"We did the Goodyear test out at COTA a couple months ago, which was fun. We got a chance to see a new racetrack. The track has a lot more elevation than I think a lot of people would think or see on tv. Turn 1 is a big hill and unless you are there to see it in person it doesn’t look like it, so way more elevation than I anticipated. It was also interesting because I felt like different parts of the track had more grip than other parts and I suppose that’s because they had to patch different areas and some areas have really old asphalt. One of the toughest things for me was understanding the level of grip at different points around the track. I think it is going to be a real challenge, obviously a real long back straightaway that we have seen in the F1 races there so that will be interesting there. I think for our cars, I’m not exactly sure how we will handle and adapt to that. Being really detailed and hitting your marks as always and trying to put together a good race and should be able to have a good result." - Chase Elliott

"It’s very different from a lot of aspects. It’s a very long course, which, to me, is gonna be a little bit similar to Road America, which we are looking forward to going to in the Cup Series for the first time in a handful of weeks as well, but on the COTA front I think what’s going to be unique there is you’re looking at four hairpin corners that are first gear in our race cars, in our current car. You start thinking about Watkins Glen or Sonoma, we really don’t have that many slow corners and then on top of that you think about the straightaway between turns 11 and 12 is an incredibly long straightaway. At the same time you’re looking at a massive speed difference from top speed to that hairpin getting into 12, so it’s gonna be hard on equipment again. I think our equipment has really caught up to the road courses that we currently run and surviving them has not been an issue. I think you may run into abusing equipment at COTA. I think that is one possibility." - Chris Buescher

"COTA will be a very interesting weekend. It’s a fun course. During the endurance race I ran during the off-season, one thing I noted was how it almost has four different sections that are nothing alike, so you need to be diverse as a driver on how to attack each one. One approach will only work in for one part of the track. There is a lot of run-off, so drivers should be able to be aggressive and not pay a massive penalty by ending up in a gravel pit like other road courses. As for the race, it’s going to be a mixed bag of strategies. Guys who are going for the win are going to try to flip the strategy for track position at the end of the race. You’re also going to see guys going for stage points on a different strategy, so we’ll see how our team falls in the mix, knowing we are now above the cut line for Playoffs. I hope we have the freedom to choose on what to focus on, but man, the weather may come into play too, which would throw a whole other wrench into the race." - Tyler Reddick