Denny Hamlin — winner: “Yeah, it’s so big for everyone at Toyota and Joe Gibbs Racing. The Toyota was just great there at the end. And so happy to get this victory and my dad’s not feeling well at home. So just shoutout to him, the whole family’s here, so fantastic day and it couldn’t be better. … Just step up. I mean, all I can do is just keep being a student of the game, keep trying to get better, and every week is a chance to get a little better. I just told (Bill Murray) him to talk to the guys behind me and make sure they stay behind me the rest of the race. So we made that happen. Man, it’s just a great victory. Love that Denny Time flag. You all can boo me, but you can either get on the bandwagon, or you can get run over by it.”
Hamlin proud of team for ‘swinging for the fences’
Denny Hamlin joins the postrace show to praise his team for “swinging for the fences” to elevate his car to win, his outlook ahead of Bristol, and what to expect from the Round of 12.
Chase Briscoe — second: “I would say that our strength was our speed. We had a really, really good, just fast for a shop’s Toyota. Our weakness was just the sloppiness, right? Whether it was me behind the wheel or obviously pit road, I don’t know what the left rear issue was. But yeah, great recovery. You know, James did an amazing job of just doing something different to kind of get us up there and would have loved to obviously battle up there and potentially try to beat everybody’s favorite driver for Toyota’s 200th win, but yeah, just was at a tire deficit there. I thought our car for having a tire deficit and everything else, it showed us how good it was. So yeah, just thankful again to Coach and Toyota and everybody at Bass Pro Shops. This thing is a dream to drive. A year ago, you would have told me I would have been disappointed with second. I would have told you, you’re crazy. Just today and how much speed we’ve had kind of week in week out has been a lot of fun.
Yeah, I feel like we can go there and win You know, it’s a great track for me typically in the past and was really strong for us honestly earlier this year. So yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Darlington is the only track that I can think of we’ve actually went as a team for the second time and Bristol will be the second time we get to do that. So hopefully we can back it up.”
Briscoe rebounds at WWT Raceway after pit issues
Chase Briscoe unpacks the strengths and weaknesses from his day at World Wide Technology Raceway and the speed his team has brought to open the Cup Series playoffs.
Chase Elliott — third: “It felt good to just have a solid day for this No. 9 Chevrolet team. I thought we were really good at times; certainly more competitive than we’ve been in a minute. It was a lot of fun to be up in the mix. We just needed a little bit more there at the end, but we were way, way better than we’ve been here lately, so that’s nice.”
Elliott showed ‘good offense’ at WWT Raceway
Chase Elliott was encouraged to be on offense at World Wide Technology Raceway after coming home third and apologizes to Josh Berry for contact early in the race.
Ryan Blaney — fourth: “I just wanted to know what I did to deserve it. He just said he made a mistake, you know, and that’s fine, make mistakes, but at the end the day I still got turned. He came from all the way on the bottom of the racetrack and hit me in the left rear. I know he most likely didn’t mean to do it, but it happened anyway. And so that’s just one I got to remember. And but I was happy we bounced back like after getting turned around and did a good job of kind of timing out where we need to be and having a good enough car to get back to Ford. So probably the effort hours and pens well forward for a good day and a good recovery and go on to Bristol next week. I think just go have a decent race, you know. I think Bristol has been a place where we’ve gotten better as the last like two or three races there. I feel like we’ve gotten a little bit better there. So just try to keep improving that racetrack a little by little and just just go have a solid night.”
Blaney on Larson contact: ‘One I have to remember’
Ryan Blaney recaps his conversation with Kyle Larson after getting turned during the race, but he is proud of the way he rebounded to secure a fourth-place finish in St. Louis.
Joey Logano — fifth: “It was another solid day here in St. Louis. We’ve got a cool top five streak going here, but, you know, proud of the Mustang team. I had a shot at it. I lost control on the restart there to the 11 and then I was able to stay with him and thought we might have a chance of getting them on the cycle there and we just weren’t able to cycle in front of them and then just couldn’t really go in that final restart. Just lost a balance on it. So overall I’m proud of the team. Team did a good job. They executed the first two races really good on pit road. And Paul called a really good race today and put us in position to try to win it. So just got to be a little faster. The strategy gave us a shot to win. We were up there racing against (Hamlin). I thought maybe on that green-flag cycle we could get him, but he short-pitted us a lap, and we just weren’t able to get ahead of him. That would have been the control of the race. We gave up control on the restart and we just couldn’t regain it. Overall, we needed to score points here, and we did that. We got some stage points in the second stage and a top five finish. It is a pretty cool top five string we have going here at Gateway but wish it was a win.”
Logano extends top-five streak in St. Louis
Joey Logano continued his streak of top-five finishes at World Wide Technology Raceway despite losing the balance late in the race and shares what makes him so good at the short, flat tracks.
John Hunter Nemechek — sixth: “Really solid day. Executed strategy very well. I think we knew coming into this race we knew that it would be a strategy, track position type race. I’m really proud of the effort on this No. 42 Toyota team, everyone at Legacy Motor Club. Sixth-place finish, another top-10 to add to the year. We ran inside the top-10 almost all day, got stage points and executed very well, so proud of the effort. Proud of the whole team, excited to continue to build on this momentum from Darlington and Gateway. We should be pretty good next week in the metric standpoint for Bristol, hopefully, group two qualifying. That was an emphasis this week. Looking forward to it.”
