Here are some of the comments made by the drivers at Darlington Raceway before and after Sunday night's Cup Series playoff debut:
According to winner Erik Jones, Richard (Petty) has likely not visited Victory Lane at Darlington since he last won here. It's simply amazing. These gentlemen, Petty GMS, and Focus Factor Crew make me incredibly proud. We've been so close all year long, but I didn't believe today would be the day. I knew it would be difficult to win, but there was no better setting. I adore this race and this track. Two times on that trophy, man. I was thrilled to appear there once, but having it appear again was quite great. That was the calmest I've ever been when racing for the win. When I recall my previous victory here, I was exhausted, my stomach hurt, and my nerves were racing. Today, though, everything went as usual. I had a good feeling about this track and believed Denny (Hamlin) would run me clean, making it difficult for him to pass. It was difficult to pass all day, and we had a terrific restart there. But wow, everyone should be so proud. What a wonderful dream to come true. You can only say that. Through all of it, my confidence in myself never wavered. I was confident that I could still complete the task; all we needed to do was expand the program, which we had done. In the past year, we've hired a lot of fantastic individuals.
Denny Hamlin came in second: I believe it was approximately a second for us in a 15-lap run last night in Xfinity, and there was a falloff of about two and a half seconds in the previous run. Since the speeds are so high, the throttle time is very long. It's a game of errors. Simply put, Erik performed a fantastic job.
Third-place finisher Tyler Reddick said, "I couldn't quite put the entire race together. I thought tonight I didn't do a good enough job of getting in the box. Simply put, I felt a little erratic. In the end, I wish I could have done better. When we were last here, I thought I was very skilled at that. Just needs to be determined what changed. There is always something to learn, but taking everything into account, we once found ourselves in a rather difficult situation. Ty Gibbs, (Austin) Cindric, and I may have been sandwiched and hit the wall off a four, so it was a great night for us to recover and finish third. It's what we required during the playoffs and lacked here the previous year. So, getting that tonight is fantastic, but it always hurts when you're close and one slot away on a restart from being in the lead.
drivers' comments from Darlington Raceway
Michael Hembree
20:47 on September 4, 2022, EDT
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Here are some of the comments made by the drivers at Darlington Raceway before and after Sunday night's Cup Series playoff debut:
According to winner Erik Jones, Richard (Petty) has likely not visited Victory Lane at Darlington since he last won here. It's simply amazing. These gentlemen, Petty GMS, and Focus Factor Crew make me incredibly proud. We've been so close all year long, but I didn't believe today would be the day. I knew it would be difficult to win, but there was no better setting. I adore this race and this track. Two times on that trophy, man. I was thrilled to appear there once, but having it appear again was quite great. That was the calmest I've ever been when racing for the win. When I recall my previous victory here, I was exhausted, my stomach hurt, and my nerves were racing. Today, though, everything went as usual. I had a good feeling about this track and believed Denny (Hamlin) would run me clean, making it difficult for him to pass. It was difficult to pass all day, and we had a terrific restart there. But wow, everyone should be so proud. What a wonderful dream to come true. You can only say that. Through all of it, my confidence in myself never wavered. I was confident that I could still complete the task; all we needed to do was expand the program, which we had done. In the past year, we've hired a lot of fantastic individuals.
Denny Hamlin came in second: I believe it was approximately a second for us in a 15-lap run last night in Xfinity, and there was a falloff of about two and a half seconds in the previous run. Since the speeds are so high, the throttle time is very long. It's a game of errors. Simply put, Erik performed a fantastic job.
Third-place finisher Tyler Reddick said, "I couldn't quite put the entire race together. I thought tonight I didn't do a good enough job of getting in the box. Simply put, I felt a little erratic. In the end, I wish I could have done better. When we were last here, I thought I was very skilled at that. Just needs to be determined what changed. There is always something to learn, but taking everything into account, we once found ourselves in a rather difficult situation. Ty Gibbs, (Austin) Cindric, and I may have been sandwiched and hit the wall off a four, so it was a great night for us to recover and finish third. It's what we required during the playoffs and lacked here the previous year. So, getting that tonight is fantastic, but it always hurts when you're close and one slot away on a restart from being in the lead.
