What Cup drivers said at Bristol after Ty Gibbs earned his first career victory

Ty Gibbs — winner: "Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome to be with great people. To be in this position is great. I'd love for my father to have seen this. I knew he knew it was going to happen and expected it as well. Yeah, it was great day for us. My boys didn't give up. Pit crew is just amazing. This is our family. It's been great. So it's just such great deal. Very honored to be in this situation. I really appreciate this. ... Honestly, I didn't really know or care if I was going to win or not. I thought the race was awesome. I thought we all put on the racing was great. Feel like it's been us the whole year. I really appreciate always racing Ryan Blaney and Kyle, too. Those guys always run me real well. We all run together and hard. Hopefully we put a great show on for the fans. Thank you for Team 54, everybody that's a part of this whole deal. What a great day."

Ryan Blaney — second: "Yeah, I mean, great battle for sure. Good battle all day. I fought a lot of different cars. Yeah, I got free into three, two or three laps before the last yellow. I kind of was side by side with Ty. I just slipped getting in there. Real easy to slip off the bottom. That kind of cost me some time. Yeah, I don't know. Gave it my best shot the last restart. Got a good restart. Was close, but just couldn't get it done. Proud of the effort by all the 12 folks, gave me a real fast car, fast car in qualifying. Got it better through the race honestly. Halfway through the race I thought we got to be the best car, which is really good. Gosh, I really wanted to win at Bristol here. I came close. But congrats to Ty. He's been really close. Nothing is more special than your first Cup win. It's pretty cool to win at this place. Yeah, move on. Fun day. Just wish we could have beat him. ... I’m disappointed we didn’t win, but, overall, I’m really proud of the effort. I had a great day and got better all day. It’s definitely something to be proud of. ... You never forget your first one, that’s for sure. Even though I’m bummed we didn’t win the race, I’m happy that Ty was able to get his first one because I remember what that was like and I remember the elation and the joy, especially when you’ve come close a handful of times, which he has. Honestly, Ty has dealt with a lot of criticism from the outside, and I feel like he’s handled it pretty well and it’s good to see that he’s been able to prove himself on the racetrack. You never forget that first one. I hope they have a good time.”

Kyle Larson — third: "Yeah, I mean, Blaney had by far the best car. His pit crew just kept putting him behind all day, which really allowed us to lead a lot of laps, get those stage wins. Yeah, so that was good. Happy about all of that. Just knew it was going to be difficult to hold him off. Seemed like every restart he could just plow right through the field and get to second. Was just really fast. Yeah, then Ty got strong there the last run, too. That was probably my worst run, I think. We were making some adjustments at that point. I just got a little bit out of the track. Yeah, they were just better than me. Then the strategy got kind of crazy there at the end. We took the third-place car and finished third. Happy with the points earned today. Look forward to next week."

Tyler Reddick — fourth: "It feels really good. Yeah, for me, unfortunately, miscommunication before that first pit sequence. Just had my wrong mark. It was a really good bounce-back for our Toyota Camry. Billy, everybody on this 45 team did a really good job. Yeah, we had to fight for it all day long. We had more speed this time around, which was great, but unfortunately still fighting brake and steering issues along the way. Very physical day inside the race car. I may even take a day off tomorrow."

Chase Briscoe — fifth: "Yeah, a clean, solid executed race. It's what we needed. We weren't good enough speed-wise for the top two or three guys. We just hung around that fifth to seventh place all day long. Needed a little bit more. Yeah, clean, solid day. That's what we needed. Super happy for Ty. It's been a long time coming. To do it the way he did it, on old tires, to beat the two guys that dominated all day long, that I was impressive. Just super happy for him and the whole family. Looking forward to seeing him in victory lane."

Todd Gilliland — sixth: “We weren’t great to start and that’s kind of how we were in practice, but it seemed like when the groove moved up to the top for us we were way better. It was like a different car It’s a pretty awesome day for us. To recover from qualifying 35th at Bristol is tough to do, so, honestly, I’m just so proud of my team. We’ve got to work on qualifying. I think a lot of it is on me. That’s not a great feeling to have as a driver, but I’m so proud of our fight today. No, even before that last caution with like 30 to go I was fairly content. You hate to say that as a driver, but for the day that we had, I was content. I’m proud of my crew chief, Chris (Lawson) with those calls. We were on the same page for two tires. Immediately when the caution came out, I said, ‘I think two tires or even stay out here.’ I’m thankful he didn’t let me stay out, but two tires was definitely the right call and I’m just really proud.”

Ryan Preece — eighth: “We ended up eighth because we had a good restart. On a green-white-checker we were able to take advantage and move forward, so that’s a good feeling. We’ve just got to find a way to break into that top five for those restarts because if we can be there, we’re just as good. It’s just when you start 10th or 12th to make up that ground is extremely difficult. They made great adjustments during the race and got our car in contention. The pit crew rebounded and did a great job, so we’re gonna work on putting it all together from practice to qualifying to the race and we’ll be fighting for the wins.”

Carson Hocevar — 10th: “That was the lowest we were all day. Not the way we wanted to end it. We were really good in the long run, but it was really tough to drive on the restarts. Just too loose. I’m happy we had the speed to run top five all day and have a shot at it at the end. Got some nice stage points, so a really good day points-wise. We excel at the intermediates, so we’re looking forward to Kansas next week.”

AJ Allmendinger — 15th: “Overall, it was a really solid day. We stayed on the lead lap all day with long green flag runs. I felt like we had anywhere between a 10th to 15th-place car all day. The track was very tricky with the PJ1. Basically, you just couldn’t really run the top to makeup time. I thought our Chevrolet had pretty good balance on the bottom. We didn’t need that last caution or we could have finished a few spots better. We still came home with a 15th-place finish. It was a big improvement from where we’ve been the last few weeks, so that’s nice to see. Hopefully we can go to Kansas, a racetrack that we struggled at last year, and keep building on it.”

Austin Dillon — 18th: "The team battled today, and we’ll take an 18th place finish at the end of it. Our Chevrolet was just way too loose for the majority of the day. Richard Boswell (crew chief) and the guys kept making adjustments and we made it better in the last stage. We started to lose front turn in the middle of the corner at the end of a run. The top line probably would have been a better choice on the final restart because everybody just parked, but you never know until it happens. Everyone at RCR and ECR will keep working to make our cars better.”

Kyle Busch — 25th: “Not the finish any of us wanted for the No. 8 Chevrolet here this afternoon at Bristol Motor Speedway. We battled the rear of the car the entire race, and despite the best efforts of the team, we got a lap down in the third stage and were never able to get back that track position. We’re going to keep putting in the work and hopefully that begins to translate next weekend in Kansas."

Connor Zilisch —33rd: “We had a decent day at Bristol Motor Speedway. We didn’t quite have the speed that we needed, and then made a mistake that cost us from there. We’ll take what we can from it, move onto Kansas Speedway next weekend and see what we can do there. Appreciate Roto-Rooter coming on board and being a part of the entire weekend. It was an honor to have them on both cars.”

Alex Bowman — 37th: "I was fine, just a frustrating day. Really struggled with our 48 Chevy. Thought we were OK in practice and then obviously qualified bad and then just really struggled with the handling today. Bummer. Hate that we didn’t get a chance to work on it and make it better and finish the race, but kind of ourside our control. When you run that bad, stuff can happen, and it happened to us. Move on to Kansas, another should-be good racetrack for us. This one should have been, too. But it’s the way it works out sometimes. We’ll go try again next week."