Christopher Bell — seventh: “I just think we are underperforming. Clearly, the JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) Camrys are amazing, and I don’t know. Our team cars are really good, and I felt like I had what I needed to race with them, and we finished seventh and they finished one-two. I honestly think the cars are as fast as I’ve had in my Cup career, and we are just not getting results out of it. That is a bummer, but on a lighter note – we had a good points day and were able to increase our buffer to the cutline, which is really good. I think from that standpoint mission accomplished. We had a great Camry, just didn’t get the finish that we probably could’ve and should’ve.”
Bubba Wallace — eighth: “We are plus 50 that is a good sight to see. Solid execution all day with varying strategies from the whole field. My little restart mishap – I just got stuck between gears, and that hurt myself, (Kyle Larson), (William Bryon) on strategy for all of us involved, but we recovered. Looking at big picture, if you would have told me we would have led laps and had the car maybe to win today after practice, I would have said hell no. All-in-all, solid day for our Toyota Camry team. Just came up short.”
William Byron — 11th: “I think we had pace this weekend, we just couldn’t get our balance. We really struggled the first two stages with that. We started losing track position in the second and third stages, and it was really hard to overcome. In the final stage, we had a pretty good balance on the car, all things considered, and we were kind of able to go forward, if not maintain. I think there was a lot to learn there in the final stage with how we managed that.”
Kyle Larson — 12th: “I just told (Blaney) I messed up. I wasn’t meaning obviously to go in there and hit him. The lap before I had got in there and got inside of him, slid up, got to his door, got him tight, got to where I could race him down the frontstretch. I was just trying to do that again. I was a little further back into (Turn 3) than I was the lap before. Just misjudged the point of where I wasn’t going to get next to him and tuck in. I just clipped him. Yeah, all on me. But wasn’t intentional at all. I hope he understands that. Obviously I hurt his day where he could have gained more points. But yeah, all in all, I mean, outside of that, it was a great race for us. We had a great, great car. Just a restart when the 23 wasn’t able to get going, I think it messed our strategy up and whatnot after that. That was unfortunate. Yeah, proud of my team. Just a phenomenal race car. A place we struggle at. A style of track we struggle at. Looking forward to going to New Hampshire with this package, trying to build off of it. Just keep trying to do a good job in the playoffs and hopefully get to Phoenix and have a chance to race for a championship. It would be great to have a day (at Bristol) like the last two times there where we lead a bunch of laps and win the race. You can never expect that. Everybody is always getting better. We have to try to go up there and execute like we did at Saturday, here this weekend, last weekend, qualify up front. You just hope the race will play out better in our favor. We can just build on it.”
Larson: ‘I messed up’ spinning Blaney
Kyle Larson claims he misjudged his corner when he clipped Ryan Blaney in Stage 2 but he is happy with his day after his team brought a “phenomenal” car to World Wide Technology Raceway.
Austin Dillon — 18th: “We didn’t come here with a good race car for some reason. All of our cars were pretty off today, we just missed it. But this No. 3 Dow DayGlo Chevrolet team did a great job executing with what we had. We got stage points and finished the best we possibly could right there. We outran our day by a lot, so hard work and execution gives us a shot at Bristol (Motor Speedway). Just feel like we’ve missed some opportunities and could be in a better position, but we did all we could today.”
Austin Cindric — 19th: “I feel like our Freightliner Ford Mustang was definitely capable of a top ten. I felt like we were capable of getting points in both stages and didn’t do any of the three. A bit of a frustrating day to miss out on some points that we probably should have gotten. We could have put ourselves in a place where Bristol would have been much less of a risk but that’s racing. We are still in a decent spot. No tragedies from the day. We just need to keep improving if we want to keep advancing through the rounds.”
Kyle Busch — 22nd: “The entire No. 8 Chevrolet team battled from the moment we started today at World Wide Technology Raceway. We qualified deeper in the field and had an early spin in Stage 1, but the Richard Childress Racing team never quit. We drove into the Top 10 towards the final laps, but came up short, finishing 22nd. Our focuses are now on Bristol as we look to get a win in 2025.”
Ross Chastain — 24th: ““I thought for most of the day, we were around a 10th-place Chevy. We had a bad restart, and then the caution came out and trapped us a lap down and magnified it. We just need more. We want more. I will go and prepare the same as we would if we won the last two races. We’re doing what we think is best and we’ll put our best foot forward when we get to Bristol.”
Shane van Gisbergen — 25th: “We were too tight in traffic, and then eventually got on the other side of it and I made an error and spun. We just couldn’t get it back. We weren’t amazing. We were probably a 15th-place car, but then detuned it a little bit and ended up where we did. Little frustrating, but it’s kind of where we’re at. 20th and 15th is a huge improvement for us, but obviously in the playoffs, you expect more. There’s that pressure there.”
Alex Bowman — 26th: “It was just really poor execution on all angles today. It was a bummer. I thought our No. 48 Ally Chevrolet was OK once we were kind of towards the front-half. We just struggled in the back. Super frustrating, but all we can do is keep digging. There’s a lot of people working really hard to continue to be better. I thought, race car-wise, we were heading in the right direction once we had some air on it. We just have to go to Bristol (Motor Speedway) and go to work.”
Daniel Suarez — 35th: “There wasn’t much we could do today. We just got hit by another car and put in the wall. We’ve had too many days like this.”
Josh Berry — 36th: “Obviously, it was a chaotic restart back there and checked up a little bit to try to stop Joey (Logano) and (Zane Smith), and (Chase Elliott) got a run and kind of slid in there and got loose and slid up into us. Chase and that team have done a lot for me, and I really doubt that was on purpose. Just wrong place, wrong time for us again. Obviously, it’s unfortunate. We’ll just go to Bristol and try to do the best we can and put ourselves in position to race for a win, and that’s really all we can do at this point.”