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Quotes to Remember: STP Gas Booster 500

“Disappointed for sure. We had a fast car all weekend long and really thought we were maybe going to be walking out of here with a Grandfather Clock. I tore the car up pretty bad over here off of (Turn) 4. I checked up and I got hit from behind, pushed into the 1 (Jamie McMurray) and all hell broke loose. All in all, second place isn’t bad, but it sure sucks right now.” – Clint Bowyer, finished second

“Well, we just didn’t need those cautions there at the end. I made a mistake on pit road and got us way behind. But, what an incredible effort for this Drive to End Hunger Chevrolet team. They had good pit stops and then they also made great adjustments. We were real tight there at the middle part of the race. And then boy that thing just took off. And on the long runs, I feel like we had the best car. But you know those cautions are going to come out there. We tried to free it up. We just didn’t get it quite freed-up enough. So, I was just trying to get the front end to cut and I knew that we just didn’t quite have it. We just needed more laps there at the end. Congratulations to Jimmie (Johnson, race winner) though; yes he is so impressive here but the thing that impresses me the most are those darn poles. Where did that come from? He used to at least give us a shot when he would qualify like 15th. So when those guys get that number one pit stall they’re almost impossible to beat. It was a lot of fun. We needed that third-place finish. So I’m very proud of this team.” – Jeff Gordon, finished third

“I don’t know [where] anybody that came (to pit road) finished, but we just — getting stuck on the outside lane on restarts just kills you. We fought hard up there and tried to do what we could and just had to fade gracefully I guess you’d call it. The M&M’s guys did a great job today and gave me a really good car. We keep finishing top-5 here all of the time, but it’d sure be nice to figure out some sort of secret that could get us into Victory Lane here. It would be nice to bring home a Grandfather Clock, but not this week.” – Kyle Busch, finished fifth

“They’ve all been hard-fought. We seem to run sixth here every time. Sixth is good, but it’s just not great. We want to be able to win here and just haven’t been strong enough to do that. We’ve been strong enough to be proud of what we’ve done, and I’m proud of where we are right here today, but the 48 car is on another level. His car is so much better than everybody else that he just plays with everybody the whole race just to make it look good. That’s pretty obvious, but I feel like if we can get our car where he’s at, I can beat him.” – Brad Keselowski, finished sixth

“We had a really good car at the beginning of the race. Even if we fell back I could get back in the top-5 and then after that little incident we got in. I don’t know, I thought the car was going to be better without the bumper cover on it. In the wind tunnel that is a big advantage. I was actually kind of pumped up that it got ripped off. The car just wasn’t as good after that. I think the track, even though you couldn’t see rubber, the track got tighter and tighter as the race went on. We adjusted for it, but just didn’t have enough speed there at the end. Made a good pit call at the end and got a couple of extra spots. That was a really good day for us.” – Jamie McMurray, finished seventh

“It wasn’t that great of a result — we were capable of a little bit better, but we just kept stumping our toe on Friday and then we had a setback when we were about to get into position. I just want to thank Joe Gibbs (team owner, Joe Gibbs Racing). I did not fill Denny Hamlin’s shoes, I can tell you that much. He (Hamlin) is the master. I enjoyed this opportunity — it was fun.” – Mark Martin, finished tenth

“Considering everything we had to come through it was a decent day to come in 11th. Considering we got in that crash early — a bunch of cars, like a 10-car pileup. I’m not sure what caused the wreck up in front of us. Had a lot of damage on the car, went a lap down and came back from that. The Jet Edge guys did a great job preparing it. Then there at the end we drove all the way back up to the top-five and blew a left-rear tire. I think we cut it. We had great tire wear and I can’t imagine we wore the left-rear out. Who knows? That put us another lap down. Then we came back from that to a solid 11th.” – Brian Vickers, finished 11th

I think you take what the car gives you and Tony Gibson (crew chief) has a really good track record here, he is a great crew chief, and my car was good all day. We kind of balanced her out after being a little loose to a little tight but we got the GoDaddy.com car back up there. We obviously went down real early with that spin and then were two laps down at one point. So I feel that is one of the things that I am most proud about is coming back from two laps down and being on the last lap. Then grabbing a 12th-place finish in the end was good and I think it was the right call to stay out because I don’t think tires were quite worth enough to pit, so it was a good run today.” – – Danica Patrick, finished 12th

“We ran really great — that’s the best we ever ran at Martinsville and the best car I’ve ever had here by far. That part was all good. We just didn’t get the finish, which is disappointing — we’ve got to start getting some finishes. I had a great car and that’s the good part.” – Matt Kenseth, finished 14th

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