Here is what drivers had to say after Sunday’s season finale at Phoenix Raceway:
Joey Logano — Winner: “I love the playoffs. I love it, man. What a race! What a Team Penske battle there at the end. Had a good restart and was able to get in front of the 12. And he had a lot of long run speed there, and it was all I had there to hold him off. Man, three of them, that’s really special to get that. What a team. To fight through today, we went through a little bit of adversity throughout the race. Paul Wolfe, what a crew chief do I have? I’ve got the best team. I don’t know if I’m the best driver, but I’ve got the best team, and together we’re very well-rounded and can show up when it matters the most. We’ve got a mentally tough team that can make things happen when it matters. The amount of work and effort that went into building this race car right here, the amount of time, I don’t think anyone works harder than us. We were up at 6:00 in the morning this morning going over stuff. The guys just want it bad. I’m glad we delivered. It was looking iffy there for a minute, but that restart was really the difference-maker, and gosh, I’m so proud of the team.”
Blaney ‘worn out’ after chasing Logano for win
Ryan Blaney congratulates Joey Logano for bringing the championship back to Team Penske after a “heck of a battle” but “didn’t have enough” to make up ground after the final restart.
Ryan Blaney — Second: “Just worn out really and just couldn’t quite get there. And tried really hard to do so, just he restart didn’t really work out and just got too far away from me and took me a while to pass a couple guys and just could never get by Joey. Yeah, ran out of time. But congrats to him, congrats to the 22 team and Pennzoil and Ford. They put together a great playoffs, and we’re happy. If we’re going to race somebody, I’m happy it was him for the championship, and happy to be one-two for Roger (Penske), three in a row for Roger, super amazing, and Ford. Just super fast, just didn’t quite have enough there at the end. At least a Penske car won it, but heck of a battle. I hope the fans enjoyed it, and hopefully we come back even stronger next year.”
Byron ‘gave it all’ despite falling short of title
William Byron unpacks his championship race at Phoenix and feels his No. 24 didn’t have enough to hang with the Team Penske Fords, but he remains proud of “a great year” entering the offseason.
William Byron — Third: “We just needed a little bit more. I felt like we gave it all we had, and that’s something to be proud of. We just didn’t have enough to go fight with the Penske guys. I could at times kind of inch up on them, but I felt like on the short and long run they were better, and mid portion of the run I’d be a little bit better. But (crew chief) Rudy (Fugle) made a great call. I was really proud of that. That was cool to give us a shot and give us a shot at the front row and ultimately netted out better. But yeah, just not quite enough.
“But so proud of this team. It’s been a great year to make the Championship 4 and win the (Daytona) 500 is awesome. I know what we need to work on, and we’ll go at it next year. Makes you hungrier, but also just more experience in what it takes. I feel like this style of track has been tough on us, and we made a lot of strides this year, but still more to go. If we can just kind of inch up on this style of track, I know we’re so good at all the other ones, and we can put it all together.”
Kyle Larson — Fourth: “It was a hard-fought P4 for us. We were super, super loose all weekend, and each run, we got it a little bit better, a little bit better. Just was going to be tough to beat the Penske cars. They’re extremely good on the short flat tracks, so once again they put themselves in position to win another championship.”
Christopher Bell — Fifth: “I felt like our Camry was fine, but we definitely lost the handle of it on that last run. I knew that I was getting a little bit worse compared to the competition as the race went. We needed to take a step and make it a little bit better, and it seemed like I got a little bit slower in the end. (The pit crew) were amazing. This whole team is incredible, so I’m glad to be paired up with them for the years to come, and hopefully we will keep building on what we have.”
Reddick ‘heavily motivated’ to improve at Phoenix
After falling short of the 2024 Cup Series championship, Tyler Reddick is “heavily motivated” to improve at Phoenix but remains proud of the team’s effort in a mistake-free race.
Tyler Reddick — Sixth: ” think we definitely got our Camry better throughout the day. Yeah, there was that one time there we were behind the other Championship 4 cars, and they just kind of were able to pull away over time. It was a good year for us and everyone at 23XI to get to the Championship 4 and have a shot at it was nice. But yeah, we’ve got to get a little bit better here in Phoenix. Obviously, we’re heavily motivated to do that knowing the championship is decided here. Good year for us. Proud of the effort. It’s a lot to do, all the preparation, all the work that goes into it. It takes everybody. We were close. We were just not quite good enough, unfortunately. Yeah, it just seemed like my best hope was to try and pass them on the restarts and hope I could hold them off on the long run. In Stage 1 I was almost able to hold off the 12, but just as the race kept going forward, that last restart in particular, I got outside the 12 but the 9 kind of washed up.
“Got to be aggressive, and that was I feel like my best shot at trying to get ahead of the others. We fought hard all day. We didn’t make any big mistakes that took ourselves out of it. We fought really hard. A lot to be proud of, but obviously when you come here, you want to leave here a champion. We’ll work on it and think about what we can do in the off-season to get better here.”
Daniel Suarez — 10th: “I’m happy with our day. Just like at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway, I feel like we maximized the potential of our No. 99 Chevy, so that’s good. We had a 10th-place car, or so, and that’s exactly where we finished. I’m really proud of this team. We had a good year, and it’s definitely something good to build off of for the future.”
