Shane van Gisbergen — winner: “Unbelievable to win with the 97. Yeah, the Chevy was great. Thank you to Trackhouse. We weren’t very good in practice, and then qualifying was amazing. Good tweaks. And then today, so what a race car. And then Stephen (Doran) made great calls. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. And then to run them down like that, very, very special to do two in a row. But it’s not easy. Everyone’s really good. There was a lot of pressure there. And I think (Michael) McDowell was good. Connor (Zilisch) was good. Tyler Reddick. There were some really good guys and a lot of pressure. So just stoked for these guys, you know, to execute every facet of our game. And speechless. This is so cool.”
Michael McDowell — second: “It’s great to get this Chevrolet in the top five. There was moments where I thought, ‘Ahh, maybe we can hang with SVG,’ and it felt like he was just pacing himself off me. He’d take back off. But in that second stage there, we got a little bit off strategy, and then we recovered well, which (crew chief) Travis (Peterson) did a great job of getting the track position when we needed it. Just not quite enough to run him down. Like I said, it’s just tough, man. Second is awesome. It’s great to get momentum back on our side. We needed it after a rough few weeks, but we wanted to get to victory lane. But proud of Spire, proud of my guys. They worked really hard. … We restarted there 27th. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out. But we made pretty quick work to get near the top ten, and then it cycled around again, and then we got a little bit of track position. I don’t know even if we restarted right behind SVG if we had the pace for him. That last stop, we came out right with him, and he still had a bit of pace on us. So we got a little work to do, but it’s a good building block. Our road course program’s really, you know, come around. Top five at COTA, top five at Mexico. So I feel like we’re building on it. We just need a little bit more.”
Ty Gibbs — third: “Yeah, honestly, just a little frustrating because I wish we could keep racing. Unfortunately, just had to save some fuel there. But, yeah, good to come home with a third-place finish. Obviously, wish it was another win. But, had a lot of fun today. Always fun to come to Watkins Glen. So I want to say thank you to my team. So it was a ton of fun today. We’ll just keep working hard, keep going for it, and had a lot of fun. So a lot of positives from today. And thank you, Toyota. … Obviously a lot of things have changed since the last race here, and I think we’ve made some good changes, and I’ll just keep going forward and keep working hard. It was a very fun day, very blessed and fortunate to be in this position in this car, and we’ll keep working hard, we’ll keep going forward, and we’re excited to keep hammering down.”
Chase Briscoe — fourth: “Yeah, just (crew chief) James (Small) did a really good job of putting ourselves in position to kind of just maximize our day with how the start of the day went. So, yeah, it’s tough whenever you’re trying to save and then you’re trying to run hard enough so all those guys that pitted don’t catch you. But I can see the leaders, so you want to go. So, yeah, it was tough there trying to manage all that. Plus, your tires are just all over the place. So, yeah, I felt like we had just a solid day for our Toyota. So hopefully we can build on this. And, yeah, just need a little bit more. We just weren’t great kind of all day long. Just lacked a little bit. So, yeah, I need to go back to the drawing board and see if we can figure something out. But, yeah, overall, just a great day for us.”
Tyler Reddick — fifth: “It was mostly a really good day. Yeah, unfortunately for us, after that final caution there, we just fired back off, and we’d been able to kind of match with Shane. That one in particular, just something was not right. Doesn’t seem like we had a problem with the tires or whatever, but just didn’t fire off good, and we started bleeding really, really bad and just fell behind the cars on new tires, and we’re kind of in a bad spot there, just losing a lot of track position. So we decided to pit, and it put us in a spot where we have to make the tires last a long time, but we were able to grab some fresh air, and when cars did come back out that ran longer, we were way ahead of them and just got fortunate getting through slower cars quick. And catching some of the guys at the end that were running out of fuel. So for as bad as we were free-falling there in Stage 3, for this Camry to come home fifth, got to be pretty happy with it.”
