500 laps, and now I’ll have to go back and digest everything that happened this weekend. It was a lot to process in the moment, but for how good I felt we were during the race, I now have to understand how the race unfolded and what to do better the next time. Our Chevrolet was tight for a majority of the race, and then we had a right-front tire cord, forcing us to pit under green and costing us track position. I’m happy with the amount of speed we had and the guys that I was able to race with on the track. I know the result isn’t great but overall, I feel like I learned a lot, gained some respect and didn’t make any enemies. There is still a lot to learn but hopefully I will have a few more opportunities in the future.”
Read the full article here
