Say What?!

"You really have to be able to adjust. That’s a huge swing. We all talk about it. It’s a big part of our meetings. What does the track normally start like and then once it starts cooling off, where does it usually go? And you keep that in the back of your mind. It’s like, ‘OK, my car is doing this, but when the sun goes down it’s gonna change.’ Is it gonna change for my benefit? Or is it gonna change for our detriment. We have to be ahead of that, so that part is a huge piece of what we look at and what we try to prepare for, and that’s another big thing of staying in the game. Sometimes your race doesn’t start off how you want. You’re kind of off the pace, but maybe it’s gonna come to you. You have all night to work on it. The track is gonna change. Things are gonna figure themselves out, it’s just how can the teams adapt to everything, so that’s a huge part of the 600 and that’s why you see a lot of guys who are strong early and struggle late, or guys who are struggling early and then come on at the end of that race. That’s why you see this huge change in the field." - Ryan Blaney

"Charlotte is rough, my goodness. The vertical loads when we go into the corners in turns 1 and 2, I get squished into the bottom of the car in the seat, almost harder than anywhere else we go. I would compare it to Dover, but Charlotte is a mile-and-a-half and really fast when you run the bottom. When you run the top of the track up by the wall, it’s almost like a washboard – if you’ve driven on a dirt road that’s rough and it’s really bouncing really aggressively – that’s what turn 1 up by the wall feels like. In turns 3 and 4, it gets way more sun throughout the year than turns 1 and 2, so it has a lot less grip. When you turn down into Turn 3 there isn’t a lot of grip. Wrapping the line for me is my left-front right down by the apron to have a low exit off of turn 4, or running right up by the wall." - Ross Chastain

"The Coca-Cola 600 at home in Charlotte is always a favorite. Two years ago, I did the Xfinity race and the Cup race on the same day, which was quite eventful and something I’ll never be able to top. But knowing I’ve come close to completing 900 miles on the same track in one day makes the 600-mile Cup race seem a little less demanding. We’ve had so much speed in our 1.5-mile program and I’m excited to get a handle on it Saturday evening. This is the longest race of the year and where we can score the most points. The biggest thing we need to work on is getting in a better position to execute on restarts and we’ll have a couple of shots at that with four stages in Sunday’s race. This race is always an important one for teams and for the families of the military members that we are honoring." - Justin Haley