Noah Gragson — 12th: “It was a good improvement from where we were in practice and then where we qualified and just continued to stay in the fight and inch our way up front. We were looking at a top 10 day and just faded a little bit too much there on the last run, but, overall, today is about the memories and the people – the people at Stewart-Haas are in a tough position right now with everything that’s gone on this year, but we all rally behind each other and support each other and today is about all those people that are looking for jobs, build these race cars, get our race team to the racetrack that work so hard and sacrifice so much, so, overall I’m super grateful and I’ll cherish this moment today.”
Austin Cindric — 13th: “First off a huge congratulations to Joey, Mr. Penske and everyone on the No. 22 team. Three championships in a row just shows what kind of team we have at Team Penske. Those guys set a high bar, and it makes me hungry to get to Daytona for next season. Great effort today, all year really, by this Ford Mustang team. We took some big steps in our growth, and I’m proud to go racing with Brian (Wilson) and all the guys. A great season and looking forward to next year.”
Truex’s NASCAR career defined by ‘unending grit’
Seven-time NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson reflects on Martin Truex Jr.’s career, one of “unending grit and resilience”, ahead of his final full-time start at Phoenix Raceway.
Martin Truex Jr. — 17th: “Oh man. I wanted it to go better than that. We were pretty good early and then lost track position and then the track just continued to rubber up and get hotter. At least that’s what I felt like it was doing. I kept losing the grip. I kept losing more balance. I just losing track position. It just all magnifies with this thing. We got caught by the caution there and had to stay out on old tires and get the wave around and we couldn’t even race to try to go forward. It was just not a good day. Not a good day to end on. I’m proud of the effort of my team. At least we got to lead a few laps at the beginning.
(On being congratulated by Michael Jordan and Jeff Gordon) “Yeah, it means a lot to have the respect of guys like that and what they mean to the sport. Absolute legends, right? It makes me feel good that I’ve earned that respect over the years, and it means a lot. From here forward, I’m just going to go have some fun and do a little bit of racing here and there just for fun. Hopefully, it will be less stressful than days like today.”
Kyle Busch — 21st: “We had a pretty decent start to the race today in our Chevrolet at Phoenix Raceway. We picked up about 12 positions in the first stage from where we started and I thought we had one of the better cars. Unfortunately, the second run wasn’t good for us and we lost a ton of track position. From there, we were just trying get back into contention. Crew chief Randall Burnett and the guys on the team kept working and we were about to show some speed later in the race but ran out of laps to make anything happen.”
Daniel Hemric — 23rd: “We clawed all day and made the No. 31 Chevrolet much better there the last few runs. Trent [Owens] made great adjustments as always. I’m proud of the hard work everyone on this team has put in this season. Today was bittersweet, but I can’t thank Matt Kaulig, Chris Rice, and everyone at Kaulig Racing for these past few years.”
Josh Berry — 24th: “Man, this is just such a special group and I can’t say thank you enough to everyone at SHR for all they did this season. We had some really tough circumstances and a lot of uncertainty and the No. 4 group still showed up and gave it their all, and I am just so thankful.”
Derek Kraus — 25th: “Overall a great weekend here at Phoenix Raceway. I learned a lot, and had fun running all the laps. I can’t thank Matt Kaulig and Chris Rice enough for this opportunity, and we will see what 2025 brings.”
Austin Dillon — 27th: “Our No. 3 Chevrolet team fought hard today at Phoenix Raceway. We started with a tight-handling Chevrolet and struggled with a lack of clean air but worked hard to finish Stage 1 on the lead lap. Crew Chief Joel Keller called for good adjustments throughout the day, but we ended up falling a lap down to the leaders and the cautions didn’t fall in our favor today. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs this season, but we worked through it as a team and pushed forward. Already looking forward to 2025.”
Chase Briscoe — 29th: “It definitely wasn’t the day we wanted to end on. We just couldn’t ever get the car driving right and I sped on pit road. We weren’t gonna be very good probably anyway, but it wasn’t the finish we wanted. I told the guys before we took off whether we win or finish 36th, ‘let’s just have fun today and enjoy it.’ This is probably the most smiling and laughing we’ve ever had after a 29th-place finish. We would have loved to have a better result, but at the end of the day it was all about just enjoying each other and the people and everything that makes Stewart-Haas so special. It’s been a place I’m so thankful to have called home for the last seven years, and I didn’t think it would honestly be this emotional. I was crying before we even rolled off pit road. I’m appreciative of the opportunity from Tony and Gene. My dream was to make it into the Cup Series and the 14 car was the car I always cheered for, so the fact I got to drive it and do it for my childhood hero was pretty cool, so definitely something I’ll never take for granted.”
Ryan Preece — 37th: “It was a good year and I really appreciate all the hard work.”
Ty Gibbs — 40th: “It was definitely a big hit. I made contact with the wall, but I didn’t think it was necessarily too bad, and I went off into the dogleg. We’ve been really hard on the track there all week and I think I just caught it at a bad angle, and it just took off from me. I had no control there. It was a really, really big hit though.”