William Byron — winner: “Damn, I got a lot to say (smiling). Things have a way of working out. God really tests your resilience a lot of times. We’ve been tested. Just unbelievable. I’m out of breath. Thank you, fans, for coming out. Bad-ass crowd. I watched my first NASCAR race up there just before start-finish line. Man, I am just so thankful, excited to see my family, just celebrate this one. We obviously go to Phoenix. Just go try to kick ass there. … We just worked so hard, all these guys work so hard. You put everything into Sundays. Sometimes you don’t get anything in return. That’s been the last couple weeks. Honestly, throughout the year, had some close calls. But yeah, sometimes life is that way. You just got to keep being resilient. We were. Just feels damn good.”
Ryan Blaney — second: “Yeah, I look back on that long run before the last yellow where William got by me. I just got loose, trying to work through that. My rear drive was fading quick. I tried to manage a lot in the beginning. Yeah, just was starting to fade. I was trying to protect. Yeah, I mean, that’s just two guys going for it. I don’t blame him for taking that. I have kind of lost momentum. I would have done the same thing, to be honest with you. I knew it was going to be tight. I tried to crowd as much as I could. I’m just proud of this whole 12 group. Everybody who puts a lot into our program. Starting where we did and making the ground up we made early was impressive. They gave me a great car and race trim, and getting the lead was great. (Byron) was just a little better than us at the end. I seemed to lose a little bit rear drive quicker than he did. He was able to keep it longer than me. That’s how he got the lead. Thought I got a good restart, the last one. Kind of entered up top, tried to carry speed, and he just motored right around me on the bottom. Pretty impressive. Just proud of the effort. A shame we’re not going to Phoenix as part of the Championship 4. We’ll be doing the best we can to finish the year out strong. But I’m just proud of, like I said, the 12 guys. They have gave 100% of what they had. That’s all you can ask for. Wasn’t quite enough tonight. We’ll just move on.”
Blaney ‘just got loose’ down Martinsville stretch
Ryan Blaney explains what was happening inside his car as William Byron blew by him at Martinsville, saying that he just got a bit careless and “was fading quick.”
Chase Elliott — third: “Just be positioned better. Obviously, those final laps get tough when the guys out front have a big advantage when the track cleans off like that. It was just going to be difficult. I was just hoping, in my position, to get to a spot where I could maybe capitalize if something crazy happened. Outside of that, we just got a little too far behind at the three-quarter mark. We got caught a lap down in the cycle, and then from there, we were just kind of playing catch-up. We just weren’t quite good enough, truthfully. William (Byron) and the No. 24 team did a great job and capitalized on a fast Saturday; put themselves in a good spot and got it done. I feel like we’ve had some of our best races over the last month, which is a lot of fun to end the year strong and be up there in the mix a lot more. I’m proud of that and the fight all day today and throughout the week. The effort everybody at Hendrick Motorsports put into these cars and just trying to bring our very best here, I thought we did that. Unfortunately, we just came up short. But fortunately, we got two cars into the Championship Four and hopefully one of them can get it done.”
Elliott falls short of the Championship 4
Chase Elliott recaps his third-place finish at Martinsville and analyzes why he wasn’t able to secure his spot in the Championship 4.
Ross Chastain — fourth: ““There was a time where when we did the choose for the restart, there was only one car behind us. And then at the end, there was only two cars in front of us. Definitely both ends of the spectrum today for this No. 1 Chevrolet team. The left side’s torn up from the first-half of the race because we struggled. We were getting beat up pretty bad. We went a lap down; made some good adjustments when we took the wave around. It was a free pit stop, per say, later and Phil Surgen (crew chief) did a bunch of adjustments and it brought the car back to life. We caught that caution, which took us from around 10th into the top-five. I think we just watched William Byron cement himself into the championship race. As a kid, I remember watching the No. 24 car win and dominate here. To be buddies with William now, I saw at the end of the race a guy go and solidify himself in that car for a very long time, not that there was any question about that. Really cool for Chevrolet to go do that and beat the No. 12 car (Ryan Blaney) here. At a flat track, it’s hard to do these days, but the No. 24 car just flat-out drove by him on the long-run and held him off on the short-run at the end. As a friend, that was really, really cool to watch.”
Kyle Larson — fifth: “Well, a couple times I just wanted to stay green. Then (Carson Hocevar) was in, like, every caution tonight. Restarts, I felt good about my car on restarts, but you never know how the aggression is going to pick up, and everybody’s give-a-shit factor goes out the window. We had good enough track position all day. We were kind of out of the mess, I guess. Yeah, that was good. My HendrickCars.com Chevy was fast. Our pit crew was on it all night. What a performance by William. That’s awesome. I think when the 12 gained control of the race, it was going to be really hard for anybody to beat him. William did a great job on the restarts, just kept positioning himself. Was good enough to get by him on that long run. I was surprised on the restart there, the two tires were as good as they were. So happy for him. Happy for our team. Happy for Hendrick Motorsports. This win is as good as it could have been for us, for us to score more points than Christopher, then have William or Chase win, too. Glad we can give Mr. H an opportunity next week. Hopefully one of us can win it. I’m proud of everybody at Hendrick Motorsports. I feel like we’ve been progressing so much throughout the Playoffs. To put two cars in the Championship 4 is awesome.”
Larson: Byron’s Martinsville win was ‘awesome’
When asked if he was ever in doubt about his late battle with Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson responds that he just wanted to avoid any cautions before giving teammate William Byron props for a strong showing.
