Here is what drivers said after Monday’s rain-postponed Cup race at Michigan International Speedway.
Chris Buescher — Winner: “Some really good changes. Got this Mustang in a good place to win here at Michigan for Ford, for Jack. Brad’s home track. It’s everybody’s home track on the team but me. Cool victory here. I got to say, missing my wife. She hasn’t been at the last two wins now - three wins. We’re going to have to get her to a racetrack soon. I didn’t thank her last week. I know she puts up with a lot. I wish she was here. We’ll get to celebrate now.”
Martin Truex Jr. — Finished 2nd: “I think we needed maybe a little bit longer run to wear the tires some more. I feel like we were a little better. It’s hard to pass the leader on equal tires. We had an unbelievable car today. Hats off to everybody that puts in the work on these things. Toyota TRD, Bass Pro, Reser’s, everybody that supports us. It was a rocket. The leader in clean air is really, really hard to pass. Just didn’t quite have enough. All in all, a good day.”
Denny Hamlin — Finished 3rd: “Yeah, I just stalled (the No. 11) and couldn’t get it refired. Something with the ECU - just had to get it refired and cycled it there. I thought we were really close with the 19. I thought he got through traffic better than I did all day, and it looks like the 17 was pretty good too. That’s no shock – he showed some speed yesterday. Showed some things on the track that I felt like caught my eye. Track position was king, we just never got to be up towards the front enough until the very end.”
Brad Keselowski — Finished 4th: “Yeah, I scored a lot of points. Obviously we want to win. The speed we showed at the end was enough to win the race, but at the beginning and early part of the race we were only really good enough to run 10th. We went for our points mode. The speed showed up. Dang, maybe we shouldn’t have gone for points. That’s part of how it always plays out. All in all a really strong day for both teams at RFK. Really proud.”
Kyle Larson — Finished 5th: “I felt like we were a little bit better, and then after that wreck off of (turn) two, the No. 14 and I hit pretty decently, and I just felt like we were a little slower after that. I think the handling was still similar, but just a little bit slower overall. We took what we could get out of the day.”
Daniel Suarez — Finished 6th: “This is exactly what we needed after a couple of rough weeks. The team did an amazing job with execution and the car was fast. It wasn’t easy – we had to work for this one. Two days ago in practice, I knew our car had the speed, but we were just very off on balance. Once we found the balance, the car was pretty fast so I’m happy with that.”
Ross Chastain — Finished 7th: “It was a grind all weekend. We started on the front row but didn’t have the balance or the grip level we needed when we got back in traffic. I felt like we were so fast and I just couldn’t get back up there. We just didn’t have the car to do it. The changes that we were able to make were small – air pressures and stuff – but helped the car today.”
Ryan Blaney — Finished 9th: “Just kind of a decent, okay day. Just different pit strategies and stuff like that. I thought the call we made to come in before the second stage and put tires on with like 15 to go flipped the stage. It had us restart in the top-five and got us our track position back that we lost earlier. We were able to kind of halfway hang on. I didn’t think my speed was great but just a hard working day for sure.”
Erik Jones — Finished 10th: “I thought our Chevy was a top-five car. We just got shuffled around on some restarts. When the No. 48 got wrecked there, we had to come in and change tires; got shuffled to the back and we had that long green-flag run there at the end. To drive from the back up to 10th, it’s good. Obviously we wish it was better, but we had good speed and a good car all race yesterday and today. The balance was just a little tighter today and kind of held us back.”
Ty Gibbs — Finished 11th: “Yeah, I feel like we had a great Monster Energy Toyota Camry TRD. I just didn’t do my job. I didn’t execute. I need to do a better job – be smarter, better race craft. I don’t know if that’s more studying or what. Just didn’t do a good job today. I appreciate all of the team effort. We had a great car – I just didn’t do my job.”
Josh Berry — Finished 34th: “Just wild restarts here and just trying to learn as much as I can. I just got loose there and backed it into the wall. Just hate it that we didn’t get to run all the laps today because that was the main goal.”
William Byron — Finished 35th: “I just got loose trying to get stage points there. We were dicing it up. We didn’t have the best restart, so we were gaining spots back, but just tried too hard. We’ll just regroup and try to get a good couple of weeks before the playoffs. Just made a mistake – was just trying hard and got loose.”
Chase Elliott — Finished 36th: “Yeah, I feel good. I hate that it happened. It was really early in the day to have a tire blow like that. It was really weird. It’s a bummer, but not surprised.”
Kyle Busch — Finished 37th: “I put myself in a bad spot. I really hate that I did that. I wish the results were better for the day for our entire RCR team. They work so hard and do so much for me to put myself in a bad spot like that and get crashed.”
