Denny Hamlin — winner: “It’s fantastic. Chris Gayle, this whole team has just done a great job. We’ve been so fast throughout the entire year, just haven’t finished it for one reason or another. Feels good to come here at Michigan where we’ve been so close over the years. This is such a gratifying day to restart 11th or something like that and drive through the field. I knew I was going to have to go 100 percent to get around everybody. Just worked them one by one.”
Chris Buescher — second: “That was such a fast Mustang. I really appreciate everybody on this team working so hard to put us in this situation and to have a chance to win. I’m disappointed I didn’t get it done. It’s on me. I had a couple different decisions I would love to go back and make and ultimately should have had us ahead of the 11. We were faster on the day and I didn’t do a good enough job. We’ll certainly take the good with it. We certainly need a little bit of good luck or fortune on our side. This is a day where we kind of made our own. We were really fast and worked hard to be there and just didn’t have any bad luck, so that put us with a shot to win. After the last handful of weeks with having speed in the first stage and qualifying and not being able to get the race finish that was certainly big, but it’s frustrating to be that close and to know that we had a car that was capable of winning. I just needed to do a better job.”
Ty Gibbs — third: “We had a very fast Toyota Camry. Wish we could’ve gone out and won, but it was not the option with the fuel spot we were in. It’s just unfortunate because I believe we had the capability to go do it, and we showed how fast enough to go do it. It’s frustrating, but it’s just part of it sometimes.”
Bubba Wallace — fourth: ““Yeah, when Charles (Denike, crew chief) comes over the radio and says be on it the whole time, that’s all you want to hear. I was doing a little bit of technique stuff on that run to pick up some fuel. When it was time to go, it was time to go. When you weren’t really gaining anything, you have to be smart on what the situation is, and I feel like we’re getting there. All-in-all, a good day.”
Kyle Larson — fifth: “I thought early I was surprised running 75-80 percent I could just kind of maintain the gap. Then those other guys started coming, and my balance was already shot by then anyway. I didn’t think I had a chance to push even if I wanted. I ran that whole last run not hitting wide open more than 2-3 seconds. Just glad to make it. It was not a pretty day, We weren’t very fast, but we were able to get a top five. . Days like today aren’t the most fun, but they feel really good, too. Proud of the whole team. Wish we could have got a win for Chevrolet, but we’ll try again next year. Days like last week and this week were very similar. We weren’t fast on speed but made the most out of it last week and today. For a point of that last run, I thought we might have a shot to win. So it just says a lot about the team and how really strong we’ve stayed through some bits of adversity. Hopefully we can just run better from now and run in the top five all day.”
Ross Chastain — sixth: “We saved fuel the whole second-half of the run, so we were fine there at the end and I was able to start pushing hard again. I couldn’t really make much more lap time. You’re off the gas for 20 laps and you think – oh, I’m giving up all this lap time, and you go and get a tenth back on a big track like this. I think we finished about where we should have. When (Denny Hamlin) passed me on that last run, I was like, I don’t have that, so hats off to those guys. They’ve been impressive. We just haven’t been quite that good to drive up and pass those guys, but it was a solid sixth-place finish for the No. 1 Chevrolet team.”
Zane Smith — seventh: “There’s a lot of positive from the speed and how my car drove today, especially when we made it better. We had positive restarts and just a lot of positives. I’m on two tires there trying to hold off guys that are on four. If I’m on four against four in the Cup Series that’s already hard enough, so I was trying my best at defending but ultimately we got beat there some. All in all, I’m proud to end up in the top 10 there with Long John Silver’s on board and everyone at FRM. I wish we could have gotten Ford a W here in their home state, but we’ll try again next year.”
Brad Keselowski — 10th: “We had a really good car. I felt like we had a top two or three car and just didn’t get to see it through. I’m really disappointed. We kind of crushed ourselves on pit road with the speeding penalty and then having to go around the 45 and the 71. Every time we pitted we would lose a lot of spots. It wasn’t the pit crew’s fault, we just needed a better pit stall. I’m not really sure on the speeding penalty. I felt I was way slow, so getting called fast didn’t really add up, but we had the speed to do a lot more than we did today and I’m disappointed to not get that. Still, we’re reasonably happy with a top 10.”