Austin Dillon — sixth: “Man, God is so good. We work really hard on these road races. I put a lot of effort into them to get better. And we don’t qualify great. But (crew cheif) Richard Boswell and the team did a good job just pushing the strategy early to go hard. And we really didn’t worry about tires when we short-pitted. And that got us our track position at the end of the stage. And after that, we were able to maintain. And it was fun saving fuel there behind Briscoe. I probably should have pushed a little harder because I actually made it back all the way around on fuel. So I did a good job on saving fuel, which was cool. But, man, so many of our partners, you know, we’ve been working really hard at RCR. We put a lot of effort into it, and it’s cool that Kyle (Busch) and I both are racing. He scared me into the Bus Stop with, like, two to go. He just gave up on saving fuel, and he ran out at the line. It was kind of fun getting him back by the line. And just a good day for RCR overall.”
AJ Allmendinger — seventh: “That was a crazy race. I thought when we started the race, the No. 16 Chevrolet was pretty good. We just still had some of the same issues that we’ve been fighting. After around 12 to 14 laps, it hits a cliff and gets loose. But we got some stage points. Unfortunately, that put us a little behind in strategy. It was just so tough to pass, so I thought we were going to be in for a long day. (Crew chief) Trent (Owens) made a really good call there; we had a good restart and started moving through the field. I don’t know if that run would have been better if it would have stayed green, but overall, despite being in a hole on strategy, Trent did a great job to get us back in position to at least be on the offensive side. Obviously you always want more, but it was a good day.”
Kyle Busch — eighth: “Strong day for the No. 8 Chevrolet. We were a Top 10 car for the majority of the race, and ended eighth here at Watkins Glen International. We made the adjustments and strategy calls we needed to drive forward and make up track position after qualifying 21st, despite battling a car that trended tight throughout the race. We ran out of fuel at the end of the race, but we’re still going home with our second Top-10 finish of the season. I’m proud of the work the entire Richard Childress Racing team is putting in back in Welcome, N.C., and will look to continue that momentum as the season progresses.”
Austin Cindric — ninth: “In a lot of ways, we maximized our day with points in most stages, and earning a Top-10 is a really good day for us. I would have been happy with that this morning. The strategy definitely got put into a really tight window, and we decided to go for it and get some fuel mileage out of this Ford Mustang and try to hold onto these rear tires. I feel that I may have left one or two spots on the table just trying to make it to the end. Otherwise, I’m proud of the effort and it’s another good points day for the No. 2 car.”
John Hunter Nemechek — 10th: “Really solid day for us. I felt like we had a really good Camry today. I feel like we played the first stage to get stage points. Had a late pit call but couldn’t get to pit road so we just made the most out of it. Ended up in the back and couldn’t really pass. Then we played a really good strategy at the end. Ended up staying out at the end, with like 40 to go, when a lot of guys pitted and they were going to try to make it. We were able to maintain on those tires, not lose that many spots or too much time. We kind of split the stage and ended coming home 10th. Needed one more lap, probably would have gotten five more cars with everyone running out of gas, and us pushing so hard. A lot of work has been done on road courses in the off season for sure – car, myself – and we showed it today. It’s what we needed.”
Ryan Blaney — 11th: “We did a good job getting points in the first stage. I thought we were in a really good spot until the No. 24 spun-out in the Bus Stop. I couldn’t go anywhere and caved the nose in. I was actually surprised how fast the Mustang was after that. Overall, we fought from the back a few times to a decent finish and a good points day.”
Daniel Suarez — 13th: “Our Chevy was decent at times today. We tried to gain track position all race long, and the No. 7 team fought hard to work our way back toward the front and come away with a decent finish. I felt like it was a step in the right direction for our road course package. Our car was definitely better in the race than it was in practice and qualifying. Stage 2 didn’t feel the best, but the rear handling improved some for the final stage.”
Connor Zilisch — 20th: “Yeah, I’m not sure, honestly, what actually cut the tire there at the end. We were running on those tires for a long time. Not surprised to see it happen necessarily. But, yeah, just frustrating. I mean, we had a really good day going. At worst, we were going to get ourselves our first top five and walk out of here with something. But, you know, congrats to Shane, Trackhouse, ECR Engines, everybody who makes this happen. It’s really cool what we’ve built on these road courses and how fast our cars are. So cool to see him win. Had a good day in our Chevrolet. Yeah, didn’t quite end the way we wanted it to. I needed last year’s race length of about 92 laps, and I probably would have been a little better. But, yeah, it is what it is.”