Chase Elliott became Team Chevy’s fourth different winner of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season, taking the manufacturer to its series-leading sixth victory in nine points-paying races.
· The victory marked Elliott’s first NASCAR Cup Series win of the season, and the Team Chevy driver’s 19th all-time victory in 295 starts in NASCAR’s premier series.
· The victory is Chevrolet’s series-leading 18th NASCAR Cup Series victory at Texas Motor Speedway, with Elliott extending the manufacturer’s NCS win streak to four-straight at the 1.5-mile Texas oval.
· Elliott led Chevrolet to a season-high six top-10 finishers in the NASCAR Cup Series’ ninth points-paying race of the season – earned by drivers from four different Chevrolet organizations.
· Elliott’s victory capped off a weekend sweep for Chevrolet at Texas Motor Speedway, with Team Chevy’s Kyle Busch earning the victory in Friday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race and Sam Mayer claiming the victory in Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race.
· Chevrolet’s trio of victories at Texas Motor Speedway marks the manufacturer’s third tripleheader weekend sweep of the 2024 NASCAR season – extending its record as the only manufacturer to accomplish the feat thus far this season.
· With 24 races complete across NASCAR’s three national series this season, Chevrolet has a winning percentage of 66.7% with 16 victories (NASCAR Cup Series – six wins; NASCAR Xfinity Series – four wins; NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series – six wins).
· The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season continues at Talladega Superspeedway with the GEICO 500 on Sunday, April 21, at 3 p.m. ET. Live coverage can be found on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.
TEAM CHEVY POST-RACE QUOTES:
CHASE ELLIOTT, NO. 9 HOOTERS CAMARO ZL1
Finished: 1st
Chase Elliott, the 42-race drought is over. You did everything just right. How does it feel?
“Oh, man, couldn’t feel any better. First off, thanks to everybody that came out today. You guys are unbelievable.
Hooters has been a partner of ours for a number of years now. It’s been a dream of mine to pay respect to the late Alan Kulwicki. Driving this car to a victory and do a Polish victory lap – just really crazy how things came full circle there in that moment. It was pretty emotional for me. He beat dad back in the day. Here we are sharing his sponsor and having an opportunity to win today.
Man, couldn’t be more grateful for this journey and kind of the path that hasn’t always been fun, but certainly have enjoyed working with our guys. We’ve been working really hard and really well together. Like I said, hasn’t always been fun, but we’ve enjoyed the fight together.”
You mentioned you have been fighting together. Today it was a fight on the racetrack. That race looked like it was crazy to drive. How intense was it on the track?
“It was just crazy. This place is so sketchy. I haven’t seen a replay of Denny (Hamlin) and us. I didn’t feel like I did anything super crazy there any more than anybody’s ever done to me. Just had to run forward. I want to look at it. I didn’t feel like I did anything to crash him. I think just the circumstances. But nonetheless, apologies to him, if so.
Couldn’t be more proud of our team. Thanks to our partners at NAPA, Chevrolet. Everybody at Hendrick Motorsports. Had a big week last week. Boss, thank you for sticking with me. Really, really proud of this. Appreciate all the folks back home that have stuck with me and helped us get back on track.”
WILLIAM BYRON, NO. 24 LIBERTY UNIVERSITY CAMARO ZL1
Finished: 2nd
TELL US ABOUT THE CLOSING LAPS OF THAT AND WHAT HAPPENED ON THE BACKSTRETCH WITH YOU AND CHASTAIN.
“I just had a big run. Ross (Chastain) and I race really well, and I didn’t want to wreck him there, but he blocked me late, which is understood. It’s racing at the end, but I was already there and unfortunately, we made enough contact to where it got him squirrelly and it happened. So, I hate that that happened, but it’s the last lap and I had the run so I am going to just take the run. I didn’t expect it, but I don’t want to do that to a fellow Chevy guy, and we always race really well.
Happy for Chase (Elliott) and those guys. They did a great job; executed really well and had a good car. Our No. 24 Liberty University Chevy, we struggled all day and had to fight tooth and nail all day just to keep our track position. We just had a few restarts go our way at the end.”
DANIEL SUAREZ, NO. 99 KUBOTA CAMARO ZL1
Finished: 5th
LOT OF OVERTIME RESTARTS AND YOU HAD TO FIGHT YOUR WAY TO GET UP THERE. WHAT WAS THIS RACE LIKE FOR YOU?
“It was tricky. I thought we were going to be pretty strong, and we were pretty good in the first run. Then in the first green-flag cycle, I don’t know what happened to the car because we were super loose. And then after that, we started making adjustments and we got the car better. We started making progress and we got a penalty, and we went to the back again. We started making progress and we had another bad pit stop. It was just not a very clean day at all. It was a good result at the end of the day because the strategy worked out good, and we got a couple of good restarts. But we have some work to do. We have to continue to in order to move forward.”
AUSTIN DILLON, NO. 3 BASS PRO SHOPS CAMARO ZL1
Finished: 8th
“Just happy for the No. 3 Bass Pro Shops Chevy team. That was a big finish for us, and I am proud of the fight that our guys showed. To come home with eighth is big because we had struggled with the handling of the car. We made some good calls to get us some track position, and we had some good restarts at the end to get us a good finish. Man, after this year, this feels like a win and hopefully we can build off of this.”
DANIEL HEMRIC, NO. 31 SOUTH POINT HOTEL AND CASINO CAMARO ZL1
Finished: 17th
“Thanks to Michael Gaughan, everyone at South Point, and all of our supporters at Kaulig Racing for sticking with us. It’s not been thrilling or exciting the last few weeks, but at the end of the day we’ve managed a couple times this year to finish better than we raced. That’s what we did here today. I’m proud of Trent [Owens] for making the call to take two tires there and getting some track position. I need to do a better job on restarts; we had a couple go our way there at the end, especially that last one. I’m proud of the fight from this No. 31 team today.”
ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 48 ALLY CAMARO ZL1
Sidelined by damage sustained in an accident in Stage Two
Finished: 37th
Could you tell what happened?
“Really what started it was what happened on pit road and getting buried back there. We should have been up in the top-10. But yeah, we were just racing those guys really hard. I was in a really bad spot to have a guy crash and have to climb into the brake pedal. The No. 22 (Joey Logano) saw it before I did, just because of how we were all stacked up. I had to climb into the brake pedal a little bit harder than I wanted to, and it just spun out as soon as I did.
Definitely a bummer. We had a really fast No. 48 Ally Camaro there in the beginning of the first stage. We were going through the field pretty well. We just had that deal on pit road that put us in the back, and then that happened.”
Are you feeling OK?
“Yeah, it was pretty minor, damage-wise. Just how we got hit, there was no good way to fix it.”
AUSTIN HILL, NO. 33 UNITED RENTALS CAMARO ZL1
Sidelined by a mechanical issue in Stage Two.
Finished: 38th
“Really hate our race ended early today at Texas Motor Speedway. Our United Rentals Chevrolet was pretty solid and track position and clean air were so important. The strategy that Keith (Rodden, crew chief) called should have worked out in our favor with the amount of cautions that flew once we went to the garage. The No. 33 team tried to fix the mechanical issue, but unfortunately, there was something wrong in the steering. The most important thing was not to wreck the car before our next race together. Driving the Cup car is so different compared to the Xfinity car though, so I was learning on the fly. I would have loved to finish the race and see where we could have ended up. Overall, just proud of this Richard Childress Racing crew and we will come back again soon. Appreciate United Rentals and RCR for the opportunity to run this race.”
Inside Track Communications