Daniel Suarez — 14th: “It was an OK day for the No. 99 Chevrolet team. We had speed on the long run, but on the short runs, we were getting destroyed. We were not super-fast on the straights… we struggled a lot on the straights, more than I was expecting. Overall, we rescued an OK day, but we need more.”
AJ Allmendinger — 17th: “Just a hard fought day for our No. 16 group. I needed to be a little bit better, definitely made some mistakes for our race team and tried to get them back on the final restart. I felt like we got pretty close to where we probably should have been running, just more disappointed in myself today. I need to be a little bit better, but we fought hard and got everything out of it at the end there. We had to save a little bit of fuel, probably lost two spots in doing that, but at the end of the day, I think about 14th to 17th was about all we had. We did a fairly good job of maximizing our day and we’ll go to Mexico City and try to win the race.”
William Byron — 28th: “It was just trying to manage both. Try to keep the lead and save fuel down the straights and on exits. Ultimately, I guess maybe we had not as good mileage as the guys further back that run, and that’s the way the cautions go. That one you can’t do a lot about. It sucks. It really stings, but we had a really good car. I thought we executed well on the last stop. We just burned more and not able to do much about that. It is what it is.”
Michael McDowell — 30th: “It was a rough day across the board for the No. 71 Chevrolet team. We got some track position about midway through. We made some improvements, but we just didn’t have it for you. And then right there at the end with five laps to go, we ran out of fuel. We went from a top-15 day to a 30th-place finish. That’s no fun, but we’ve got Mexico City next weekend and we’re looking forward to that.”
Austin Cindric — 31st: “It seemed like one of those days that it wasn’t meant to be. We were just a little bit tight for the first run and that kind of took us by surprise, but we made the car a little better and took the strategy to stay out and try to win the stage on old tires. I felt more would stay, but we got passed there on the last lap. All in all, it was a good recovery from the back of the field and then we had a left-rear tire fail on that green flag run. I feel like we probably would have been able to make our way back up close to the top 10. Like I said, there was a lot of good, but a lot of bad, too. There’s plenty to clean up and ready for a new adventure in Mexico.”
Todd Gilliland — 33rd: “There was zero warning at all. Obviously, everyone is kind of pushing it. We’ve seen some left-rears down in practice, but that was a very unfortunate place for mine to go out that’s for sure. It’s just wild that you have a long time to think about hitting the wall, but it’s all good. It honestly wasn’t even a bad hit at all, so I’m proud of my guys for making my car better throughout the day. It’s unfortunate.” To be honest, I don’t know what we were, but we can both imagine that I’m sure we were pushing it. Everyone pushes it. We pushed ours a little bit too far.”
John Hunter Nemechek — 34th: ““Unfortunately, it was a tough day. Not really sure what happened, our car just snapped around on me without warning. I hate this for all the men and women who work very hard to give us fast race cars. We’ll regroup and try to get this monkey off our back.”
Alex Bowman — 36th: “That hurt a lot. That was probably top of the board on hits I’ve taken, and unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of hits. So I hate that for the 48 team. Couldn’[t really do anything except think about, ‘Oh (expletive) this is about to hurt really bad.Hate that. Hate that for our team. It’s been a rough two months. I mean, honesty, we were pretty decent (in practice), I was pretty optimistic to start today. We got super loose and just had a long pit stop trying to make an adjustment to make it better. And never really got a chance to race again after that. Confident that my guys would have gotten the car better, and we could have gotten back up through there, but unfortunately, when you get in the back like that, (expletive) gets pretty crazy, and stuff like that happens.
“We’ve had a lot of speed and a lot of good race cars. Obviously today, we were off from where we needed to be. But just the support that we have from Rick (Hendrick), Jeff (Gordon) and everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, they’ll give us the tools we need to get turned back around. We just needed to get pointed back in the right direction. We’re a much better race team than this.”
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