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MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES: FEDERATED AUTO PARTS 400


September 9, 2017


Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

Joey Logano


Richmond, Virginia

Q. Joey Logano, it wasn't the win you hoped for coming into the night. At times during the race, were you thinking you might be able to win this thing?
JOEY LOGANO: There were times in the race I thought if something happened to the 78, we might could win this thing. All the things that happened, actually it did. We just weren't close enough to the lead to capitalize.
We knew that second wasn't going to be worth anything. Then we finished second. So proud of the effort we gave all weekend. I said before the race, Homestead may have come a little early for us this year, that pressure that you have for racing for a championship started here at Richmond for us.
Our championship season was on the line, and we just came up one spot short, which stinks. It hurts, it stinks. May be the end of our championship run, but it's not the end of our season. We'll get this Shell‑Pennzoil team to try to win 10 races.

Q. We saw all the damage on the left front. How much did that affect the car?
JOEY LOGANO: I mean, it may have. It's hard to say. It is a slower racetrack. But we still get behind each other, start fighting the aero quite a bit.
I'm sure it didn't help it, I know that. It's hard to say how much it hurt it. Yeah, just everyone stacked up on pit road with the ambulance sitting on pit road. I don't know how that happened. I'm not making excuses.
Maybe if we could have hung in better on that long run, we would have been close enough to capitalize on that last final restart. We did capitalize. We went from 10th to 2nd. Just needed a little bit more.
I hope everyone in Florida is doing okay. Obviously haven't seen anything since the race started. Thoughts and prayers with everyone.
Thanks to Shell, again, for putting American Red Cross on the car. That's a very special thing. Would have been cool to see that car in Victory Lane, but we came up one short.

Q. Dale Earnhardt Jr., looked like it might be a Playoff run for a while. Were you praying for a caution pretty hard?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, we needed one. That was the only way we were going to win the race. We weren't going to pass the top three guys. I mean, we had speed. We could run up to fifth and sixth. We weren't going to get around those five guys running in front of us. So we had to pull that strategy. If the caution comes out while we're leading, then we got that track position we need.
I ran around the 42 and a lot of guys tonight. I think we had the speed in the car to keep that track position once we got it. I think if we could have got a restart on the front row late in the race, we would have had a shot at it.
Real proud of the guys. Greg did a good job of preparing us going into this weekend. The guys stepped up, every one of them were more vocal, worked really hard. Had a great car. That's the way we should have run all year.
Apologize to our fans we're even in this situation we're in tonight. We believe in ourselves, and we should have been locked in before we got here. But wasn't a great season performance‑wise, but we got 10 to go. Tonight showed us that we can certainly run well if we work hard.
So we'll see if we can get a few more good runs. Maybe a win, you never know. Never know, you just got to keep going. Talladega is the racetrack that anybody can win at.
We'll keep plugging away and see if we can't have some fun before the end of this season. It was a fun night, though. It was great to run with the leaders, run up front. We haven't done that in a long time.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports




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