Ryan Preece — sixth: “Our Ford Mustang was really good. I felt like from the drop of the green between managing the plan we had, we just had a really good race car and it was kind of surprising to me. From there, it was fun to use tools that you learn growing up in racing – how to manage tires and take care of them and do the things that you need to do to keep them on it, so I had a lot of fun today. We had a bad pit stop. We were third and came out ninth, but I was gonna be good those last 30 laps and I’m not entirely sure how they would have been. I took care of my tires to make sure that knowing it was 100-and-however many laps that we needed to be good at the end. It’s a lot easier to pass cars at the end of a run than it is at the beginning, so there were definitely points during the race when we were really good in the long run and it crossed my mind that we could definitely win today.”
Christopher Bell — seventh: “Just seemed like we were lacking a little bit of long run pace. I felt whenever we got the balance close at times I could take off on tires and do okay and make some passes, maintain my position. Then the consistent theme of the day was just falling backwards as the tires got old. We just weren’t strong enough at Martinsville this weekend. We practiced in the teens, we qualified in the teens, and kind of raced back there most of the day. I feel content with the results. I think the four going there are legitimate contenders. Whoever the champion is, it’s going to be well-deserved.
The 20 team wasn’t good enough. This year, there’s four great drivers. All have had championship seasons. Whoever the champion is, it’s going to be well-deserving. I think the format worked out this year.”
Bell kept ‘falling backwards’ at Martinsville
Christopher Bell unpacks his tough 7th-place finish at Martinsville that ends his championship hopes and credits the four drivers who made the championship race as being “real contenders.”
Joey Logano — eighth: “We pitted in the middle of the second stage there coming to the end when everyone was flipping and all that stuff to the end of the second stage and, I don’t know, I feel like I lost control when the Hendrick cars pulled the okie dokie in front of me and I chose the inside lane, which put me third and that’s what let the 12 get up there and then you just kind of get stuck in dirty air. I’m kind of kicking myself on that decision, but, outside of that, we just weren’t fast enough. That’s the bottom line. We weren’t good enough to drive back through either way, but I thought I would have had a chance if maybe I could have made that better earlier in the race. I just got out of the car. I have no idea. There will be plenty, obviously, looking back at it and things we’ve got to do better. Ultimately, we just have to be faster. That’s the biggest thing. Bummed. I don’t know if there’s another word for it. I’m just bummed that one of us didn’t make it. Everyone works hard enough to deserve to be there. We just couldn’t get the job done today, or really the last three races. That’s what it comes down to. The four there deserve to be there. That’s how I always look at it and this year we didn’t deserve to be there. It seemed like right at the end of that run, the top five cars started tanking, but it just kind of seems like the tires would fall off and then they’d kind of maintain for a while, and then they’d run out of rubber and they would fall off huge. They’d tank and by the time we passed a couple cars and you use up a lot of tire to pass cars, and then everyone is the same speed and then they started tanking right at the end, and then the caution came out. You’ve got to do something different. You can’t do the same. We would have got killed if we stayed out. That many laps on your tires there’s no chance. We’re the team to do things, but that wouldn’t even make sense. You could almost argue two tires there. It would have been close, but we were almost too far back and couldn’t close up enough to even get to the lead. You’ve got to have the lead if you put two tires on and your only hope at that point is everyone wrecks each other and it becomes a demolition derby behind you. That’s the only hope, but we were just too far back. We just couldn’t close the gap and, like I said, just wasn’t good enough. It’s a bummer. There’s no Ford. There’s no Team Penske car in the Championship 4. We weren’t good enough. That’s all there is to it. It’s not from a lack of effort. We just weren’t good enough.”
Logano: Championship hopes ending ‘stings’
Joey Logano explains the decisions he made in Stage 2 and how the little mistakes cost him a shot at “making things interesting” at Martinsville before lamenting being out of the championship hunt.
Kyle Busch — 13th: “After a strong qualifying effort with the No. 8 Chevrolet, we battled a tight center that led us to go a lap down early in the race. The entire Richard Childress Racing team made adjustments throughout the race that not only got us back on the lead lap but had us inside the top 10 at race’s end. We leave Martinsville Speedway with a 13th-place finish, and will look to Phoenix next week with our focus on concluding the season with a win.”
Austin Dillon — 16th: “We battled hard today. It was an eventful day for our Chevrolet. but this No. 3 team just kept grinding it out. We kept our heads down, made the next best decision and got our balance in a really good spot in the second half of the race. Proud of the effort, and we will look to finish our season strong next week in Phoenix.”
Denny Hamlin — 35th: “I felt like the car was coming to us, but I know what you are asking. I felt like we were in a good spot there where we just started to close back in on (Ryan) Blaney. We got the track position we needed. I didn’t feel anything, it was running and then it was just no noises, no sounds, no indication. I decelerated into Turn 1, and it just shut off. That was it. We’ll work on it I guess and try to get them next week. I’m obviously concerned (about the mechanical problems), but there obviously nothing I can do about it. We’ll live with it and hopefully we’ll get back next week and we are just going to have to see how it goes. I’m confident in the speed that we’ll have next week. I’m really confident in what this team is going to bring next week and we’ll bring our best, hopefully it lasts. Everything was fine and then it just lost power into turn one and that was it. No noises or anything, but just silence because it wasn’t running. I thought that the left side tire was a good change. It certainly makes you manage it, but also more cars have been on the track and the track is starting to rubber. It hasn’t wore as much as I would have expected and the lap time fall off was not quite as much. But a good experiment, I think it can put on good races.”
Chase Briscoe — 37th: “No indication. I was just running around there. I felt really good about coming here and where we were at and racing with (Kyle) Larson there and went to upshift and something happened. I’m not really sure, it’s unfortunate. We’ll go on to next week and that won’t matter anyways.”
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