After winning last night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Darlington Raceway, John Hunter Nemechek got behind the wheel of the Sam Hunt Racing No. 26 GR Supra and claimed a fourth-place finish in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race. Brandon Jones (seventh) also claimed a top-10 finish at the treacherous South Carolina track.
Toyota Racing Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Xfinity Series
Darlington Raceway
Race 11 of 33 – 200.1 miles, 147 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Justin Allgaier*
2nd, Noah Gragson*
3rd, Riley Herbst*
4th, JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK
5th, Sam Mayer*
7th, BRANDON JONES
16th, TY GIBBS
30th, RYAN TRUEX
33rd, TIMMY HILL
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK, No. 26 Stillhouse Vodka Toyota GR Supra, Sam Hunt Racing
Finishing Position: 4th
How do you feel about your race today and another top-five finish for Sam Hunt Racing?
“We unloaded yesterday and had a really fast Stillhouse 1111 Toyota GR Supra. This Sam Hunt Racing machine was quick. All the guys gave me a great car here. Had to start back because we didn’t get to qualify and we were able to get into the top-10 I think in the first stage, made some adjustments, got it better. And then I thought we were going to have a shot at the win there until the caution came out and lost a few spots on pit road there. The pit crew did awesome for not running up run every week and maintaining most of the time. So shout out to the Sam Hunt Racing guys. I think that’s three or four or five starts in this car and I think three out of the five are top five finishes so pretty proud of everyone in the organization.”
After two strong races at Darlington, what does this do for your overall momentum?
“I feel like it’s good no matter what series you’re running in. I feel like the XFINITY car can translate over to the truck and truck and translate over to the XFINITY car and I feel like I learned a lot last night in the truck race. Had a really good Toyota Tundra TRD PRO and that carried over into today. Our Toyota GR Supra was really fast. Just needed track position to start off. We battled our way through the field and made the right adjustments I felt like and had a shot there until the caution came out and just lined up wrong. Chose restarts wrong but we’ll learn from it and now we’ll go race I think seven or eight more weeks straight in the truck series trying to pick up some more wins.”
BRANDON JONES, No. 19 Menards/TurtleWax Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 7th
How was your race today overall?
“Yesterday we were pretty snug in practice and then we fired off today really loose so I know we didn’t do much different and the weather was kind of similar so I don’t know where it all kind of switched for us today. But we rebounded I think and we still stayed in the fight pretty well there and continue to at least keep pushing back up through there kind of early on. We’d fall back and then we’d find a little speed there. So all in all, it wasn’t terrible for sure. I think that we can definitely continue to build on this and keep going here and momentum is still kind of strong in my opinion. Even after Dover and everything today, I feel like we’re still kind of in the right direction as far as how fast we’ve been here in the past couple weeks. So looking forward to many more here in the next couple of weeks.”
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