Christopher Bell — winner: “It’s been too damn long. Oh my gosh, man. I’m just so, so proud of all these guys. All this No. 20 car. All the mechanics. All the pit crew members. They deserve it more than anyone. This has been a long time coming. Darlington has been one that I’ve always wanted to win since I got into the sport. This is the ultimate driver’s track. I knew we’d able to win it. We can win any week. It just hadn’t happened yet. But yes, when I was sitting in the infield care center at Michigan, I thought my season was over. I thought I was going to be out a couple of weeks. I thought I wasn’t going to make the Chase. We’re still in it, baby.”
Ty Gibbs — second: “Well, I think it’s just goes back to where we started. They had a pretty squirrelly metric, and we started 28th ranked in the fourth seed. Hopefully we can fix that for next time. I feel like the Toyota Camry was great. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m glad Christopher won. I’m happy for him and the 20 team. We just missed it a little bit and had some issues happen a little bit. But appreciate all the effort from everyone on my team.”
Tyler Reddick — third: “We just had a little hiccup on the left front on one of those green-flag cycles in Stage 2. The guys did a great job catching it. That could have been catastrophic in the first pit stall. Good job the boys not making a mistake much worse. Just lost a little bit of track position at a critical time. I think for us, where our car went was just track position. We got where it needed to be for that final restart. It was a little tough at the end, but we know where we need to be at the end of this race and years to come. Good day for the Chase. Really want to win this race bad and one day we will. It’s good to be in contention every year.”
Ryan Blaney — fourth: “Just a scrappy night. Was really proud of the progress in the first stage of the race coming from where we started and was able to get decent stage points. I thought we were pretty good, and then the track cooled off, sun went down, and I don’t think i did a really great job of getting ahead of it, and we were playing catch up from that point. Coming down to get tires was a good call. I was able to free it up a good bit, and I was actually fairly decent at the end. Really proud of the effort by the 12 group. It was a good race. Nine to go. We’ve got to keep plugging away, and I’m proud of them for stickig with it for 500 miles. Anytime you can have a solid night here and finish pretty good, that’s a boost of confidence for sure. It’s definitely nice to have some decent momentum.”
Kyle Larson — fifth: “I don’t (rethink the call to stay out) because we were going to be restart behind (Bell) and (Chase Briscoe), and it was going to be tough coming around to my pit stall in front of (Gibbs). So I was actually surprised that they pitted in front of me. And then I was surprised that not more stayed out with me. I thought four more might stay out, and I really thought that could help me at least get some laps where I can manage my tires, but Bell got to second so fast. I could just manage my defense and not able to run the lines that I ultimately wanted to to take care of my tires. Either way it would have been hard to hold them off, but I ended up holding them off longer than I thought I could, so really happy with the day. Much better than we’ve been at Darlington the last couple of times. My car was not very good the first run, but we got it better, and it really allowed me to run the lanes that I like to run here to manage my tires. We had a great second and third stage. Really proud of the team and the race car they brought. Huge thanks to everybody at Hendrick Motorsports for continuing to work so hard. Great start to the Chase. We only gained six points to the lead, but it’s better than losing six. After that first run, I was thinking oh my gosh, we’re going to leave here 80-some points out. We had a great rest of the race. Just keep bringing good, close, comfortable race cars and just fight it out like we did tonight. I thought we were close to a win at several points in the race. Great top five.”
Chase Briscoe — sixth: “I ran out (of fuel) at the the stage end. Decided to come early. To go from dead last back to the lead in 80 laps, our Toyota was unbelievable. The caution at the end, just didn’t execute on the restart. That one will sting for a while. We had a great car. Just unfortunate circumstances there. As a group, we were really, really good. Our car was unbelievable. It’s going to come down to execution these last 10 weeks, and whoever can do that the best out of the four of us will have a great chance at the championship. Just have to clean it up if we’re going to win the championship. We were close, just not close enough.”
Josh Berry — seventh: "“It was a lot of fun. There were a couple runs where I thought we were super, super good. I just struggled a little bit firing off, but the trade off of that was we were kind of always moving forward throughout the runs and then just how the race played out at the end. I thought we made the right call getting the tires. I probably should have picked the top, but, all in all, the guys did a really good job. We had a really solid car for no practice or anything and the pit crew had some sloppy ones to get it started but they locked in there at the end and held their own when it counted and that’s all you can ask for.” Yeah, I think obviously we had a good car. We struggled a little bit firing off. I think the trade off for that was some long run pace. There were a couple runs where I was super happy with the car and a couple runs where I would just kind of ask it for more, but we’re running fifth so it’s just a great job by the guys. The cars have been a lot better this last two months and its shown. To come here, the first race of the Chase and to be the first non-Chase car and probably wasn’t even close for most of the night for how we ran, so I’m just proud of the guys. They’ve dug in hard and obviously I’m excited to get another top 10 and keep the streak going, but I felt like there was more out there tonight.”
Bubba Wallace — eighth: “Just a really good clean day. Pleased with our Toyota Camry was in the daytime. Nighttime, we just got too tight and were just OK. Come out of here with a solid effort, good points day, it was fun running up front with Tyler. Great for 23XI. That was a long one. Ready to go for Gateway. Long way to go. We know what we’re capable of when we can have clean races like tonight. It’s easier to work on cars when we have clean races like that.”
