Here is what drivers were saying after Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway:
William Byron — Winner: “Yeah, it’s cool. We’ve just been kind of steady Eddie through the first three, four races and we haven’t shown any flashes, but today I thought we had a good car if we could have just gotten to the front, and at the end there we were really fast.”
Ross Chastain — Finished 2nd: “Early in the race I thought we were one of the best cars, and I wish we could have raced with those guys. We just worked our way back with taking four tires a lot, and some bad restarts on my side, but we had the speed, and we showed it all weekend.”
Bubba Wallace — Finished 3rd: “Third time I fooled myself starting on top. These guys gave me the right information. 14 was tight and he sent it off in there. Wasn’t going to stick, but that’s what he’s going to do. We’re racing for a win. I just hate it. I should have just kept my line into (Turn 3), and forced William to get tight. But we’re so vulnerable in these cars, right. But just upset with myself. Really needed a win there, and it was a good showing. I don’t know where that puts us. I don’t really care. But I know what I did and I choked.”
#NASCAR … Bubba Wallace on his duel with Kyle Larson on the restart before Larson wrecked. pic.twitter.com/VbK8HFrGEi
— Dustin Long (@dustinlong) September 24, 2023
Christopher Bell — Finished 4th: “We had to overcome a slow performance, that is for sure. We got away with one today. We didn’t have the pace to run fourth for sure. The restarts worked out in our favor, and we were able to sneak by on the bottom and get a good finish out of it. This is one of those days that I’m going to be really, really happy on Wednesday or Thursday, but right now, I’m pretty disappointed because the performance wasn’t there.”
Denny Hamlin — Finished 5th: “Today, I thought we had a really fast FedEx Camry until we got the damage. Once we got the damage, it just wasn’t as fast as it was before. Still, considering how much damage it had – it was a top-three car. A bunch of carnage happened there in the end, and we avoided it, so we are in a better spot than when we entered.”
Kevin Harvick — Finished 6th: “I just struggled a little on the restarts getting the car pointed quick enough to really make ground and didn’t do a very good job of putting the car in the right spots. We lost a couple on the restarts and probably should have finished third or fourth but it was still a great day.”
Brad Keselowski — Finished 7th: “There were big ups and downs today. We ran in the top-10, 10th-12th most of the day. At the end there we pitted and put two tires on at the end. I think we were fourth of fifth but then they kept wrecking so much that we didn’t get a chance to take advantage of it and were only able to get back up to seventh.”
Daniel Suarez — Finished 8th: “It was an up-and-down kind of day for the No. 99 Kubota Chevy team. I felt like the car had potential, but we just continued to work on the balance and try to make it a little bit better. We had a couple of issues on pit road. I made a mistake coming onto pit road on a green-flag stop. I felt like the car was a top-10 car, and overall, it was a good day for our team.”
Chase Briscoe — Finished 10th:
#NASCAR … Chase Briscoe saw progress on a day he finished 10th and left disappointed in the result. He explains … pic.twitter.com/q2LVtTZkPc
— Dustin Long (@dustinlong) September 25, 2023
Justin Haley — Finished 13th: “I was super happy with the handling from the start; we just started getting a little tight on the shorter runs. Once we overcame a pit-road penalty and had a longer run, we were so fast running similar times to the leader. It’s not quite the finish we had here last year, but it was still a really good day.”
Chris Buescher — Finished 14th: “At the end there we tried some strategy to make something happen and we couldn’t keep green flag conditions for more than a couple laps at a time so we bled off all the laps that we needed to do something and I ended up back there with people that were all over the place all day, running into us on straightaways and just shouldn’t have been around that group.”
Carson Hocevar — Finished 16th: “We got a good result there at the end. We were a top-10 to top-15 car all day. We either had a loose wheel or just got really loose and I hit the fence. I just made a mistake on my end. I hit the fence and knocked the toe link in and bent a lot of stuff. I was in survival mode and started to figure out how to drive it with everything broken and moving around in the rear-end.”
Martin Truex Jr. — Finished 17th:
#NASCAR … Martin Truex Jr. called his 17th-place finish the end of “a long terrible day. We need to fix it.” pic.twitter.com/NQsNV8fFMS
— Dustin Long (@dustinlong) September 24, 2023
Tyler Reddick — Finished 25th: “Really solid Jordan Brand Toyota Camry TRD. Qualifying put us in a hole, but we had a really good strategy. I got to win stage one, and I think it was shaping up to work out okay. I think the 7 spinning and bringing out that caution – we had to come down pit road and take a lot of fuel. From there it was restarts – I had good ones and I had bad ones. The last one there took us out of the race.”
Ryan Blaney — Finished 28th: “It was an up and down day, definitely and it ended with a down. I am proud of this group for getting a little better all day and having a good strategy. We took right side tires to get track position and then the car was ok, just kind of hanging on. We got better and then I sped on pit road. That really took us out of it. Took us out of having a good finish. When you put yourself back there then you get in a wreck.”
Erik Jones — Finished 30th: “We had a fast Chevy all weekend. The No. 5 was really checked out and running second to him based on what happened. So, we pitted there and it obviously put us pretty far back. I was just aggressive there to try and get some positions back, and just got high and out of the groove and into the wall.”
Kyle Larson — Finished 31st: "(Wallace) did a good job to stay with me on the restart, through (Turns) 3 and 4 and all that. I tried to open up and have my shape into (Turn) 1 and with these cars compared to the old ones, you don’t really get sucked around like that. I wasn’t really expecting it and thought that I would be fine. Yeah, we just went in there side by side and I just lost it.”
Ty Gibbs — Finished 33rd: “I was really happy with our speed out of the gate. This is a place that I’ve struggled. I was out of the groove, it’s my fault, I guess. Just have to keep going and keep fighting. We are bringing great cars to the track every week – we will keep working hard.”
Kyle Busch — Finished 34th: “The car had good grip in it. We had those couple of yellows back-to-back and we restarted on the outside. I felt like I had a flat right front and I was going to come to pit road. I second-guessed it and said ‘I don’t think so, man. It’s just something is wrong... something isn’t right, but it’s not a flat.’ And just all on its own, just turned into the bottom of the race track in turn one and it just swapped ends on me. That’s the rear, not the front, not having grip... so I just don’t know.”
Austin Dillon — Finished 36th: “Yeah, we had a loose wheel. It stinks... it’s kind of been the way our year has gone. Coming off of Turn 2, it’s a little slick there getting up to speed. I didn’t really think it was a loose wheel, but it was really loose, which could have given me a little bit of a hint. But I got down into Turns 3 and 4, you can just see the wheel comes off. It’s unfortunate.”