You led all but 68 laps and for the Miami fans, you finally get a win at one of your best racetracks here at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Kyle, I know this was one you wanted bad. This is sort of reminiscent of last year when you guys were so dominant; maybe the best run you’ve had all year long.
“Yeah, definitely the best run we’ve had all year long. We’ve been capable of it I feel like many weekends, we just haven’t quite put it all together. Cliff (Daniels, crew chief) gave a great speech this morning and got us all ready to go and focused, and I did my best to keep it out of the wall. I got in the wall a few times, but I could still make speed doing that.
Amazing No. 5 Valvoline Chevy. I knew that that last run was going to be short enough where I was going to be in some sort of trouble there, but thankfully AJ (Allmendinger) and Ross (Chastain) were racing hard behind me.
Huge thanks to Valvoline, Hendrickcars.com, everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, too. I think it was a good day for Chase (Elliott) and William (Byron). But yeah, happy for our team, and we get to go race for an owner’s title in Phoenix in a couple weeks.
We’re still technically not out of it. I can’t win the championship, but it means more to me to win it as a team. We’re going to go to Phoenix and try to get another championship.”
I have to ask you about the contact on pit road with Martin Truex Jr. What was your view of what happened?
“Yeah, so I was just going behind him. He had a hard left and was hard on the brakes at the same time, and I ran right in the back of him.
My team said he was late turning into his stall, but I don’t know. If it was my fault, I’m sorry. I don’t think it was.
But it’s hard to see down this pit road. I don’t know if fans and people realize; when you’ve got debris all over your windshield, the sun is shining straight in your face, it’s hard to see your stall. So hate that that happened. He was definitely the one I was going to have to beat. He was really good that last long run, too.
What a fun day. I’ve always wanted to race here during the day at Homestead where we could rip the wall. Finally have a car tough enough for me to be able to run the wall and finish the race. A lot of fun today. Hope you fans enjoyed it, and hope we can do it again in a couple of weeks.”
Inside Track Communications PR
