Edward Graham, the Assistant to the Vice President of Operation Christmas Child for Samaritan’s Purse, will say those most famous words in motorsports, “Drivers, Start Your Engines,” before Sunday’s 1000Bulbs.com 500 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series event at Talladega Superspeedway.
Amid a Friday full of activities both on and off-track at Talladega Superspeedway, the main storyline was speed.
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to media at Talladega Superspeedway:
BASICALLY, HOW HAS THE SEASON GONE SINCE YOU FOUND OUT THAT YOU’RE NOT GOING BACK TO RCR AND WHAT’S YOUR GAME PLAN BEEN SINCE? “The game plan, from a professional side, has still been the same. The goals you set out to accomplish in February, and really dating back three years ago with RCR, those all stay the same. Just knowing that the things that have changed is knowing the outcome is going to be what it is come Homestead."
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Light Ford Mustang – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE TEAMWORK AMONGST THE FORD DRIVERS HERE AT TALLADEGA? “Nobody has done it better than we had last year at this race, so I don’t think there’s really any debate on how that will work when it comes to Stewart-Haas Racing. There’s really no debate on what our four cars can do and how we did it. The commitment and the things that it took to do all that is above and beyond what many other teams have done.”
YOU HAVE A STRONG SUPERSPEEDWAY PROGRAM. TALK ABOUT YOUR OVERALL THOUGHTS COMING IN HERE? “Yeah, we’re kind of in a points position where we have 48 or so points to the one in front of us and 80 or so behind us. So, we can kind of do what we want to do in a sense. But you look back at our races, we’ve really ran well at superspeedways and our average finishes are good here."
WHAT DO YOU THINK IT’S GOING TO TAKE FOR YOU TO WIN HERE AT TALLADEGA? “Survival. No crashes. Not for us, anyway. A good start. We are trying to figure out how to put both of us Buescher and Ryan Preece) in the best position at the end of the race. I think in the spring, we were in a really good spot."
Hattori Racing Enterprises driver Austin Hill was made available to media at Talladega Superspeedway:
DGR-Crosley driver Tyler Ankrum was made available to media at Talladega Superspeedway:
“The game plan, he said, "from a professional side, has still been the same. The goals you set out to accomplish in February, and really dating back three years ago with RCR, those all stay the same."
HOW DID YOU FEEL IN PRACTICE? “Yeah, we were OK in practice. We didn’t get off of pit road very well there when we were out with our Chevy teammates, we were just a little slow getting up to speed. We worked on our height a little more after that and I think we got some speed dialed into the car. So, I think we should be pretty good.”
KYLE LARSON, NO. 42 MCDONALD’S CAMARO ZL1, met with media and discussed his expectations for Sunday’s race at Talladega and the benefits of teamwork, the challenges of racing at Martinsville, his impressions of the 2021 car test at Richmond by Austin Dillon, and more. Full Transcript: