By Adam Carabine
The Cup Series wrapped up their practice and qualifying at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday. Some of the drivers were available to the media afterward, here’s what they had to say:
Joey Logano on having the best Average Finish of all the Cup Drivers at Las Vegas:
“It’s been a good track since the get-go for me. Even when I first started as a rookie, it just was one of those tracks that, I don’t know why, it just suits my style a little bit. I figured out what I needed. Even earlier in my career when I wasn’t good anywhere, I was still able to run good at Vegas. So, I hope that’s the case still, that it continues, but it’s been a good one for me for sure.”
Tyler Reddick on his transition to 23XI Racing’s #45 Car a year earlier than expected:
“The only thing that really shifts and changes, it was going to be a new team either way, but now I’m going to be working with Toyota a year earlier than I thought, too. Just having that transition from being at [Richard Childress Racing] to a different team, different organization, with a different manufacturer, all of that just kind of moves up. I knew there was going to be some change, it’s just going to be a little bit more than maybe I initially thought was going to happen. It’s all good things, though, I’m excited about it.”
Christopher Bell on whether having your back up against the wall is better than a conservative approach:
“Definitely whenever it came to that, it was a matter of winning or going home. There was some advantage to that, because if we were just there to try to get a Top 10, I don’t think our strategy was the same as what it was whenever we were going to win. But yeah, let’s not try not to get that at Martinsville.”
Chase Elliott on whether Martinsville will live up to expectations in a few weeks:
“I think what you saw in the spring is what you’re going to get. Like I told you guys last week, you’d better qualify well. That can be a big game changer, for sure. Not the Martinsville we’ve seen in years past, but it’s what we have to work with right now, so try to make it better moving forward. I think that was the goal of the test we did there a month or so ago. And I think it will get better, as we go forward, but right now it’s what we’ve got. It’s probably going to look a lot like what we saw earlier.”
Chase Briscoe on what the strategy is to make the Final Four:
“You’ve got to perform at your best. Strategy wise, you can’t eliminate yourself. Some guys have unbelievable speed, I think you’ve been able to have one bad race and make up for it. But in this round, I don’t think you can have a bad race at all. You almost have to be in a must-win from the get-go in this round. It’s just hard to have one bad race.
I think the biggest thing for us is we just have to maximize stage points. That’s something we haven’t done the greatest job of throughout the playoffs. When you look at the difference maker a lot of the times in moving on and advancing, it is the stage points and that’s something we need to do better of. That starts with qualifying, I think we’re 15th or something. So we’ve got a shot to get a couple points. I think there’s only 4 playoff guys even in the Top 10. Just need to capitalize on that.
It’s kind of the opposite of how our regular season went, where we would get a lot of stage points but then we would never finish. Now we’re getting the finishes and not the stage points. So just need to put the whole thing together, and if we can do that, the cars are what they are at the end of it all.”
The Cup Series will take the green flag on Sunday, October 15th @ 11:30am local time (2:30pm ET).