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Joey Logano, who came in fourth, said, "It's a good day, but I think it was a squandered opportunity. Every time you visit the Southern 500, especially during the playoffs, you just have to go by and finish strongly because so many other drivers are experiencing difficulties. After so many teams faced problems, we were able to finish fourth. We also had a lot of problems of our own. We lost track position a few times before getting caught in that caution and losing it very late in the race. After that, we just fought hard. It's incredibly challenging to ascend through this field. It's incredibly difficult to pass, but I fought back and managed to place in the top five, which is fine. I suppose you should be glad about it because we scored many points in the first round, which matters most. However, I wanted the Southern 500, and we missed our chance to win it. That one hurts a little because I believe that if we had the air, we would have been better than the cars in front of us. Instead of moving to the rear and tuning to unclean air, if we could manage to stay closer to the front, we could tune to cleaner air. We simply went too far backward.
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Christopher Bell: Fifth place finisher Overall, I scored well but was unhappy. Even though our Camrys were quite quick, it's upsetting when your teammates are running one, two, or three, and you're having trouble catching up to them in the race. Overall, it was a nice day, and this playoff stretch got off to a good start. Hopefully, we can keep the momentum going. I don't know if anyone could pass exceptionally, but our teammates could get to the front. Because of how strong our teammates were and how we were usually in the rear, outside of the top-five area, I'm dissatisfied with our fifth-place finish. I had a few bad breaks but a few nice ones in the end, so I finished fifth and earned some stage points. Overall, the Yahoo Camry had a successful day, and we'll work to build on this and keep the momentum going into Kansas.
Sixth-place finisher Michael McDowell said, "We had an extremely quick FR8 Auctions Ford Mustang. In the long run, we were extremely strong, but on pit road, we needed to execute a little bit better. Darlington is a challenging track, but we only lost a few spaces each time and had to pass those cars again, losing some of our momenta. Running 500 miles here is extremely difficult, and to run all night competitively and in the lead makes me incredibly proud of the effort, yet I'm also not surprised. There was speed. We moved swiftly. This year, there were numerous top 10 lists. We're making good progress since that was arguably one of our best performances on a racetrack that is roughly a mile and a half long. Everything is wonderful and moving in the right direction. Therefore I'm glad to leave. Although we had a few close calls, as you might expect in a 500-mile race, I'm proud of the effort.
Finished in eighth place, William Byron said, "I feel wonderful about leaving here tonight." In points, we come in second. I'm disappointed that we lost, especially given how Stage 1 went. I anticipated a close race for the victory, but I'm quite pleased overall. We carried out our race. We were caught a lap behind only because of the caution. We resisted even though there was nothing we could do about it.
9th-place finisher Bubba Wallace said, "All in all, a good day for our Root Toyota Camry team. To stay ahead of the curve, we need to improve at calling the adjustments and managing our balance. Overall, I'm just happy to have finished this. Good car for us, but we still have to drive through Kansas.
Kyle Larson, who placed 12th, said, "It felt like it was going to explode. For a lap, it made an amusing noise coming out of (turn) 2, but by the time I turned around, it was laying down. I was pushing down and letting folks go as they passed me. When we pitted, nothing appeared odd. When we returned to the race, it initially ran poorly for a few laps before clearing itself out and running smoothly for the remainder of the race. I, therefore, don't yet know what it was. My dash would have been lit up if it had been fuel pressure. So I'm not sure if it was something electrical for a brief moment or something else. I'm confident they will discover the entire tale when they enter the data. I'm simply relieved that it wasn't fatal and that we were still able to battle back after falling behind by three laps. By the third stage, we were back in the front row. I had hoped for a better outcome, but every time we restarted, we were like 30th. We were merely entrapped in filthy air, and I had poor balance. We were going to have some excellent track position when we arrived at the finish line, but since I wasn't sure whether a lug nut was tight, we elected to pit rather than risk losing 20 spots for more positions. So, I'm disappointed about it but also relieved because I believed we might have another DNF. I simply hope they understand what happened so we can fix the issue.
"The caution hit us at the wrong time, but we were going to be alright, and then we had to re-pit for a wheel that was going to be loose," said Ryan Blaney, who came in 13th. You cannot do it when there are 20 laps left in the race. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, we were competitive all day, earned some respectable stage points, and at least finished.
Ty Gibbs, who came in at number fifteen, said, "We were incredibly quick as the sun was lowering, but we needed to make some significant tweaks to keep our Monster Energy Toyota Camry TRD quick into the night. The squad worked hard, but tonight we were just a touch-off.
"We didn't take ourselves out of it tonight, and that was aim number one," said Austin Cindric, who placed 16th. We could have advanced further in the car tonight, though. We felt we could keep up with the rest of them on the long runs, but we battled on the short runs and lost my lunch money on restarts. Anytime we tried to rectify that, we just seemed to make things worse for the others. Something to keep in mind for tonight. We didn't pull ourselves out of it since I lost track of where I was on those restarts, but I kept killing us. I'll take the fact that we were able to finish with more points than many other guys, but I'm not at all happy with it.
"We just didn't have it tonight," said Austin Dillon, who placed 17th. We were constrained right away, and amid the race, we had something respectable before it turned into a loss. Although our No. 3 BetMGM Chevy wasn't terrific, we are currently not last in points and have made some strides in that regard. All we have to do to take it from Kansas (Speedway) is bring a better hot rod.
18th-place finisher Daniel Suarez said of his 99 Jockey Camaro ZL1, "I felt like the pit team did a pretty amazing job. I simply erred by speeding on the pit road. That must not occur.
Ross Chastain, who came in at number 20, said, "I just kept my world limited and stayed in my bubble. That's what we train for, for situations like that. I have no control over it. It took me some time to explain what was occurring because it was a freak occurrence that we hadn't experienced the entire time we owned this car. I had the impression that the left rear simply lacked air. Our No. 1 Worldwide Express Chevrolet team battled back from being four laps behind to finishing one lap behind and more than capable of competing with these guys. Coming back and fighting as we did in the 20th is a tribute to this team.
Chase Briscoe, who came in at number 27, said, "We just had a lot of balancing issues. We were tight at the start of the race, then we became quite loose, and when the nine cars crashed, we were left with nowhere to go. That kind of ruined our day, but luckily, many of those guys also had problems. No doubt, that wasn't how we intended to begin the round, but we'll need to do better and probably need to prevail. We shouldn't have been in that predicament where we were suffering in any case; I don't even know what the points look like. We just weren't able to strike a balance. Unfortunately, we now know what has to be done and will attempt to do it. I thought if I stayed up on the bank, he wouldn't come up, but when he did, I saw him coming and locked them up. When he (Elliott) went into one, he simply plugged the fence, began spinning, and went down. I was simply sliding with him once I locked them up. I wished I could start afresh. Of course, looking back, it's much simpler, but I made the incorrect choice at the time.
Kyle Busch – 30th place finisher: "Engine broke. Simply unfavorable circumstances tonight. The men did a fantastic job, and M&M's Toyota Camry was fast. Simply quite proud of the work. The news and everything that happens throughout the year, including all the men have done and experienced. They have persisted and never given up. I recently had a fantastic car, but I have nothing to show. That is the aspect of it that I detest the most. We certainly had a tremendously quick car and were leading many laps. Happy with the lads' battle. Tonight's pit road crew was great. It was a great pleasure to take the lead and lead laps to demonstrate our abilities. I hate that we can't earn the necessary points to win.
Martin Truex Jr. came in at position 31: "I lost power steering, and the car quickly overheated and lost power. I think I kicked some belts off. Thank you to all of my guys, JGR, TRD, and Bass Pro employees, for their year-round support. It's been difficult, and today is undoubtedly another difficult night, but we'll return the following week and resume our battle. Just angry. Upset and furious. No matter what we do this year, it seems worse because we deserve better. When we operate well, things go wrong, and when we operate poorly, nothing happens. It's just one of those years where nothing works out for us. I should have won this race approximately five times, but I've only done so once, making me pretty upset.
33rd-place finisher Kevin Harvick said, "I'm sure it's just some subpar parts on the racing vehicle, as we've seen so many times. Nothing has been fixed. It is comparable to the safety information. We simply let it continue unabated. The car began to burn, and the dash began to catch fire as it did so. I completed a few laps before the flame began to consume objects. I believe you can see all the brake fluid and a portion of the brake line right there, but the fire was coming through the dash. What a calamity without cause. We didn't touch the wall. We didn't touch a car, yet here we are in the pits with a burned-out vehicle, unable to complete the playoff race due to subpar parts. I simply quit. For a few laps, the rocker was aflame. I simply stopped because the flames were pouring through the dash, and I could not get myself to sit in there and burn up.
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