Here’s what drivers were saying after Denny Hamlin won the spring race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Denny Hamlin — Finished 1st: “That’s what I grew up here doing in the short tracks in the Mid Atlantic, South Boston, Martinsville. Once it became a tire management race, I really liked our chances. Obviously, the veteran in Martin, he knew how to do it as well. We just had a great car, great team. The pit crew just did a phenomenal job all day. Can’t say enough about them.”
Martin Truex Jr. — Finished 2nd: “Yeah, I guess this tire management thing fit into my wheelhouse here at Bristol. Man, the difference was just coming out of the pits so far behind Denny. I had to use mine up more on the last run. The last four, five laps of the race was cord.”
Brad Keselowski — Finished 3rd: “It was interesting. Like a little short track race. You go to any of these local short tracks, that’s how you have to race. Have to take care of your stuff. It’s refreshing. It’s different. I like that it takes something different every week. That’s what makes Cup so hard. You go in every week, some weeks you drive ‘em till you burn ‘em down, this week you got to take care of ‘em.”
Alex Bowman — Finished 4th: “We just made our left-front tire last a little longer than some others there. I think it was a good, solid day for the No. 48 Ally Chevy team. I feel like we had a pretty good Chevy, but we just had to go roll around half-speed and try to make it last. It kind of reminded me of Greenville Pickens (Speedway), short-track racing in the East Series, or something like that. Just had to be really, really, really patient.”
Kyle Larson — Finished 5th: “Yeah, it was tough, tough to get a rhythm. I felt like I was kind of in a rhythm when I could run around fourth to sixth behind the Gibbs cars and kind of pace myself. I felt like I was doing a good job of managing my stuff, we just never got a long run. And then the one time we get a long run is when we had the penalty and we had to go to the back and abuse my tire to get back to the top five.”
John Hunter Nemechek — Finished 6th: “I definitely think it takes you back to short track racing around the country, figuring out how to manage tires and conserve tires for the end. Luckily, we were able to do so. We had a really fast Dollar Tree Toyota Camry XSE, probably rode a little bit too much that last long run. Probably could have finished better but overall really solid points day for this 42 team, needed that after the last few weeks we’ve had.”
Chase Elliott — Finished 8th:
#NASCAR … Chase Elliott on the type of race Sunday’s event at Bristol was …
— Dustin Long (@dustinlong) March 17, 2024
“It was a lot of fun.” pic.twitter.com/OeLbJO0fYC
Ty Gibbs — Finished 9th: “That’s just what we had today with our SiriusXM Camry. I felt like we were great all day, just that last run, the right rear just came apart. We were just two laps late of coming in. When we had that tire come apart, I think I was like four laps down at one point. Just frustrating, but you have to work for it here.”
Josh Berry — Finished 12th: “That was a good weekend. We had good speed. I was really pretty happy with the car, but obviously there were a number of issues going on, and I’m really kind of speechless on that part, but I thought we did a good job managing everything. We just seemed to make some adjustments at the end that seemed to cause the (tire) cording a little bit sooner and that kind of tied our hands a little bit there toward the end. But all in all, it was a great effort. Hate that we didn’t get a top 10, but it was a positive day and, honestly with everything going on, it was a lot of fun.”
Chase Briscoe — Finished 13th: “Crazy race, by far the most bizarre race I’ve ever been a part of trying to not go hard at all, trying to save your tires, and then you’d feel good, and they would just go all at once — they would be blowing. It was definitely weird just how you had to run that race, a cat-and-mouse game, which I think would’ve been really fun if you didn’t have to worry about the tires blowing or coming apart.”
Ryan Preece — Finished 14th: “I’d rather things go the way they did today than get beat by somebody with a faster car that day. Obviously, they’ve got some work to do, the (tire) wear was excessive, but we maximized our day. If we didn’t have that tire come apart there at the end, we could’ve finished maybe top-10, but it is what it is.”
Justin Haley — Finished 17th: “I loved it. I don’t know what social media says, but as a driver I thought it was fun because you had to manage it. You weren’t all-out the whole time, so it was fun to have a major part in how the car ran.”
Kaz Grala — Finished 19th: “We had great speed in our Ford Mustang Dark Horse. I’m proud of everyone at Rick Ware Racing. Both of our cars were fast. We were just straight-up top 15, top 12 cars today, which was really cool. Unfortunately, we got behind on the very last run there tire cycling-wise. I got shoved to the top and that wore out our right-front a little early, so we ended up 19th, but we had a strong day.”
AJ Allmendinger — Finished 23rd: “We initially struggled to find balance in our No. 16 Mtn Dew Cheetos Chevy. Combined with the tire issues the field faced, we had our hands full. I’m proud of our team and Travis [Mack] on the pit box. The way our day started, it wasn’t looking good, but we refocused as a team and made the most out of our day.”
Austin Dillon — Finished 24th: “We fought hard with the No. 3 BREZTRI Chevy. It didn’t matter what we did, we just kept losing tires. We were kind of in a box there trying to save and trying to go. Man, it was a weird race. Hate it that we couldn’t hold on because that would have been good run if we would have gotten ourselves into a better position.”
Kyle Busch — Finished 25th: “Today was one of those days where you just try to survive and get the best finish you can. Our FICO Chevrolet was good at the beginning of the race and we were able to work our way into the lead. The right-side tire wear was a huge factor and unfortunately led to me spinning out a couple of times. We were able to make up that lost time by taking the wave around during a caution just past halfway and catching a yellow flag about 50 laps later that put us back on the lead lap. Crew chief Randall Burnett and the guys worked hard on the car all day but the balance was just too tight. At the end of the race, we stretched out tire wear as far as we could go before pitting but unfortunately had to stop under green.”
Daniel Hemric — Finished 28th: “Lots of highs and lows during this long race. We had a solid second stage, but after making some contact with the wall, we just fought a really tight-handling No. 31 Cirkul Chevy. The right front would wear quickly, and the rear would start going away not long after. Hopefully we can come back in the fall for some redemption.”
Noah Gragson — Finished 34th: “We put ourselves in a box there early. We made a lot of speed on the first run, got up to 13th running the outside, then we cut a right-front down, or wore the right-front all the way down to the cords. Came down pit road, got trapped a lap down. We just didn’t execute today, especially myself, I hit the wall later in the race getting up into the marbles. There was a ton of tire rubber out there. But there are no excuses. I need to get it together for the Bass Pro Shops team and just didn’t run a good race.”
