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Here’s what the drivers had to say after Sunday’s Cup Series race at Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon, Tennessee:
Chase Elliott- Winner: “I’m just so proud of our team because we had a setback (with a pit stop) there about halfway there and were able to dial our NAPA Chevy back in and get back in the race. It’s been a long day, a fun day. Just so proud of our team. We’ve had a pretty rough month and a half, so it’s just nice to be heading in the right direction again. Getting a win is always great, but doing it in a really cool city like Nashville is even better. I’m looking forward to this guitar.”
Kurt Busch — finished second: “I’ve become soft on him. I should have thrown some fenders and moved some momentum. I didn’t stick to our strength. We didn’t have many strengths tonight. We just played really well. Restarts were mediocre and cross-country speed was good. I just had to stick to our strength and I screwed up. I want to thank all my guys at 23XI. We have a great group of boys and girls. The way we run a second is cool but we’re here to win with the playoff situation. This Camry and all TRD Camrys were fantastic. I just hate it when we don’t get to victory lane and I was right there. I wanted to throw some fenders, but I didn’t make it. Everyone will smile, but I let them down. I should have come up with a better plan.”
Ryan Blaney — 3. Done: “I’m not sure, as the race continued later in the night I thought we lost some ground between some of the other cars. I thought hot and slick during the day we were quite competitive and then something went wrong and I thought we weren’t that good. I had to back up and then spun too much. Jonathan made a good call to last the last stop. Why not, he finished ninth and could do third, so that was a good decision from him. Overall I wish it was on this hot and slick day as I thought we were a little bit more competitive but not a bad result.”
Kyle Larson — 4. Done: “It was definitely better when the sun went down. I don’t know what changes they made to it, I’m so proud of my boys for working hard and persevering. Not much worked out for us there as we got caught a lap down and we had to ride around the wave and there we were running 10th before the final warning from twenty. We stayed out and scored a top five. So proud of my HendrickCars.com Team #5 and proud of Chase Elliott too. This is great for Hendrick Motorsports and everyone there. Everyone was working hard trying to figure out how to go faster and they were definitely the best of the four of us all weekend. Cool to see he closed it.”
Ross Chastain – finished fifth: “An incredible night for the #1 Jockey Chevrolet Camaro. Trackhouse Racing brought in two incredibly fast cars and that was the right call to the pits, but we just didn’t realize 10 people were going to stay out. If a few less fail, we have a chance. Of all the boxers we got through traffic the best, so proud of it and proud of the accomplishment. Incredible job by our pit crew on the pit lane tonight collecting spots at every stop throughout the night. It just took us a little bit more to finish in the top four, but we were definitely a top five car. In the Cup Series, that’s all I can ask for.”
Austin Cindric – finished seventh: “I’ll take it, I think. It sure was a long way to get there. Obviously getting the lucky dog halfway through stage three and putting our Ford Mustang in the top five. At the end I was overtaken there by a couple of guys on tires, but obviously I had speed in the car. We just needed the track position. Jeremy made a great call to run long and we got probably 10 spots from that and on the restart there probably got six or eight more spots and was able to have a representative day.
Joey Logano – finished 9th: “It’s an ugly top 10, but it was still a top 10. It was a fight. Qualifying second I had false hope because I thought we could be better than what we were, but once the race started we realized we weren’t. We just fought everything.”
‘@ChaseElliott checks in from Victory Lane, guitar in hand.
Thanks to all the race fans who stayed up to watch @ NASCAR at @NashvilleSuperS! #NASHCAR // @Hendrick9Team pic.twitter.com/vEYkxrvNCx
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) June 27, 2022
Erik Jones – finished 11th: “We definitely had our ups and downs today, but it was nice to recover and finish 11th. We struggled with our Chevy’s handling early in the race and I felt we made the right adjustments to have a good day ahead of the rain delay. When we restarted after 10-15 laps the handling went away and it was just hard to drive. We will keep learning and working to get better. Overall a good result that we will take with us into next week at Road America.”
Austin Dillon – finished 14th: We went behind early today at Nashville Superspeedway, but this team fought out of there. We were too loose to start the race and that put us behind early. We went back a lap but earned our lap back. From there, crew chief Justin Alexander made some great strategic moves to gain position on the track. Unfortunately, when we got to track position, our Chevy was too tight in the same places on the track that we were too loose earlier in the race. Restarting with four laps left, we knew the likelihood of a crash was going to be high. I just hugged the bottom of the track and dug. We drove from the 18th to the 14th. At the end we were just too close to let anything happen. It’s not what we wanted, but we dug hard.”
Alex Bowman – was 36: “It’s frustrating not being able to finish the Ally 400. (Crew Chief) Greg (Ives) and everyone on the #48 team are working so hard on these race cars and it’s unfortunate that I wasn’t able to drive one to win. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time today. Greg threw the kitchen sink against the car and then we did two laps before we crashed. So it was difficult not being able to see if we would have found something at that stop.
