What Drivers Said after the Daytona 500

Fans weren't the only ones talking about the Great American Race. Drivers had a lot to say as well

Here’s what many of the drivers who competed in Sunday’s Daytona 500 had to say about how their day turned out:

Austin Cindric - No. 2 Discount Tire Ford - WINNER: Oh, my God. Do you know what makes it all better? A packed house. A packed house at the Daytona 500. Oh, my God. I’ve got so many people to thank. First and foremost Roger Penske, happy birthday. Oh, my gosh. Appreciate Ryan (Blaney) being a great teammate. Obviously, he wants to win this one, but I’m so pumped for Discount Tire, Menards, Ford. Everybody works so hard with this Next-Gen car, through this whole process, and damn, I am so excited. This makes up for losing a championship last race I did (at the end of last year's Xfinity season).

“I’m surrounded by great people. That’s all there is to it. I know there’s going to be highs and lows, being a rookie in a field of drivers this strong. I’m just grateful for the opportunity, excited to climb the mountain we’ve got ahead of us on the 2 team. But we’re in the playoffs. That’s one good box checked. My gosh, what an awesome group of fans, what an awesome race car. Just really thankful.

Bubba Wallace - No. 23 Mcdonald’s Toyota - Finished Second: “What could have been, right? Man, need to talk about some happy stuff here. Just dejected, but the thing that keeps me up is just the hard work that we put into our speedway stuff and the hard work from everybody at 23-11, proud of them, can’t thank them enough.

“I knew this was a big move last year for me to go out and be competitive, and we’re showing that. It’s always the first race of the season and you’re getting through everything, but when you come out of the gates like that, it’s empowering, it’s encouraging. So thanks, everybody, back at the shop, McDonald’s, almost got them another one, back-to-back superspeedway wins. That would have been awesome, especially with it being the 500. But just short.

“I thought our Toyota teammates did good work until they got picked off 1, 2, 3 throughout the race, so we just had to survive. Great Speedweeks, though. We’ll come home second. I’m going to be pissed off about this one for a while. I was happy on the first second place we got a couple years ago. This one sucks when you’re that close, but all-in-all, happy for our team, happy for our partners, and on to California.”

Chase Briscoe - No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford - Finished Third: “Just couldn’t quite get to Brad (Keselowski). I needed to be able to get to Brad, and he was having to drag so much brake for me to be able to help him. I wish I was more help. If I could have locked on, I could have got him up there.

“You know my story, sleeping on couches and volunteering six, seven years ago, and now to have a chance to win the Daytona 500 at the end and finish third and start the year off with these Mahindra Tractors folks and HighPoint.com, all the people that get us to the racetrack. We want to be a playoff contender this year, and having a good run here is a good start.

“Wish we could have had one more lap. You never know what could have happened, but yeah, super cool to finish third and really cool for one of my best friends to win the race.”

Ryan Blaney - No. 12 Menards/Blue DEF/PEAK Ford – Finished Fourth: "The last lap I got good pushes on the bottom from the 23 and then I was able to get Austin in front and off of four where we were good enough to make a move I got blocked and I ended up getting fenced. I’m happy for Roger Penske, winning the 500 on his birthday. I’m happy for Jeremy Bullins and everyone that works on that 2 car. It’s just one of those things. It didn’t work out. We still ended up fourth, but I don’t know another perfect position we could have put ourselves in to win the race. It just didn’t work out.”

Aric Almirola - No. 10 Smithfield Ford - Finished Fifth: “I honestly thought I was in a really good position. I knew it was gonna get kind of dicey and haywire there with the leaders and I thought that they would kind of shove each other around and come disconnected and I would have a bunch of momentum coming from behind. We’d seen that in the Duels and other races, so I hate to come up short. I had a really good feeling going into today. I just felt like it was kind of gonna be one of those storybook-type deals where the last Daytona 500 I thought we had a shot at going to Victory Lane and just came up a little bit short. Dang, that’s fun. That’s fun.”

Kyle Busch - No. 18 M&M’s Toyota - Finished Sixth: “Overall, a good day and a good effort. I’m pleased with how far we came from behind to get a decent finish there. We were tore up a lot most of the race so that was a good finish.”

Michael McDowell - No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford - Finished Seventh: “I was not exactly where I wanted to be. I would have liked to been a row or two up. It’s hard to win from sixth, but I had my Ford teammate in front of me, Aric Almirola, and saw that everybody was pushing hard. You can’t see too much through the back window of the car, so you’re just kind of pushing and hoping it all works out. I thought we were gonna get to the finish line, so as I was crossing the line I just got hooked in the right-rear and went straight in the wall. That was unfortunate because we had a pretty clean race. That’s not what we wanted. We wanted to come back here and challenge for the win, but we were close to being in that position again – being in that top five coming to the white, but we just needed to be a few more spots further forward. All in all, it was a great race. I thought the Next Gen car did really well and put on a good show. The pack stayed together quite a lot – more than I thought from the Duels and practice, and we had a fast Love’s Travel Stops Ford Mustang. All in all, other than a destroyed race car, we had a decent day going and it would have been nice to get across the line without destroying the car, but glad to come out of here with a top 10 or a top five, I’m not sure where we ended up and get ready for California.”

David Regan - No. 15 Select Blinds Ford - Finished Eighth: “For some reason the outside lane just didn’t get the surge that maybe we got two restarts prior. I saw Brad back just a little bit and I was kind of surprised it was that clean on the white flag lap and then coming through three and four no one lifts and everyone is real aggressive. The first thing that I saw was the 12 car come across the racetrack and we all started kind of squeezing down and then I felt Michael McDowell come across my left-front fender and that kind of ran us into the wall. It was right at the start-finish line. That’s unfortunate to tear up a lot of race cars for that reason, but you’re going for the win in the Daytona 500 and no one is gonna lift and everyone is gonna do what they’ve got to do. I couldn’t be more proud of our effort. We really did a perfect job executing the whole race long. We made some adjustments. We just kept fighting and tried to be careful and get aggressive when it counted, so happy to come home with a top 10, but you’re disappointed to have a torn up race car. Select Blinds, Jacob Companies, Envision, everybody that made this possible. It was a lot of fun and I’m sure we’ll come back one day.”

Brad Keselowski - No. 6 Kohler Generators Ford - Finished Ninth: “I thought down the backstretch we were gonna win the race and just the 12 and the 2 got a really good push from the 23 and basically cleared our lane and then our lane kind of broke up there at the end. It was really close, just green-white-checkers.”

Ty Dillon - No. 42 Black Rifle Coffee Chevrolet - Finished 11th: "(Top 10) was our goal today. Race smart and race when we needed to in order to get to the finish. I am really proud of these guys because we accomplished what we wanted; to get in position late in the race and have a shot at a good finish. It’s a great start for this team and we are looking forward to Fontana and the rest of the season.”

Daniel Suarez - No. 99 Tootsies Orchid Lounge Chevrolet - Finished 18th: “Our day was O.K. We had a fast No. 99 Tootsies Orchid Lounge Chevy, we just got behind there with the speeding penalty. The No. 42 (Ty Dillon) kind of pushed me to the grass and then we had a loose wheel. It wasn’t a clean day, but we’ll move onto Auto Club (Speedway)

Jacques Villeneuve - No. 27 Hezeberg Engineering Systems Ford - Finished 22nd: “It was amazing. It was a handful. The car was more difficult to drive than I expected. It was tight. It was loose and that was not expected after testing, but just getting the draft was complicated – especially at the start because everybody just jammed and hit the brakes and that was it. That’s frustrating. It’s really hard to get back in the pack.”

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. - No. 47 Kroger/Irish Spring Chevrolet - Finished 28th: “We put ourselves in the perfect position really for us to come down to leading the Daytona 500 with five laps to go. All and all, our No. 47 Kroger/Irish Spring Camaro just got pushed in the wrong spot. We did everything we could today to put ourselves in the right position. We’ve got to be happy about that and move on.”

Kyle Larson - No. 5 Hendrickcars.com Chevrolet - Finished 32nd (collected in Lap 190 crash): “It’s disappointing. I had a run there on the No. 4 (Kevin Harvick). I didn’t realize how close he was to the No. 17 (Chris Buescher). I got to him right as he was getting to him and it got him out of shape. I hate that I did that. It’s so hard see in front of him, especially on the straightaway like that.”

“I didn’t realize how close he was to him and it just got him all jacked up. I hate that it ended our day, as well as a bunch of others.”

Tyler Reddick - No. 8 3CHI Chevrolet - Finished 35th (sidelined by damage sustained in Lap 152 crash): “We had a really fast 3CHI Chevrolet all week and felt really good after our team worked hard to make adjustments during today’s race. We had a part break which caused me to spin and wreck on the frontstretch. With the shortage of parts for these new cars, that definitely puts more work on my team and that’s tough. I’m looking forward to getting to the west coast and improving our performance. The entire RCR team and everyone at ECR worked really hard to make these cars fast.

Denny Hamlin - No. 11 FedEx Express Toyota - Finished 37th (collected in Lap 63 crash): “The 6 (Brad Keselowski) was pushing the 21 (Harrison Burton) and you could see the 21 was kind of getting out of control there, so you know the mindset was that you’ve got to back off but I think the 6 was just insistent on pushing him at all costs and eventually turned the 21 around. Tough, you know, considering it was just for the stage. We were kind of boxed in there where I noticed that something was going to happen, but I was boxed in, I was behind a teammate and I wanted to try to help. Again, just too aggressive pushing right there when they weren’t lined up and in control.”

William Bryon - No. 24 Axalta Chevrolet - Finished 38th (collected in Lap 63 crash): “It looked like the bottom lane was pushing well; nice, balanced and controlled. The outside lane was getting a little squirrely the last lap or so. I noticed that, but there’s nothing you can really do. You’re just trying to push your guy out front. It was (Martin) Truex Jr. in front of me and Kyle Busch. We were doing a good job of kind of managing that gap on the bottom. I think the No. 21 (Harrison Burton) just got loose, slid down the track and I slid to the inside wall. There was nothing we could really do. I think we were definitely going to finish in the top-five in that Stage. Our No. 24 Axalta Camaro seemed really fast. It’s disappointing, but we’ll go onto California (Auto Club Speedway) and we’ll be fast there.”

Harrison Burton - No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford - Finished 39th (collected in Lap 63 crash): “I’m fine. I’ve hit a lot harder before, that’s for sure. It’s just unfortunate. I hate it for the Wood Brothers group. They brought a really fast Ford Mustang down here and ended up on our lid, so that’s never good. I’d like to look back and see what happened. I don’t know, I just got pushed and didn’t take it the right way – the car didn’t take it the right way or got pushed in the wrong spot. I’m not sure. I couldn’t really tell. I was looking out front to see what I had to do next to sidedraft the next guy that was on me, so just a bummer. I don’t really know what we could have done different, but we’ll move on and get better from it."

Ross Chastain - No. 1 Advent Health Chevrolet - Finished 40th (collected in Lap 63 crash): “They were just wrecking and I saw a car upside down. Just wrong place, wrong time for our No. 1 Advent Health Chevrolet. Bummer.”