Kyle Larson — Winner: “It was far from perfect. I gave up almost two spots by getting in the wall too many times. I knew I wasn’t going to get the best restart. I knew I wasn’t good on the short runs. JJust had to keep plugging away at what I know and what’s good for me. Proud of myself. Proud of the team. Just a lot of gritty, hard work today between damage on pit road, qualifying bad, bad restarts. All that stuff. Just super pumped. One of the coolest wins of my Cup career because of all the heartbreak I’ve had here. The heartbreak yesterday. Just keep my head down and keep digging feels really good.”
Alex Bowman — Second: “I guess I choked that one away, for sure. Just kind of burned my stuff up. Saw (Larson) coming, so I moved around a little bit. Not when he passed me, but the time before that I hit (the wall) with the right front and just bent something enough that I lost a lot of right front feel, and then I pulled it off the wall too far right there and ended up hitting the fence pretty bad. So man, I hate that for this group. they deserve better than that. Just a couple of mistakes there. I felt like we were OK all day. That last run was probably the best we were but hats off to (this team). I hate it for (Rick) Hendrick. Congrats to Kyle and we’ll try to get another win this week.”
Bubba Wallace — Third: “It was really good. We showed up here in Miami and had speed. That’s the first box you want to check. We fired off just OK, and so I was just praying for track position. My pit crew has been on fire. Tremendous amount of work has gone into the last five years of this team to get where we’re at. We’re not where we want to be, but we’re damn sure competitive each and every stop. They got us up there and gave me a shot. Our Toytoa was just a game-changer. Got out front. I didn’t think I burned my stuff up to start that last run, but I need to go back and study and obviously not hit the fence and allow (Bowman) to get there. All in all, hats off to my 23 group here. It’s been a grind all year long. We’ve been getting kicked in the teeth the last stage of every race. Finally close one out. This feels good. I can’t hang my head over this. It’s a good day.”
Chase Briscoe — Fourth: “Starting fourth, finishing fourth is not the whole story. We were up and down all day long on pit stops, brake issues, tire vibrations. Honestly, this is what we needed as a race team. To come out with a top five, we can finally kind of build on this. I felt like we’ve had good speed all year. We just haven’t been able to kind of show that. It’s fun to be up in the front all day long and show what I’m capable of. Really looking forward to the next couple of weeks. There are a lot of really good racetracks for us as a team and even myself.”
Denny Hamlin — Fifth: “Yeah, a solid day, just needed a little bit more speed at the end. We would have runs there where I thought we had a top-three car and we had runs where it would end there and it’d be fringe top-five. Overall, great job by Chris (Gayle, crew chief) and the whole team to bring me a car where we could battle back and obviously, win Stage 2 there, and at least contend. Certainly a lot better, just need to work on the little stuff and be slightly better to run the kind of speed it takes to win.”
Chris Buescher — Sixth: “We used this Ford Mustang up today, but it was a pretty fun day. We made some progress on it, but we still have some tweaks to be better. We’ll work on that, but this was a pretty solid Homestead given where we were the last go-round. The team made some good adjustments and we had a strong restart and was able to hang on. I wish we could have gotten one more. We were definitely faster than (Denny Hamlin), but we were kind of stuck in one lane and it’s the lane he wanted to run too. I just couldn’t find a lane to get by, but, overall, it’s good to be that fast down here. I’m excited.”
AJ Allmendinger — Seventh: “I can figure out enough lines to make speed and do different things where certain guys just rip the fence to keep the momentum up. We just didn’t quite have enough there in the longer run. In general, I was really happy there. We fought hard, lost a little bit in the second stage but Trent Owens and the team worked hard to get it back and be very competitive.”
Ryan Preece — Ninth: “I felt like it went pretty well today. We made an adjustment there and lost a bunch of track position, but we were definitely pretty happy with how the car was and put it back to where it was and drove forward. I’m definitely pretty happy. This is something that I’m pretty proud of and I feel like if we can just keep consistently doing it, we’ll be good.”
Zane Smith — 11th: “I obviously knew our car had some speed in it, but we were going into today with me wishing it just drove a little bit better to manage throughout a run, and I feel like we more than accomplished that. The gains we made overnight were great. I was looking for more of a front end and we really accomplished that, and with that it kind of gave me the opportunity to run the bottom when a lot of people were up top. They would go bottom to try to block and I was still able to maintain up there and never really had to use the fence into one and two. I had that mistake on my end, but fortunately, it was early in the race and was able to battle back from it. I knew our car was good enough to, but you just never know how these are gonna play out, especially when you lose track position. I was just really proud of the effort.”
