Four of the five rookie of the year candidates had issues in the Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway on Saturday night: #21-Blaney, #24=Elliott, #34-Buscher and #44-Scott were involved in accidents. On lap 89, #21-Ryan Blaney got stuck in the middle between #24-Elliott on the top and #16-Biffle who was below the #21. Blaney and Elliott made contact, sending both backing into the wall. Then, on Lap 93, #44-Scott got loose, then made contact with #42-Larson, sending the #44 sliding. #34-Buescher had no place to go and hit the #44 Ford sending it into the inside wall. #47-Allmendinger and #95-Dillon were also involved. Comments/Quotes from each:
#24-Chase Elliott:
Q) YOUR CREW IS MAKING REPAIRS, BUT TAKE ME THROUGH WHAT HAPPENED. DID YOU REALIZE YOU WERE GOING THREE-WIDE?
Elliott: ‘Yeah, kind of at the last second I heard them say three, and I really didn’t know how that was going to work. And there’s really not enough room. I felt like I was I was about at the top of the gray; or the bottom of the gray; as about at the top as I could be without getting up in the mess. I tried to give as much room as I could do as possible. That’s racing, I guess. We’ll just try to go get ’em next week. The good news is we had a fast NAPA Chevy; the bad news is that we’ve had three bad weeks in a row. So, for us; we’ve just got to go back and get the job done, bottom line. So, we’ll try again next week.’
Q) WE JUST SAW ANOTHER BIG WRECK THAT TOOK OUT A LOT OF CARS. HOW IMPORTANT IS IT FOR YOU TO TRY AND MAKE THE REPAIRS AND GET BACK OUT?
Elliott: ‘Well, it’s definitely important. It’s not as important as winning. That’s the most important thing, for us, at this point. That’s our goal. Just because we had a bad night tonight doesn’t mean our goal has changed. So, we’ll try to get ’em next week.’
Q) WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON HOW THAT ALL TRANSPIRED?
Elliott: ‘Just being top of (Turn) 3 and there is really not enough room to be three-wide, so I heard at the last second we were three-wide and I had a feeling that we were just because we got bottled up there off of (Turn) 2. I tried to give as much room as I possibly could to stay at the top of the black and out of the grey. I didn’t know how much further out I could get without wrecking myself without any help. I guess Ryan (Blaney) just got loose and got us, but that is racing. The good news is we had another fast car, the bad news that is the third bad week in a row. We will try to regroup and go get ’em wherever we go next.’
Q) WHAT HAPPENED?
Elliott: ‘Just got three-wide, had a bad corner there in (Turn) 2 and got us bottled up. Once that happened guys obviously tried to pounce and make things happen. For me, I was kind of the guy on the outside lane. I tried to get out as far as I felt like I could without getting up in the grey. I know every time somebody has got in the grey this weekend it has been bad news. I was trying to stay out of that myself. I guess Ryan (Blaney) got loose in the middle and that is an easy thing to do. It’s slick.’Q) HOW SLICK WAS IT? WAS THE DRIVING TONIGHT AS CRAZY AS EVERYBODY THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE?
Elliott: ‘It’s just such a fine line. There is just not a lot of room for error. The groove is so narrow that if you make a mistake you just kind of have to stop in your tracks. You can’t necessarily slide up and gather yourself back up in a wider spot. You just kind of have to try to keep it wherever you are and obviously the people coming behind you. That is part of it I guess and like I said we will try to come back and have a better week next week.’(Team Chevy)
#21-Ryan Blaney: ‘That restart was pretty hectic from the beginning with the 78 getting loose and it kind of put everybody in a bad spot, and it wound up with us being in the middle of three-wide into three. It’s so hard to get into that corner all night with a car close to behind you and outside of you, and no one lifting either, and it’s just an unfortunate spot we got put in and I hate to see two really good cars tore up. We were both very fast tonight (24 and 21) and it’s just a really unfortunate deal, but we’ll try to get it fixed and get back out there and make some laps.’
#34-Chris Buescher: ‘I was really happy with our Love’s Ford Fusion. Our fire-off speed was excellent and this was the best car we’ve had all year. The guys did a heck of a job. Unfortunately, the call was made to run practice during our qualifying time and we started by points. We’ve had three of these situations at superspeedways already this year and just didn’t put us in a good place for the start and the pit selection wasn’t good because of it, and we ended up in a bad spot because of it. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Q) HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE TRACK TONIGHT?
Buescher: ‘They did a good job with the repave. The track is a lot of fun to drive. Everybody keeps begging for less and less downforce, and we keep seeing more and more incidents because of it. I think it has made better racing at a lot of race tracks, but it’s not easy to get into turn three here side-by-side.’
#44-Brian Scott: ‘The 11 was pretty tight on my door and I had the 42 up my bumper there on that restart and these cars are pretty difficult to drive when you’re in that type of situation. I was expecting it and when it happened I thought I had it saved. I was just trying to gather it back up and lose the spots we were gonna lose, but go on and then some cars barreled in pretty fast from behind and caused a pile up. It started with me. It’s a product of new paves. You just don’t have any room and everybody holds each other really tight, and it’s just difficult. This low downforce package is racing really well, but it doesn’t really matter what downforce package you have when you’ve got two cars really tight on you from behind and on the side you just have no air on your car and there was nothing I could do.’(Ford Performance)
