The Four drivers eliminated from Chase..ments: #5-Kasey Kahne: DESCRIBE WHAT YOU ARE FEELING AFTER JUST MISSING MOVING ON TO THE NEXT ROUND OF THE CHASE BY THREE POINTS: You just try and get the best finish you can. Basically the restart before, they all checked up in front of me so I went high to get momentum and that didnt work. I dont know why that didnt work, but it didnt. Anyways, Im in 20th and got back to 11th. It was tough if you werent in the top few spots. Once we were up there early on we could race. We had a great Farmers Insurance Chevy - led laps and ran in the top-three and back to the lead. Once I was 10th or eighth, it was just really difficult to get back to that point. I think we got back to fifth or sixth, but that was about it.(Chevy Racing) #18-Kyle Busch: Buschs crew chief Dave Rogers talked to the media: How hard did the team work to try to advance to the next round following the accident? My hats off to all these guys -- everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing and everyone at TRD (Toyota Racing Development). Its a shame, everyone has been working really hard. I felt like we got off to a slow start early in the season and we were advancing through the playoffs pretty well with hard work and good decisions and good teamwork. The team was performing really well and working extremely hard. I thought we were in a decent spot coming into the race and rode around in the back. Kyle (Busch) got checked up for the wreck and had everything saved up, but he got run over from behind. There is no safe place in here. Everyone, every time we come to a speedway everyone will strategize -- were going to ride in the back, were going to ride in the front, were going to do this. The truth is that if youre out there on the race track at Talladega or Daytona, you have a pretty good chance that youre going to get in a wreck and today was our day. How did Kyle Busch react? I cant praise him (Kyle Busch) enough. Hes really stepped up to be a great leader of this race team in the Chase. Weve had a couple things go against us -- getting the nose knocked off at Loudon, today and Kyles done a really good job of biting his lip and just backing the race team to let us do our job. Kyle, I cant say enough good about him. Im really proud of him. Its been a lot of fun working with him and were not done yet. We cant win the championship, but we can still advance in points and work our way up to fifth. Were going to go to Martinsville working hard and were going to try to win all these races.(Toyota Racing PR) #48-Jimmie Johnson: TALK ABOUT YOUR EMOTIONS: It feels relieving to go down swinging. The last two weeks were really poor. At least we went down swinging. Ill take some pride in that. YOULL GO INTO THE FINALE WITHOUT HAVING A CHANCE OF WINNING THE CHAMPIONSHIP. The last I can think of is with Carl (Edwards) and Tony (Stewart). I vividly remembered the lunch presser that took place with the champions and how much that ate at me to watch it on TV and not be a part of it. I get the pleasure of going through that again. Today I went down swinging, and I take pride in that. Am I disappointed in our Chase? Absolutely. In the last two weeks, people have tuned on the radio and there have been plenty of articles have been written this week. Frustration was high between Chad (Knaus, crew chief) and I and the fact that we havent been able to produce like we wanted to. Today we went down swinging. We had a chance and came up short. We have to make the best of 15. We have a chance to finish fifth in points, which would mean the world to me. The worst Ive finished is sixth in the points, so its not time to put our feet up. We need to finish strong and try to be in the top-five. HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE THIS RACE TODAY? Two restarts from the end, I was trying to make something happen on the restart. I was in a weird position there behind the No. 2 (Brad Keselowski), and if I pushed him to the win, he moves on and I dont. So I tried going to his outside. I looked up and I had no friends in the mirror. If I had known we were going to have a second green-white-checker, I would have stayed in line. That would have shuffled the order around and I wouldnt have been behind him, and maybe we would have had another shot at it. We had a fast, fast Lowes Chevrolet today. Disappointed we didnt advance, but truthfully the way the last two races went, today was an opportunity for us, and we were kind of playing with house money and just didnt get it done. CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF NOT GOING TO THE NEXT ROUND? Truthfully, I showed up this weekend thinking Ive been playing with house money and Ive had a very unique opportunity to advance. In any Chase, after two bad races like we had the last two weeks, you wouldnt have a shot at the championship. So, the frustration was kind of peaking over the last two weeks. This weeks been chill. We qualified second and ran up front all day. And its so hard to win one of these races. You cant come in here and say youre doing to dominate Talladega and win the race. We dominated it. We just didnt lead the lap that counted.(Chevy Racing PR) #88-Dale Earnhardt, Jr: TELL US ABOUT YOUR AFTERNOON AND WHAT ULTIMATELY HAPPENED OUT THERE? I still really dont know. I havent had a chance to look at it. Got with the #16 (Greg Biffle) a little bit. I dont know if I came down on him or what it. I thought I was holding my line, but we were all kind of tight back there. INCREDIBLE SEASON, BUT NOW HEARTBREAK, DESCRIBE YOUR THOUGHTS NOW: The race is over, its time to go home. ON THE RACE IN GENERAL We worked real hard all day long trying to run up front. I knew we needed to be up front all day long. We got shuffled to the back. I made a move trying to get up front and it didnt work out. So, we lost a lot of track position and never got it back. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON NOT MOVING ON IN THE CHASE? Well we will just go try to win some more races before the year is out. That is all we have left.(Chevy Racing PR)
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 06:30:35 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015