Ryan Blaney \u2014 winner: \u201cIt\u2019s just cool to end it on a good note. It\u2019s just cool and obviously we had a fast car all day. Those other guys were just kind of faster getting going and I could never retain the lead. Those guys were just really good and it took my car a while to come in, but it was a really good call for two there and keeping track position. I got a decent restart and I was able to kind of roll the bottom in three and four and eek the 6 out at the line. I\u2019m just really proud of the whole group and cool to end it in Victory Lane. It\u2019s a shame we weren\u2019t in the Championship 4. Congrats to Kyle and that whole team. I\u2019m happy for this team that we could end it the best way we could. You just go try to win the race. I didn\u2019t really have any of them in front of me. There wasn\u2019t really two of them side-by-side. I tried to race those guys really good all day and gave them respect and tried to let them race it out at time, and at times I could go if it got gapped, but you\u2019re just aware of everybody that\u2019s around you. You don\u2019t want to be the storyline to mess up a guy\u2019s championship, so it was good that we were able to just run our race and run it clean to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brad Keselowski \u2014 second: \u201cYeah, everybody was out of tires, so I guess a few of those guys must have had some tires left. We didn\u2019t, so it was kind of a no-brainer for us. It\u2019s kind of the story of our season. We\u2019re just needing a little bit of speed, trying to put ourselves in position. We were in position as well as we could, I just wasn\u2019t quite fast enough. Another second place. I felt like we were in a good position, but the 5 and the 12 were just stupid fast. That\u2019s what we had. Yeah, we put ourselves in position like you said and just didn\u2019t quite have enough to finish it off, but it was a great day for us, a great day for RFK to be in position. We just want to be a little bit faster to close it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyle Larson \u2014 third: \u201cWe did the best job we could. Honestly, I can\u2019t believe it. Like, we didn\u2019t lead a lap today. Somehow won the championship. I mean, really, I\u2019m just speechless. I can\u2019t believe it. We had an average car at best. We had the right front go down, lost a lap. Got saved by the caution. Did the wave-around. Was really bad that run. We took two tires. I was like, Oh, God, here we go. We\u2019re going to go to the back now. It had a lot more grip than I anticipated. We got lucky with the final caution. I was really hoping we were going to take two (tires) again. I felt like I learned a lot on that restart, bombing one and two really hard. Thought I could do the same thing if we got another one. Just unbelievable. What a year by this Hendrick Motorsports. Cliff Daniels, everybody, his leadership, his complete leadership just showed that whole race. Keeping us all motivated. Always having a plan. All of that. That\u2019s just the story of our season.
Again, just unbelievable. I cannot believe it. This is insane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joey Logano \u2014 fourth: “\u201cYeah, we were close. We needed one more lap, to be honest with you. I was underneath them all at the line and had momentum on the short cut. I think I would have cleared them all into one if we had one more, but ifs and buts don\u2019t really matter. Overall, we had a shot at it, but didn\u2019t position ourselves far enough forward for the last green-white-checkered there. We just had a little hiccup on pit road leaving. It was close. You see the leaders right there in front of you and you think you\u2019ve got a shot at it, but just couldn\u2019t quite pull it off. It\u2019s a good way to finish the season \u2013 solid. Dang it. I saw the win. I thought it was fine. If you\u2019re aggressive, you\u2019re gonna pay the price when it comes to air pressure. No one should be blaming Goodyear or anything like that. It\u2019s not on them, it\u2019s on the teams and the settings that they put in their cars. The more aggressive you are, the faster it goes and the more likely it\u2019s gonna blow out. All of us are just trying to figure out where that edge is. When they\u2019re four-wide across the line in front of you what more could people want? There were four heavyweight dogs of our sport that are racing for the win. What else could you want? I don\u2019t get it. I\u2019m sure they\u2019re not complaining about it now, the format, as they sit there and celebrate. Kyle deserves it. He\u2019s a fantastic racer. He does it a lot different than me, so it\u2019s interesting to see how they do over there. They obviously have a great team. Hendrick Motorsports is stout, and Larson is a great driver. Cliff is a great crew chief, and they show up when it matters. They do that really well. They were down and out today and figured out a way to win the championship. Kudos to them. Good job to them. That\u2019s that. We move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Denny Hamlin \u2014 sixth: \u201cYeah, nothing I can do different. Prepared as good as I could coming into the weekend. My team gave me a fantastic car. Just didn\u2019t work out. I was just praying that no caution. Had one there. What can you do? Just not meant to be. I thought still okay. We took four tires. I thought that definitely was the right call. Just so many cars took two there. Obviously put us back. Team did a fantastic job. They prepared a championship car. Just didn\u2019t happen. I\u2019ll try. I got a couple more shots at it. Man, if you can\u2019t win that one, I don\u2019t know which one you can win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chase Briscoe \u2014 18th: \u201cCertainly eventful. We never gave up. That\u2019s been the story of my whole career, never giving up. You never know what can change at any point.
Felt like we were good enough. We came from the front to the back two or three different times. Had a really good Toyota. Wish we could have been on an even playing field at some point. Was about to pass William, blew another tire. Just part of it. Obviously thankful for the opportunity. So excited to be at Joe Gibbs Racing, be able to compete for wins and compete for championships. Hate that one of us didn\u2019t get it. I thought we were both certainly capable. This wasn\u2019t our day. Go into next year and see if we can do a little bit better. (The season) was big. Just in the sense of you always think you can do it. You never really know if you can. This year to prove to myself and certainly a lot of other people, too, that I feel like I belong here, right? So yeah, looking forward to obviously building on that. Really this year I felt like we gave the field half a season head start because we were learning so much throughout the process. We\u2019ll start on an even playing field next year, see if we can be better. Certainly, we think we can get back here. James and I were talking, we don\u2019t even feel like we\u2019re at our full potential yet. I definitely feel confident we can get back.\u201d<\/p>\n
William Byron \u2014 33rd: \u201cI don\u2019t know all the details. Yeah, I\u2019m just super bummed that it was a caution obviously. I hate that. Hate it for Denny. I hate it for the 11 team.
I\u2019m happy for Kyle, for Mr. Hendrick, they deserve it. Yeah, it stinks, right? I don\u2019t know, three laps to go, I\u2019m thinking, Let me get to the end. I felt something funny off of two, thought it might be a flat. I thought at the time if it\u2019s left rear, you can kind of get back. It just went straight into three. Laid down on the right rear, went straight.
I hate that. Yeah, just felt like a passenger at that point. Proud of the team. We had a good day going, had a shot to win it there. Just didn\u2019t quite have enough.
Yeah, just regroup, go to next year, I guess. Yeah, we brought our best towards the end of the Playoffs, for sure. The win last week was great. Today was really good, too. I thought we were kind of right there, but not quite enough. It\u2019s been an awesome year. Wish we could have finished it off better. We\u2019ll get going for next year, take some much-needed time off. I mean, Denny was on his way to it. I hate that. There\u2019s a lot of respect there. I obviously do not want to cause a caution. If I had known what tire it was, known that a tire was going down before I got to the corner, I would have done something different. Yeah, you just feel like a passenger. It sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
WILL BE UPDATED<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Blaney \u2014 winner: \u201cIt\u2019s just cool to end it on a good note. It\u2019s just cool and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-257754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}