“Tonight wasn’t as good as I thought it was going to be. We struggled. We struggled with handling, especially as soon as the night fell and it got dark outside we were not handling at all. It was tight and it was loose and on top of the race track. With two stops to go we came in and raised the back of the car up and we got better in traffic and were able to race. Then all hell broke loose on the restart and things like that. It was tires, no tires, two tires. Everyone was on different strategies, people were a lap down that should have been up front. It was hard to even figure out who you were racing. We should have finished second. I had a huge run on both those guys but that kid, I guess he was willing to wreck himself to hold the position.”
HOW FRUSTRATING IS IT? “It is frustrating. It is always disappointing when you come here and don’t get a win. A top-five was a solid night for us. We did a good job of fighting for that finish because it probably wasn’t exactly where we deserved to run the way we ran all night.”
WITH 30 TO GO YOU STARTED TO MAKE A RUN: “Yeah, you gotta go for it. You know those restarts are gonna be hectic. The 20 got to my outside over there getting into three and stalled me out and I really thought it was over. I got another run down here in one and two and got to the outside. It was hard to pass. Those things punch such a big hole in the air. You get behind in traffic and you just don’t have as much downforce as the car in front of you. You have to swing out wide and go somewhere that he doesn’t have the big wake in front of you. Some could do it better than others. Kevin (Harvick) was extremely fast. We were fast. Earlier in the race, he and I took off and I thought we were going to walk away from these guys. Halfway through I started slipping and sliding around and I knew we would have to make some adjustments and it was tricky to figure out which way to go with those adjustments. We just missed it a little bit.”
YOU A LITTLE FRUSTRATED WITH JONES? “Yeah, that wasn’t very smart. If it had been another scenario where I would have had some room I would have just turned him in front of the whole field and he would be back there wishing he wouldn’t have done that. Oh well.”
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