NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

June 28, 2026

Stephen Doran

Press Conference

An Interview with:

(Joined in progress - no audio)

STEPHEN DORAN: It's a cool journey. Getting to work with Rodney and Kevin over the years has taught me a ton. I lean on a lot of that stuff when I'm in these situations, capable of winning races.

We were in those situations a lot in the history of the 4 car it's cool to be able to lean on that experience when these times come to win these races.

Q. (Off microphone).

STEPHEN DORAN: We needed these two weeks to be good. We got one of them to be good. Like I told a few people earlier, what we need is better qualifying to be able to start better in some of these races. We proved that in Nashville and Charlotte. If we can qualify up there, we can stay up there all day. That's just the last piece of the puzzle with the ovals is to qualify good. Just maintain that all day.

So that's the focus going forward, is to just work on practice qualifying, unloading a little bit closer on the car side and just getting the initial speed in practice to carry over to qualifying, to be able to start up front and stay there all night.

Q. Just one more time, Stephen, due to the audio issues, can you just talk begin about the strategy and how you guys were able to be successful today?

STEPHEN DORAN: The strategy was pretty simple today. We didn't have the speed in the car to drive our way through the field. So we just chose to flip the stages to maintain track position. I felt like a few of those cars, especially the Gibbs cars, were better than us today.

I guess luckily for us, they chose to flip -- or to take the stage points. We chose to flip the stages. Gave us a buffer to those guys, and we were able to maintain it the rest of the day.

Q. (Off microphone.)

STEPHEN DORAN: I wish it was more, but that's better than we started the day, so I'll take it. I feel like we have the speed at the intermediates to maintain that. We've just got to start better, be able to get stage points, like we did the few races we were able to start up front. We're just pushing like hell to get there, get our qualifying better so we can get stage points, and race up there all night.

Q. (Off microphone.)

STEPHEN DORAN: It took me a day. For him I feel like it took more than a few days. To me he felt grumpy all weekend. So, yeah, I could tell it stung, hurt him as much as it did all of us, but he was grumpy all weekend. Grumpy with the car all day today even.

I have to say it wasn't a good car we gave him today. Luckily we had him driving it to get here.

Q. (Off microphone.)

STEPHEN DORAN: Yeah, thank God we have him, or we wouldn't be here right now. We did a lot of work overnight trying to get it better. I am still really not sure what it was that he didn't like about it, but he, honestly, hated the car all weekend.

I would say it was slightly better today, but still not great. Not as good as it was last year.

THE MODERATOR: Thanks for joining us, and congratulations.