Austin Dillon — winner: “Man, that feels good. Got to thank the Good Lord above. I really wanted that one. Last year, hurt really bad. Just going through the whole process of it. But this one feels so sweet. Man, I love Richmond. I was thrown down a lot this week. Didn’t feel great. I’m actually racing with a broken rib right now for the last two weeks, and man, that was awesome. God has timing, and his timing is the best timing. I’m so excited to get my wife and kids here to celebrate with us. Man, it’s so sweet. This is so special. Every one of these means so much to me and my grandfather for all that he’s put up and believing in me because there’s been a lot of ups and downs and it could have been easy for him to change the drivers in this No. 3 car, but today it feels really darn good. I probably am the slowest to get going on some of these tracks when it really comes to high grip, but when it comes to these places and taking care of your stuff, I’ll go against the best of them.”
Alex Bowman — second: “Had a really good (car) in the last run. Just broke the tires off too much in lap traffic. Didn’t get any breaks. That made me kind of work the rears harder than I need to. Just need to be a little better through there to get to him. I certainly think we had the better car. Unfortunately didn’t get there. Blake and all the guys did a great job. Just came up a little bit short. … Yeah, certainly really stressful on a lot of fronts. I think with the way that race normally goes, it’s about a must-win at that point because I think you’re most likely going to have a new winner. Yeah, just need to go execute and try to win the race. That’s all we can really do. Looks like we maybe can get to (Tyler Reddick). Looks like he had a bad day. So possible there. Looks like a big gap, so … just got to go to work. That’s all we can do at this point. That’s what we’ve been doing, right? We’ve been doing a lot of good things. Unfortunately just one spot short tonight. The team, clearly we’re not very popular through the garage with that last run (smiling). Still doing a really good job and executing at a high level. Just proud of all the guys to continue to work hard and try to overcome the situation we’re in, and we’ll keep digging.”
Ryan Blaney — third: “I don’t know. I think the track changed a lot. I felt really, really good 10 laps into the last stage. Went from seventh to second. Man, I’m pretty good here. Then kind of got the lead there, then he got it back from me. I was kind of starting to go free. I think we stayed out like three or four laps longer than the 3, trying to have some tire at the end. I was out there cruising around. All of a sudden I had no right rear tire left. I thought I was really trying to be disciplined saving tire. Just lost it.
So have to look back and see kind of where the track went. I think it changed a little bit there. Overall great show. All of Team Penske, me, Austin and Joey running top five. By far the most fun I’ve ever had at this place. I always look at different ways to get around here every time I come back. I don’t think it’s a secret. I struggle really bad here. We work really hard to try to figure out how can we improve, like how can I improve, how can we work on the car to figure out what will mesh. Just a big effort by all the 12 boys, big group effort. So yeah, definitely think we’re creeping up on it. Hopefully we can keep going.”
Chase Elliott — 36th: “I have no idea what happened. Obviously, I saw them crashing, and we were all just stacking up trying to get stopped and then after the wreck was over, I thought we were done wrecking. I was just trying to squeak by, and I guess Kyle (Busch) just didn’t know I was to his left, and we were, so I hate that. We had a good start to the night, and it just slowly unraveled until it finally fell apart. So hopefully we get on a better stretch starting next week. … I think Kyle just didn’t know that we were trying to squeeze by the wreck on the bottom. He was kind of angled back towards the bottom of the racetrack, and I was just coming through. It’s just unfortunate. We had a good start to the race. We kind of got on the wrong end there in the beginning and lost some track position. We got behind (Chase Briscoe) and got a penalty. I thought we were in a pretty good spot right there. We finally got on some better tires and we were making our way through there well, so I was excited to see where that was going to go, but unfortunately, we didn’t get the chance.”
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What drivers said at Richmond Raceway after victory by Austin Dillon – NBC Sports