Joey Logano — ninth: “We’re not satisfied unless we win. We didn’t get stage points, and that’s the part you’ve got to do in the Chase. We fought a lot of issues. A plug wire came off. That was not good. Outside of that, we made some good gains. Team did a good job. We went for it at the end. I’m with Paul on that. Might as well go for it when you don’t score stage points.”
Ryan Preece — 10th: “Losing track position there was tough, but I feel like 10th is better than a 30th or a 25th or a 20th and we did make gains. Do I want to win? Yeah, but hindsight being 20/20 I think we maximized what we were gonna maximize today. I feel good about. The metric and everything is gonna work in our favor, so I think we should be fine.”
Carson Hocevar — 11th: “We were not bad. (Larson) was pretty much best of the league for Chevrolets, but we’re second highest there. I feel pretty good about it. Toyotas are so fast. It was fun for us to come from 34th. I do everything for TV and entertainment purposes, though, based off everybody else. So I don’t know. Whatever makes good TV, I just do it for the clicks. I don’t know what happened (with Brad Keselowski). He spun.”
Michael McDowell — 17th: “A long night here in Darlington, but we showed a lot of speed. I felt like we were right on the fringe of taking home a top-10 finish today, but during that last restart it felt like something broke. Regardless, proud of our No. 71 Chevrolet, this was a lot of progress from where we were in the spring for our guys. We have run well at Gateway in the past, I am looking forward to getting back there with Spire Motorsports and continuing to build this momentum over the last nine weeks.”
Denny Hamlin — 18th: “Certainly not the finish we were hoping for. Good first couple of stages. It’d just gotten where our car was the best right before that wreck in Stage 3. We certainly made gains on it all day. It was really good in the short run. We got it good in the long run by the time the third stage came but never got to see it through. You can’t have big mistakes. We just had a tough pit stop that sent us back to third to 20th, and once we got back there, you’re with guys that are a little more aggressive and don’t care about the points. Sometimes you don’t get cut a break, and that’s the way it goes. We’re still leading. We’ve got to just go to the next racetrack and execute at a high level. It starts in practice. We’ll do our best to execute a much better day next week.”
Chris Buescher — 20th: "“We had good fire off and got going and were able to pass a ton of cars after unfortunately getting qualifying rained out, so it was a big start. We kind of got rolling there. I don’t know where we were running exactly, but I had a moment off four and got the fence and bent some rear suspension and spent most of the race just hanging on until we had a chance to fix it under yellow. That was all of the second stage waiting and then we finally got it fixed and was just trying to get our laps back. We finally got them there with 30 laps to go and just didn’t have enough racing left to recover. It’s unfortunate. I screwed up and I hate it for this team. They had a lot of high hopes coming in here and didn’t get the result out of it. Yeah, for sure. I’m a big fan of what we’ve got now and the fact that we can still reset and keep digging, but we’re gonna need some phenomenal weeks to really get back in the hunt here after that, which we kind of knew from the get-go that it was gonna take that. A couple more tracks coming up in the immediate future and I really don’t feel like we have any bad ones, so we’ll be in a good spot.”
Daniel Suarez — 21st: “It was a long night. Listen, something about the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet team this year is that we’ve done an amazing job executing, and if we have a 10th-place car, we finish better, and that’s been our signature for the entire year. Today, we didn’t have the speed at the start of the race. We went from leading the race to back in 20th. And then, we just didn’t execute the little things. Our last pit stop was bad. The adjustments, I feel like we never really improved our car a whole lot. We have to go back and regroup. We also had a couple issues with the fuel pump and an issue with the engine, a couple little things. It wasn’t the way we wanted to start the Chase, but overall, I know I have a great team. At Spire Motorsports, we’re going to go back to work and come back stronger next weekend.”
AJ Allmendinger — 22nd: “It was pretty sideways out there tonight. Every time we came to pit road, my guys kept working hard to find the right balance in the car. They never gave up. We fought all night long and did everything we could to make the most of it. We know what we’ve got to work on. We were hoping for a better result. We’ll take what we learned tonight, and shift our focus to next weekend.”
Austin Hill — 28th: "“Man, our Chevrolet fired off really good at the start of the race when the sun was up. We were able to move forward and run solid lap times, staying on the lead lap despite our starting position. Once the track got fully shaded though, the balance took a big swing and we struggled the rest of the night. We were working in a two inch by two inch box with adjustments. The car fired off tight, then would get out of the track with both fronts and rears. The rear end would have a swinging sensation. I hate it for these guys because we showed a lot of promise at the beginning, especially without having practice or qualifying yesterday. We’ll keep grinding.”
Austin Dillon — 29th: “Disappointing night for the No. 3 Chevrolet team. We struggled with balance all night, and ended real tight. I couldn’t turn on the bottom and running the top was the only shot we had. We have alot of work to do. We have nine races to find speed, balance and a little bit of everything. We’re going to keep digging and hopefully that starts to show at World Wide Technology Raceway.”
Ty Dillon — 31st: “Most Southern 500s at Darlington are tough on everyone, but tonight we had some power steering issues from the start. My guys worked hard and we stayed with it tonight getting the car better and better and running top 20 times later in the race. We need to clean up some mistakes this week, and we will be ready for St. Louis next weekend.”
William Byron — 37th: “I’ve never had that happen. I felt like I had a flat left-rear tire in (turns) one and two, so I slowed down quite a bit and I was going to pit and try to be early on the cycle. I’m not sure, it was super odd. I don’t know if I was blowing up in that process and got oil on my tire or what. We had an eighth or ninth-place run going, but it was just an unfortunate end to the evening for this No. 24 Chevrolet team.”