Austin Dillon — 13th: “We had a solid day. Our team made a lot of adjustments overnight, which helped a ton, especially at the start of the race. We started deep in the field, but were able to pick cars off early. The balance fired off a little loose. Richard (Boswell, crew chief) made a call to pit halfway through Stage 1 to get tires and work on our car. Our pit crew pulled off clean, fast stops, and gained us track position all day. We consistently ran inside the top-15 for the majority of the race and drove up to seventh towards the end. In the final stretch, I just couldn’t run the wall like I needed to and lost some spots. Finishing 13th after the last couple of weeks feels like a win. Our cars have been fast this year and I’m proud of the work everyone at RCR is putting in.”
Erik Jones — 15th: “I wish it would have been a 500-mile race. I’m kind of a ‘long run’ guy. It was a good effort today by the entire team. We never gave up and are making gains.”
Josh Berry — 17th: “Obviously, the incident on pit road kind of set us back, but our car was pretty decent. It just wasn’t quite the same after that, but I thought we did a good job of making the most of it. It could have been a lot worse but obviously would have liked to been a little bit better.”
Austin Cindric — 19th: “It was good. I feel like it was one of my best Homestead races and without the speeding penalty it could have been a really awesome points day. I thought we had a lot of versatility in our Ford Mustang and I thought that was important for keeping track position and gaining track position. I thought my guys did a really solid job on pit road today. A lot of the right pieces to execute, but I just dropped the ball on my end on the speed. A hundredth of a mile an hour, so that stings, so we have little bit to clean up but I’m proud of the total effort by everybody today.”
Michael McDowell — 20th: “It was an up-and-down day for the No. 71 Chevy team. We made a lot of adjustments throughout the race. We got our Chevy good at one point, and then on that last run, it just got really tight again. It was unfortunate, but we’re figuring it out. We’re making little gains at a time. We had a couple good runs that we felt like we were moving forward and doing the right things, and then a couple where we didn’t. We have to go back and look at it all; keep making the gains. I’m proud of the No. 7 team. Justin Haley and Rodney Childers did a great job and got a top-10 finish there, so that’s awesome. Good notes to look at and we’ll keep plugging away.”
Kyle Busch — 21st: ""Certainly wasn’t the day we were looking for with our Bank OZK Chevrolet. We definitely missed the setup. Randall (Burnett, crew chief) and the guys kept working on it with every stop and we were way better at the end. Appreciate the effort they put into it. We never gave up. We’ll keep working on it.”
John Hunter Nemechek — 23rd: “We had a challenging day. We qualified well this weekend, but the race didn’t go as planned. The handling was off. We struggled with both tight and loose conditions, as well as in traffic. Overall, it was a tough race for us and the No. 42 team. Finishing 23rd wasn’t what we hoped for, but considering last year’s result, it wasn’t terrible. We’re always striving for more, so it’s back to the drawing board.”
Ty Dillon — 27th: “We got better and better all day. We were probably going to run around 20th. I thought I had a tire going down, and it was vibrating really bad with 15 to go. I didn’t think it would make it to the end, so I came down pit road and hurt our day, hurt our result. But we improved all race, so that’s the positive. We just need to improve our Saturdays, and we’ll be even stronger.”
Ryan Blaney — 36th: “I didn’t have any warning. It just laid over when I got back to wide-open down the front, and that was all she wrote. It just stinks. We had a really fast Dent Wizard Ford Mustang. We led a lot of laps. We lost a little bit of track position there with some stuff on pit road, but got back to third and it was a great race between me and Bubba and Larson. I’m sure Denny was gonna get back into it. It was gonna be a heck of a battle the last 60 laps or so, but it just didn’t really work out for us. We’ll continue to keep fighting. I appreciate the 12 guys for just giving me a hot rod. It was an incredibly, incredibly fast race car today. We’ll keep our heads up. It’s just one of those things where it’s not really going our way right now, but the good news is we’re bringing fast cars and that’s all you can ask for. We’ll keep on moving.”
