home jobs contact us
Our Clients:
Browse by Sport
Find us on ASAP sports on Facebook ASAP sports on Twitter
ASAP Sports RSS Subscribe to RSS
Click to go to
Asaptext.com
ASAPtext.com
ASAP Sports e-Brochure View our
e-Brochure

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: AUTO CLUB 400


March 20, 2016


Chase Elliott

Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.


Fontana, California

THE MODERATOR: We'll begin our post race media availability. We're joined now by Chase Elliott, our sixth‑place finisher.
Chase, pretty exciting closing laps. Tell us a little bit about that.
CHASE ELLIOTT: It was just a hilarious restart. Always gets wild here. I felt like it was a good race to watch at least. I felt like there was a lot of opportunity to move around different lines and be able to work traffic.
We were really proud of our group. Man, they worked hard all weekend, made a lot of gains on our car from when we unloaded on Friday. Made even more gains during throughout race. We were pretty happy with it towards the end and just need to do a better job maximizing those restarts.
Jimmie did a great job of taking advantage of that. Good to see at least a teammate in Victory Lane and we'll try to get a little better for Martinsville.
THE MODERATOR: We'll start with questions.

Q. You had a couple hiccups at the beginning of the season, but now it seems like you're figuring out the lower downforce package. Do you think you're finally figuring it out?
CHASE ELLIOTT: No, I don't think you ever have it figured out. They're always something to be learned. I am by no means where I need to be. As a driver, I know I got a lot of work to do.
We finished sixth today. It's an improvement. We're proud of that, but we're not satisfied. We're excited to get to Martinsville and try to get a little better.
THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by our fifth‑place finisher, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Tell us about your run today.
RICKY STENHOUSE JR.: We had a really good car on the long run. That was kind of where we excelled. We were struggling on the short run a little bit. I thought we had a 10th‑place car, then that last caution came out. Boys made a great pit call on pit road. Made some good adjustments, had a good pit stop.
We restarted on the outside lane, which was really good for us. Restarting on the bottom wasn't very good for us all day. I was able to run the line that I preferred. I think we were three‑, four‑wide going into turn three on that last lap. That was a lot of fun.
This racetrack has always been a lot of fun to race at. This package has made it even more fun for us drivers. It was a good day for us.
THE MODERATOR: We'll start with questions for Ricky.

Q. Ricky, you have run pretty well this season, pretty solid. How confident are you in the program?
RICKY STENHOUSE JR.: I feel really confident in my guys and the cars that we're building. We still got a long ways to go as a race team, as the 17 team.
But we're limiting our mistakes, which we had last year. That's helping us improve. They're bringing faster racecars.
Our short track program needs to get a little bit better, after last week at Phoenix. We had a decent car, but didn't have it just right. Ended up blowing that tire.
I thought we were going to have a decent run there. We put a lot of effort on our mile‑and‑a‑half and speedway tracks like California and Atlanta and Vegas. I can tell a big improvement. Really happy about that.
Still got to go to work on our short track program. But very happy at the progress we made over the off‑season. Hopefully we can continue the progress the rest of the year so that we can restart these last final restarts maybe in the top five and have a shot at the win.
THE MODERATOR: Ricky, thank you.
RICKY STENHOUSE JR.: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports




About ASAP SportsFastScripts ArchiveRecent InterviewsCaptioningUpcoming EventsContact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297