NASCAR XFINITY SERIES: FORD ECOBOOST 300

November 18, 2017

Justin Allgaier

Daniel Hemric

Elliott Sadler

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by the driver of the No.1 Chevrolet Elliott Sadler, eighth place finisher; driver of the No.7 Chevrolet, 12th place finisher Justin Allgaier; and driver of the No.21 Chevrolet, Daniel Hemric, who finished 34th. Talk about how the race unfolded for you.

ELLIOTT SADLER: Just very frustrating end to the night, to be that close to a NASCAR championship and to be raced by somebody that was not racing for anything at all was‑‑ put us in a pretty bad position there at the end and let William catch us. Just very devastating to me right now to have one taken away from you like that.

THE MODERATOR: Daniel?

DANIEL HEMRIC: Yeah, for us, we came down here, we did our jobs. We practiced, qualified, did everything we needed to do to race the guys we needed to race, and I was really looking forward to battling it out with everybody with our 21 Poppy Bank Chevrolet, and just wasn\'t meant to be. We were able to stay out in front of those guys the first stage, come down pit road, thought we were in pretty good shape to kind of make our race car a little better. The racetrack was starting to go through the transition of cooling down and whatnot, so just logging laps, and when we left pit road, I started losing volts for whatever reason, and not exactly sure why yet and all that stuff, but we\'ll get to the bottom of it. Not ideal by no means, but sometimes it\'s just not meant to be, and if it was meant to be it would, but it just wasn\'t our day. But I don\'t want to let that take away from everything of our efforts that we did all year to put ourselves in position and to get ourselves here. Proud of the effort, and that\'s why we decided to keep running all the laps because we didn\'t give up and that\'s what got us here, so whether we were 12 laps down or not, we wanted to complete the race, and that\'s what we did.

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: Yeah, our race unfortunately much the same as Daniel, we felt like we did all the work up until this point and did a good job yesterday in practice, felt like the car had good speed in it, and unfortunately when the race started tonight we knew something was way off. We just struggled kind of from the drop of the green. There were moments of brightness, there was a few restarts where we picked up quite a few spots and thought that maybe we had a shot to get up there and battle it out, but ultimately on the long run we just really started dropping speed and just way too loose to be able to drive at the end of some of these runs.

Really disappointed. As Daniel said, you work hard all year to get to this point, and obviously the goal at Daytona is to have a shot when you get to Homestead. You want to have a shot to go for a championship. Hats off to William; he did a great job, as did Elliott and Daniel all year, both of these guys. Cole did a great job in the race; he came by me lapping me, and I was impressed with how fast he was.

I know that next year is going to be equally as much of a challenge. I\'m looking forward to it, and just disappointed that we didn\'t have the night tonight that we needed.

Q. Elliott, does it change your mindset at all knowing that Ryan was running for an owner\'s title about the way he raced you?

ELLIOTT SADLER: He wasn\'t because the 22 was a half a lap ahead of him, so he wasn\'t racing anybody.

Q. Justin, you mentioned earlier you were struggling with a loose condition; we had a 103‑run lap to end tonight\'s race under green. Say if a caution had come out with say 30, 35 laps to go, could an adjustment actually have fixed your issues, or would it have just undone itself?

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: I mean, coulda, shoulda, woulda. Unfortunately for us there wasn\'t one. I felt like the short run would have been fine. We had good speed. Even without an adjustment I think we could have at least maintained there. But I knew from watching the truck race last night that long green flag runs were going to be so important. We saw a lot of green flag runs last night. You know, just disappointing. At the end of the day, we just didn\'t do our job as good as we needed to and didn\'t have the car that we needed tonight, and it\'s nothing taken away from our guys. They worked equally as hard this week as they have every week, we just missed it a little bit.

But to have four Chevys going for a championship tonight and have three JR Motorsports cars, it was a good night. All in all, even though we didn\'t get the championship and things didn\'t work out the way that we wanted them to, it was still a good night.

Q. Justin, did not having Jason impact you this weekend?

JUSTIN ALLGAIER: No, I mean, I think not having Jason obviously was a big deal, but I felt like as a group we managed very, very well. Jason was equally as involved as much as he could be from not being here, but he was very much involved in what changes were being made to the car and what we were doing as far as the whole weekend goes. So from that, obviously having Chad come over and be a part of our race team tonight, huge thank you to him for being a part of that. Billy stepping up and being the crew chief this week and still trying to complete his car chief duties, I mean, there was a lot to take in for this weekend, and I feel like we did the best job we possibly could, and I don\'t know that‑‑ personally I don\'t think that we would have made any decisions differently on setup or what happened in the race had Jason been there or not.

Q. Elliott, you were out there, obviously the Preece car affected you, but when you\'re battling with William, how were you handling that as far as do you think you could really get back around him? Do you think you could have raced him down and passed him without the interference?

ELLIOTT SADLER: No, I mean, track position was everything, and that\'s why that late in the run‑‑ and that\'s why we were in the right position, I think, when I was eight to ten car lengths ahead of William with seven or eight laps to go. As long as you can hold your line and keep your momentum up, I don\'t think the guys could have‑‑ no way he could have passed me, and I think when the 18 pinched me off so bad off of 2 and William got that run and cleared me into 3, I knew it would have been pretty much over with there. I mean, just the track position was very important.

Q. Elliott, with everything you\'ve done through the years, all the efforts that have been made to win a championship, do you worry that you\'re destined not to, or can you not think that?

ELLIOTT SADLER: I hope‑‑ I don\'t have that outlook, but I think that it\'s very devastating today. Four out of the last six years we finished second in the points, and tonight is the closest I\'ve ever been to winning a championship. Having a lead at the races‑‑ the lead against the 9, the race is in my hands to win the championship, and when I dove down into Turn 1, we\'d been running behind the 18 for 10 laps. When I dove down into 1 I thought he was going to give it to me, and I was going to slide in front of him, and he just gassed it and pinched me down, and that was it.

That\'s pretty hard to swallow. I\'ve been racing a long time; y\'all know that. But I would say tonight is the most devastating and down and out I\'ve ever felt in my career.

THE MODERATOR: Congratulations on solid seasons, and we look forward to seeing you in Daytona.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports