Grant Enfinger Updates

Post-Race Quote: You’re going to race for a championship in Phoenix! There was a lot going on today, you had the penalty early on, but you guys were able to overcome that. I saw a lot of hugs here, how’s this one feel?

“It feels great. These guys deserve to be running for a championship in Phoenix. I’m pretty disappointed in our execution, you can’t make mistakes against these guys. We were blessed to have a second opportunity. Jeff made some great calls on the truck; the truck was as good as it was going to be on those last two stints. That was all we had. We could have thrown a Hail Mary and maybe that would have given us a shot at winning, but he made the right call to race for a championship. Congratulations to all these guys, I really wanted this for Mike Beam, Maury Gallagher, Ron Booth, everybody at Champion Power Equipment, and Jeff Hensley. All these guys deserve to race for a championship so we are incredibly blessed and thankful that the Lord blessed us with this opportunity and hopefully we make the most of it in two weeks.”

Post-Race Quote: “We didn’t have the speed we needed in our Champion Power Equipment Chevy today. It wasn’t for a lack of effort though. These GMS guys have given me a great truck at a lot of these races, but we just missed something here today. Before we had the damage we struggled a little bit. I feel like we always worked ourselves to about middle of the pack. Right there in the middle of the storm. In most of those instances we don’t have anywhere we could go. At one instance I went to the middle. I can’t remember who was underneath me. The No. 41 was on top. I was to his left rear tire and the No. 42 cooled down and the No. 41 went with him and I was there and I just darted and got into him. The No. 41 came down but I’m the one that’s stuck in the middle. I don’t know, I feel bad for those guys. Other than that I don’t know what we could’ve done differently. It’s just a struggle. Thank you to these GMS guys for fighting. I think a lot of these guys would’ve called it quits and I don’t know how many times we were on the D.V.P. clock but this thing is tore up from every angle. Thirteen is almost like a win. We know we got our work cut out for us when we go to Homestead. We know our mile-and-a-half package is great. We just got to have a great performance in the next few weeks at Miami. We’re still alive in this championship.”

Post-Race Quote: Grant Enfinger is opening up round two of the playoffs with his third place finish; you said that you wanted to come into this one aggressive, is that what we saw displayed from the No. 23 tonight?

“Yeah, I feel like overall, we executed almost to the best of our ability. I feel like maybe I gave up one point coming to the end of that first stage, but overall, Jeff made some really great adjustments. We weren’t really all that great in practice, but he made it better towards the end of practice. When we fired off for the start of the race I thought we were pretty good. The last, the only set of tires didn’t really like it quite as much there. I wish we could have contended for the win, but overall I feel like we got all we could get out of our Champion Power Equipment Chevrolet. Lacking a little bit to contend for a win, we always want to fight for a win and we couldn’t do that, but I think overall we executed well on pit road. Tyler Monn made some great calls. Overall, I’m not happy, but I’m satisfied.”

Post-Race Quote: “Overall, we had a decent Champion Power Equipment Chevy. We just weren’t great. Seemed to struggle a bit for the first five or six laps, and then it would come to life. I’m proud of Jeff for making a gutsy call there at the beginning and getting us off-sequence. And honestly, it played out about as good as it could have. I really thought once we got back on sequence with everybody, we would drive to the front, but we just couldn’t for whatever reason. It was a little free to fire off, and then it would come to me where we would spot them a little too much on the short run. And then, I just screwed up coming down pit road; sped, and that was all she wrote. We ended up finishing 17th, but probably gave up finishing with a shot at a top-five. We probably didn’t quite have a race-winning truck tonight, but definitely it was better than what the driver gave it. All eyes are on Bristol now.”

Post-Race Quote: On the pit road incident:

“Yeah, we just left some lugs off and had to come back in and tighten them up. I don’t want to be too hard on those guys, they’ve been working really hard. The pit stop before that one, I believe it was the first time all year that we had gained spots on.

We’re making progress, but we just made a mistake, and you know, it’s just part of it. We had to come from the back there and feel like we did pretty good there for a few laps; and then I ended up trying to make three wide in the middle work, ended up using our tires up, and guys were holding us up. I just used too much of my stuff early and was banking on a caution that never came out. Unfortunate, it’s just that at this level of racing, it’s tough to make a mistake like that and come back. But I feel like we were definitely a top-three truck, but yeah it just wasn’t meant to be tonight.”

Post-Race Quote: “Yeah, I’m proud of this GMS Racing Champion Power Equipment No. 23 all year long, and man, they put in the effort tonight too. We just had a terrible performance, and there’s no way around it. We struggled with the handling yesterday, and I felt like we were going to make some big swings and was optimistic about today, but just never really had it. We weren’t really good on a short run, we weren’t really good on a long run. The best we could have happen would just be something to happen to where we could take advantage of the strategy.

Just not a great performance for us, but I’m not letting it take away from the rest of our season at this point. These guys have worked harder than anybody out here; there’s been so much effort put in this truck. We’ve made some good calls, we’ve made some bad calls, but we’ve done it as a team. The playoffs start in a couple of weeks at IRP, we won there last year and there’s no reason why we can’t do it again.”

Post-Race Quote: “I’m proud of the effort that every one of my crew guys put into our Champion Power Equipment Chevy today. Overall, given the situation we were in, a fifth place run is pretty good. We restarted 21st at the beginning of the final stage, and obviously track position is so tough here at Pocono with the package we have. I’m proud of the execution that we had there at the end. The last few couple of restarts worked in our favor, but overall we had a pretty solid truck there at the end, too. I’m a little disappointed in how we fired off, after yesterday I thought we were going to fire off at the beginning of the race a little better than we did. But Jeff made some good calls and the best we were all weekend was on that last stint. So yeah, I’m proud of the execution we made but we’ve still got some things to clean up on before Indy and before we start the playoffs.”