Ryan Blaney — winner: “Perseverance. Everybody on the 12 group persevered all day. We had a couple of mistakes that we learned from and got better. I had to come from the back a couple of times. Honestly, (Christopher Bell had) the best car. (Crew chief) Jonathan (Hassler) made a great call to take two (tires). We were able to get the lead and just hold them off. I don’t know how many more laps to hold them off. We were able to do that. Really proud of everybody at Team Penske. So cool we swept the weekend. (Josef) Newgarden winning yesterday, us winning today. Can’t wait to see Roger (Penske). It’s cool to win here again, especially after a day like that.”
Christopher Bell — second: “If we had more green flag laps, I think we could have made a run (at Blaney). But I don’t know. You win some, you lose some. This one stings, but on a postiive side, I’m really proud of our entire team. The pit crew did amazing. (Crew chief) Adam (Stevens) brought an amazing car. Our engineers, our mechanics did really good. It’s something to build on. It was a day we needed. We got a lot of stage points. Finished second. Just bummed whenever they get away like that.”
Kyle Larson — third: “I was not happy to start the race, really not happy all weekend. Just proud of the team. We definitely know how to fight to get a good finish here at Phoenix. We do it every single time. So it’s not a surprise that we weren’t great. This will probably be as bad as we’ve been at Phoenix, but we still come in third like we typically do here. I think that’s three third-place finishes in a row here. Just proud of the team. It took a lot of fight. We definitely have a lot of work to do here but excited to get to Vegas next week and see we’ve got on a mile and a half. Go to work. But happy to put together two solid finishes in a row and continue to build on it.”
Ty Gibbs — fourth: “We were really good today. I don’t know. That’s unfortunate, but we’ll keep rolling. I think I could have done some things better. Just unfortunate. But I’m very happy with my team. All the guys. I’m with the right guys. That makes a difference. We’re running good because of that. It shows. Really happy with my team. Everybody does a great job. Everybody believes in me, and we all believe in each other, so I’m happy with that. Very happy with everything today and how everything went. Congrats to the 12 bunch, they were really fast. I’ll just keep working at getting better and see what I can do better. The show was pretty cool. I had a lot of fun. It kind of sucks I didn’t win, but we had a fun racing out there. It probably looked pretty cool.”
Denny Hamlin — fifth: “Just a fringe top three to four car all day. That’s kind of all we had. Great job; just need to be a little better. There’s not much else you can say. We’ll download, figure out how we can be a little better, but seems like a couple of our teammates were really good that we can learn from, so good top five, and we’ll move on.”
Tyler Reddick — eighth: “We just fought handling a little bit. It seemed our Camry had good speed, we were just kind of back and forth on which direction to go. We kind of hovered around fifth all day, and we took those two tires, it just got a little tight on us at the end. Would have been nice to make it four (wins in a row), but looking at the board over here, (I’ve) scored the fourth-most amount of points on the day, that’s what we need to just keep doing all year to keep the lead we have and hang on to it. Solid day. If we’re not going to win, these are the kinds of days you want to have. Glad to get out of here with some points.”
Michael McDowell — Ninth: “It was a good rally for this No. 71 Chevrolet team. We had that right-front tire go down when we were running eighth or ninth just before the end of Stage Two. That just put us in the back, and once we were in the back, we just really struggled. But Travis Peterson (crew chief) and everyone on this No. 71 team made some big adjustments, which helped us get through traffic. That last restart didn’t go great. The No. 5 (Kyle Larson) kind of got loose and slid up into my lane, and unfortunately, we lost a few spots there. But overall, we rallied back to a top-10. It was a solid day. We’ll keep building momentum. I thought we were going to have a shot at the top-five there for a few laps, but it just kind of slipped away there at the end.”
Shane van Gisbergen — 11th: “Excellent result for the crazy day we had. My Chevy had a lot of speed, but just had those two spins that reset our progress each time. Passed a lot of cars and had a good points day. Headed to Vegas next weekend with a lot of momentum.”
Austin Dillon — 16th: “It’s unbelievable. I can’t believe our luck to start the season. We had a fast Chevrolet. Handling was good all day, and I think our Chevy could have been even better if we could have figured out braking. We were in position an eighth-place finish, and who knows, maybe even better if we would have gotten some cautions and restarts to fall our way, when we ended up with a flat tire with less than 25 laps to go. Regardless, this has been a much improved weekend in Phoenix for us. Everyone should be very proud of the effort we brought.”
Kyle Busch — 17th: “The No. 8 Chevrolet team battled adversity all day. After we didn’t have the qualifying effort we wanted, the guys got to work on the car to make the needed adjustments but a cut tire put us down two laps early. We never quit and were able to race our way back onto the lead lap and into the Top 20. We’ll leave Arizona with a few learning lessons and be ready to contend again next weekend in Las Vegas.”
