Christopher Bell — winner: “Well, I’ll tell you what, I was nervous on the choose. I didn’t know if I wanted to be on the bottom or the top, and whenever Brad picked the top they really didn’t give me an option and had to pick the bottom. And all night long, I don’t know, old tires just really, really pushed up in the middle of the corners so I was hoping that those guys on old tires would push up and they did. I was able to get by or get underneath Bowman. It wasn’t pretty there at the end, but we got her done. So most importantly, this week’s obviously been a very tough week, and there’s a lot on our mind and and just this one’s for Charlie. We just know that any given week, it could be us, and it hadn’t been us for a long time. But Bristol, baby, tonight, it does!”
Bell: ‘Any given week, it can be us’
Old tires opened the door for Christopher Bell on the bottom of the track and knows that “any given week, it can be us.” Under the lights at Bristol, it was just that.
Brad Keselowski — second: “Just the story of our season, just a 50/50 shot on the restart and I got the lane that couldn’t launch. Just frustrating. We had a great car, great strategy, put ourselves in position to, if not win, at least have a really, really solid day, and on that last restart and just rolled the dice and didn’t get anything good. Just fun. I just enjoy the challenge. You’ve got to run a smart race and got to have really good cars and thought we did both today.”
Keselowski’s Bristol finish emulates Cup season
Brad Keselowski rolled the dice but came up short of the win at Bristol and discusses the joy of the “challenge” of tire management.
Alex Bowman — eighth: “I don’t think you can really point at something that cost us. Being out of tires at the end isn’t good, right, and honestly, we just played the hand that we could and stayed out. But if I had to pick one thing, our cycle tire restarts were just really poor. I couldn’t go at all. Zero grip. Our restarts on stickers or even when we’d put our qualifying scuffs on and stuff, it was fine, but cycle tires was really bad. Hats off to our whole 48 team. They did a good job throughout the course of the day and trying to be better after a rough last two weeks, and I think we swung it the right direction, and we can continue to do that for the next, what do we have, seven weeks left. We’ve just got to keep digging. Certainly sucks to not transfer, but our back was against the wall coming in here. We knew it was going to be a tough thing to do. Yeah, not a terrible day for us, and we’ll keep digging. Yeah, we’re a plenty capable race team a lot of the time, and just the last two weeks we’ve just not been very good. I thought those tracks would be a little tough for us but not how they were. Even coming here, we were typically a good bit better than we were tonight and yesterday when we come here. We have some work to do on our race cars, but everybody is always working, getting better, and tires change and the field changes. We’ve just got to keep digging to get better. I think this summer we were so fast every week that I’m a little surprised to be down on speed, but the guys work really hard, and we’ll keep digging on it.”
Restarts hurt Bowman’s chances to advance
Alex Bowman recaps his struggles on restarts at Bristol after failing to advance into the Round of 12 but knows his team is capable of putting together solid results in the final seven weeks.
Chase Elliott — 38th: “It was a game of just how quick could you get to the bottom after a few laps to preserve your tire. And I thought I was doing the smart thing. The Penske guys had got position on me, and I was just trying to get back in line and got a huge shot from behind. I don’t know if he had gotten hit, or I just stacked the lane up that much or what. Nonetheless, it happened and it’s done. Looks like we’re in a bit of a pickle here now. Cross our fingers and hope we get lucky. Sucks, I know that.”
Josh Berry — 39th: “Definitely started smoking a few laps before we pitted. We tried to ride it out a couple of laps, and then when we slowed down. It was getting pretty bad there. Man, just so disappointing. That was going to be a lot of fun. That was right in our wheelhouse. We were moving forward. That’s why we were trying to stick it out as long as we could. Because that could have been our opportunity right there for sure. Man, it’s been a tough couple of weeks, but it hasn’t been because of performance. These guys have been doing a great job. Just want to thank Miles and the Wood Brothers and everyone who’s done a good job on the team. Definitely not the way we wanted this first round to go, but I felt like we executed well and ran well. Just haven’t had the finishes. This is going to be a tough one to watch. That was going to be a lot of fun.
“Maybe seven or eight laps before we came down pit road we started getting some smoke in the cockpit, and then the longer I went the darker the smoke got and then, obviously, by the time we got on pit road it was completely black smoke. Something obviously caught on fire, so probably once again a car burned up for no reason. I don’t think the fire made it inside the cockpit. It was just a lot of smoke. It seemed like the fire stayed in the fender well, which is a good thing, but it’s just disappointing again. The car was really good. That was gonna fall right into our wheelhouse, I feel like, to have a really good night. We were able to make it pretty long on that first set and we were gonna be set up in a really good spot. This one is gonna be hard to watch because that looks like it’s gonna be a lot of fun. … We’ve qualified well. We’ve had good cars. We just haven’t had the good finishes. That’s just part of it. I don’t think you could ever script three last-place finishes in the ways that we’ve gotten them over the last few weeks.”
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