Ryan Blaney on Talladega Success
THE SUCCESS YOU HAVE HAD AT TALLADEGA. WILL THAT CHANGE WITH NASCAR BREAKING UP THE STAGES? “I don’t know if it’ll change much. I think you just have to figure out a new approach to how you want to go about it. How do you want to go about the different lengths and stuff like that. You’re still gonna be wanting to come out in the top three or four rows. I mean, that’s just kind of what it is there, so we’ll adjust to it and try to figure out the best way to do it and you just hope you hit it right. One thing I do know is that we’ve been consistent there because we’re bringing really fast cars and that’s a huge part of it. I have no doubt we’re gonna do that again and then just hope we hit the strategy side right and hopefully I do my job correctly on that side.”
Kyle Larson, driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet, on Talladega Superspeedway: “It’ll be a little different with the stage lengths. So, just curious to see how that’s kind of going to affect the fuel conservation and stuff throughout the race. I still think you’re going to be saving quite a bit of fuel, but we’ll see when we get there. And then, I think you just study that and see what kind of scenarios might pop up and how to best adapt for it. You’re always trying to position yourself for that final run to the end, so we’ll see if we can do that. We’ve done that well in the past at Talladega, especially, and I think it could just look a little different now with stage lengths.”
Chase Elliott, driver of the No. 9 Chevrolet, on Talladega Superspeedway: “I feel good about going there. It’s a speedway and just so much is out of your control, but I feel like our team has been doing a pretty good job throughout the course of the year of executing the things that we can control and hopefully we can do that. I think that’s really kind of the name of the game when you go to those speedways and just try to give yourself a shot. There’s so much that can go good or go bad or anywhere in the middle that you have no say so in, so we just try and do our best at the things that we can control and hope it falls our way.”
William Byron, driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet, on Talladega Speedway: “I really enjoy Talladega. Not sure how many people actually say that. I feel like I’ve got a pretty good grip when it comes to superspeedway racing, at least on what you can control, that is. The difference is that at Talladega your car is a bit more handling dependent than at other drafting tracks. It makes track position that much more valuable because it’s hard to make runs to the front quickly. I do think the shortened stages are going to ramp up the intensity though, since we know fuel mileage is no longer a factor. We’ll just have to see how it plays out.”
Carson Hocevar Quotes
How do you believe handling matters compared to speed at Talladega? Furthermore, how do you utilize the drivers around you to make moves?
“A good handling car helps you take a push, which is really important to moving your line forward. Ultimately, you hope you don’t get a push at the wrong time. If there is a big gap and you have guys pushing three deep behind you, it’s really easy to get turned off their bumper if your car isn’t handling right. You’re just hoping you get the right push and know your stuff is handling as good as possible when you take that push.