AJ Allmendinger — 19th: “It was just a hard fight with a disappointing ending. I thought we did everything we could with where we were at. We struggled a little bit on long-run speed, but overall, I thought we executed pretty good. We got some track position, but unfortunately, we didn’t have new tires there at the end. We had scuffs and that ultimately put us in trouble there against the guys we were racing against. We just didn’t have enough speed to overcome a minor deficit like that. But we finished on the lead lap, so it was an OK day for this No. 16 Chevrolet team. We were close to having a really good day here at Phoenix (Raceway), so that’s just what’s disappointing.”
Austin Hill — 21st: “Our team had to grind that one out. Our Chevrolet fired off on the free side, but then it quickly turned tight. It took us a while to get on the other side of it, but we got ourselves inside the top-20 when we cut down a tire under green. No one gave up, and we kept pushing forward to end up with a 21st-place finish. The more I drive these Cup cars, the more I learn of how loose the car needs to be to make speed. I came into the weekend saying that a top-20 would be a good day for the No. 33 team. We came up just short, but can build on today. We’ll try again in a few weeks.”
Ty Dillon — 26th: “I’m very proud of my guys on the No. 10 Chevrolet today. The results don’t show it, but we were much better than the last time we raced here and really thought we might have a top-15 or even a top-10 finish today. We were fast and just battled in traffic, and we had to come back up through the field a few times. We were just at the wrong place at the wrong time there at the end. We are off to a good start this year, and I am looking forward to Las Vegas next weekend.”
Connor Zilisch — 29th: “It was just a tough day overall. We didn’t really have the speed we needed in our No. 88 Chevrolet. We fell behind early, but had strategy to get us back on the lead lap. We just tried really hard all day. This whole team worked really hard to get the car where we needed it, but we were just never really able to get it quite good enough to start getting momentum and make moves towards the front. We’ll go onto Las Vegas (Motor Speedway) and try again there.”
Joey Logano — 31st: “It just seemed like we were kind of three and maybe four-wide there, and one ran out of space, and when you’re that far away from each other, it’s hard to tell who is where until they all kind of merge back together, and I got on the wrong end of it. It just seemed like everyone ran out of space. There were two cars on the outside of me. I thought I had one on the inside and you’re trying to just merge all back together and everyone ran out of space. I got the wrong end of it. It is what it is. It stinks. We had a pretty good car. I hate that I got into Ross. I had a good run there to try to slip him and he kind of anticipated and went down to the bottom and we got into each other. I just ended up spinning him, which I didn’t mean to, so it’s just not the greatest of days.”
Josh Berry — 32nd: “I didn’t see a whole lot. Obviously, I saw the smoke there for a second and could tell that something was happening, and I checked up, someone got into me. Either way, I was wrecking. It was a tough day, a really tough day. We didn’t have the car like we wanted. We had some bright spots there and got some track position and looked alright. Ultimately, we were down a set of tires and, honestly, we were just trying to finish it out and take what we could today. We just got caught up in the issues. You know the old saying, you run with the squirrels, you get what you get.”
Austin Cindric — 34th: “Obviously, it’s a frustrating start with so many fast race cars and to have another one today with our Ford Mustang. The restarts get crazy here and I’m not really sure what happened other than just cars jumping right across the racetrack. I’m not sure I’ve ever jumped head-on into a wall, but that changed today. It’s just a shame. I’m not discouraged. This 2 team has shown me a lot in the first four races, but it’s just a shame we don’t have the results for them. (I saw) a whole lot of cars going right when the cars need to be going left. It’s just a real shame. We got points in both stages and were in desperate need of a race finish without a crash and we did not get that today. It’s a shame because I felt like we did all the right things throughout the afternoon, so that’s racing. I’m not discouraged by any means. It’s a long season. My team has brought me four fast race cars to start the year.”
Noah Gragson — 36th: “We blew a right-front rotor, and then it blew the tire out. I started getting a long pedal a couple of laps prior to that and I made a comment about it after about a half lap saying, ‘Hey, my pedal is starting to get really long.’ So, I started lifting early and then it blew into one, and then blew the tire wheel in half and all the air-pressure left the tire. It was a hard hit, but it is what it is. It definitely sucks having to go early next week in qualifying and try to put this behind us at Vegas, but, at the same time, this is the most amount of points I’ve had coming into Phoenix in my career into Vegas. Two years ago we were in the negatives and climbed back up into the top 24 in points, so we’ll just go on and work hard. It’s just a bummer that we didn’t get to the end today.”
Chase Briscoe — 37th: “I’ve only seen the replay one time, it almost looked like something in my left front. When I had my vibration, I told them that I thought it was in the front end. Just par for the course for how this year started. It was another car that was extremely fast, felt like we were certainly going to be in contention for the win and just another failure for us. Definitely frustrating, we’ll go on to next week and see if we can turn it around with our Toyota team. All the JGR Toyotas seemed to be strong and marching towards the front, how was the racing in these hot and slick conditions? It was a blast, I was having a lot of fun. We were driving them extra power, it’s only 70 horsepower more, but it feels like way more than that. We were sliding all over the place and it made it a lot of fun. I think Darlington is going to be out of control when we go there with this package. It was a lot of fun, wish I was out there until the end and the JGR cars were certainly good.”
