Christopher Bell was the highest-finishing Toyota driver with a sixth-place finish in Sunday\u2019s NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Chase Briscoe also earned a top 10 result with a 10th-place finish after leading 19 laps (of 301) around the 1.058-mile New England oval.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bell leads Toyota in the NCS Playoff standings, sitting in fourth place, while Denny Hamlin (fifth), Briscoe (eighth), Tyler Reddick (11th) and Bubba Wallace (12th) round out the Top 12.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Toyota GAZOO Racing Post-Race Recap<\/p>\n
NASCAR Cup Series (NCS)<\/p>\n
New Hampshire Motor Speedway<\/p>\n
Race 30 of 36 \u2013 318.46 miles, 301 laps<\/p>\n
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS\u00a0<\/p>\n
1st, Ryan Blaney*<\/p>\n
2nd, Josh Berry*<\/p>\n
3rd, William Byron*<\/p>\n
4th, Joey Logano*<\/p>\n
5th, Chase Elliott*<\/p>\n
6th, CHRISTOPHER BELL<\/p>\n
10th, CHASE BRISCOE<\/p>\n
12th, DENNY HAMLIN<\/p>\n
21st, TYLER REDDICK<\/p>\n
22nd, RILEY HERBST<\/p>\n
26th, BUBBA WALLACE<\/p>\n
28th, ERIK JONES<\/p>\n
34th, JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK<\/p>\n
35th, TY GIBBS\u00a0<\/p>\n
*non-Toyota driver\u00a0<\/p>\n
TOYOTA QUOTES<\/p>\n
CHRISTOPHER BELL, No. 20 Rheem Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing<\/p>\n
Finishing Position: 6th<\/p>\n
Are you happy with the finish today?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a loaded question. I think from a points standpoint we did well. I know a lot of people are going to look at me and say how can I be frustrated at Gateway and not today. Well, this weekend really was a whole different story. We just didn\u2019t have the pace. We didn\u2019t have the pace to run with the top competitors. We walked out of here with a lot of points, so I think it was a successful day.\u201d<\/p>\n
How optimistic are you going into Kansas and the Roval?<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel good about our performance at the next two, but with that being said I felt good about our performance coming into here and it didn\u2019t turn out. Yeah, Kansas is very similar to what we had at Darlington so hopefully we do good. I think we can. And, then surely the Roval is a road course we\u2019re definitely strong at. Optimistic \u2013 you never know until you get through them. But today was a good day and off to a good start in the Round of 12.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHASE BRISCOE, No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing<\/p>\n
Finishing Position: 10th<\/p>\n
How was your race?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not a great day for us. On the race track, we never really had any issues, but on pit road we kept losing positions. Just hard to do that in the Playoffs and not sacrifice a finish because of it. I thought our car was okay. We definitely didn\u2019t have anything for the Penske cars. I would\u2019ve taken a 10th after yesterday but also felt like we kind of left a lot on the table today just on pit road and whatnot. We\u2019ll move on to Kansas. The positive thing is we\u2019re above the cutline. That was the goal of today and we were able to do that. We\u2019ll go on to Kansas where I feel like our car should be way better and hopefully capitalize on it there.\u201d<\/p>\n
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 Progressive Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing<\/p>\n
Finishing Position: 12th<\/p>\n
How do you feel about what happened with the contact with Ty Gibbs early in the race?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s super unfortunate he got spun there and obviously the contact came from us. Yeah, I don\u2019t have any other comment other than that. Just had some contact into (turn) one. It was obviously a really rough race before that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you feel like there needs to be a conversation with Ty Gibbs?<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I mean, we\u2019ll work through it and all but just \u2014 we\u2019ll see how it goes. But honestly, it\u2019s unfortunate the contact happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Can you walk us through the last restart?<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a bad restart on my part. I just couldn\u2019t get going with the bottom lane. Every time we started on the bottom, just could not get anything going, and so obviously it cost us some positions there from where we probably would\u2019ve finished. But just got to get a little better and certainly we didn\u2019t come here with our best. Gotta get a little faster, gotta get the car handling better and I\u2019ve certainly gotta do a better job.\u201d<\/p>\n
TYLER REDDICK, No. 45 SiriusXM Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing<\/p>\n
Finishing Position: 21st<\/p>\n
What were you battling today?<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t expect that \u2013 that\u2019s for sure. The way the race started I thought we were going to be able to run in the top 10 all day, but between the brake issues we had and \u2013 it just got away quick. The balance went away and then next thing you know we were trying to battle for 20th. Just terrible day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Are you looking forward to the next race at Kansas knowing your history at intermediate tracks?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, there\u2019s just a lot of question marks honestly. Places we have had speed at, we don\u2019t bring speed. That\u2019s been one of them for us. Yeah, we need something special to happen. I\u2019m hoping we find the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
BUBBA WALLACE, No. 23 McDonald\u2019s Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing<\/p>\n
Finishing Position: 26th<\/p>\n
What was your biggest battle today?<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a miss all around really. We couldn\u2019t really seem to get things going. Our best run lasted for five laps, the caution came out and then it was just right back to no good. I hate it. I felt really optimistic and marched forward at the start and it just never really went anywhere. We kind of plateaued lap 5 and that was it. I hate that. It\u2019s just a head scratcher. I told our team we\u2019re way better than that. We know it. As much of a gut punch as this one is, we\u2019ll move on. This is what we\u2019ve got to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK, No. 42 Pye-Barker Fire & Safety Toyota Camry XSE, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB<\/p>\n
Finishing Position: 34th<\/p>\n
What happened to take you out of the race?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I\u2019m good. I hate it for all of my guys after the run I\u2019ve had the last few weeks. Getting into turn 3 just under the 35 (Riley Herbst) there I don\u2019t know if just when I hit the bumps, but it automatically just turned sideways, and I was kind of along for the ride. I hate it. We were making ground on it all day and getting better track position wise and now we\u2019re going home with a wrecked race car. We\u2019ll be back next week in Kansas.\u201d<\/p>\n
TY GIBBS, No. 54 Monster Energy Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing<\/p>\n
Finishing Position: 35th<\/p>\n
After seeing the incident with Denny Hamlin, was someone in the right and someone in the wrong?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s unfortunate but I\u2019m excited to go race next week and I\u2019m looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Denny said on the radio that someone within the organization should talk to you, what do you expect that conversation to look like?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we\u2019ll have a good race next week. I\u2019m looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toyota PR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christopher Bell was the highest-finishing Toyota driver with a sixth-place finish in Sunday\u2019s NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) race…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[23475,17155,64268,2092,425,54590,2094,562,2095,2096,99],"class_list":["post-172735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-chase","tag-miss","tag-monster-energy","tag-motor","tag-nascar","tag-race-car","tag-racing","tag-series","tag-speed","tag-speedway","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}