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NASCAR XFINITY SERIES: FORD ECOBOOST 300

November 17, 2018

Daniel Hemric

Homestead, Florida

THE MODERATOR: We will continue our post‑race availability with the driver of the No.21 South Point Hotel and Casino Chevrolet, and that is Daniel Hemric. You finished fourth, were running in the top 5 most of the race. I know this is not the press conference you wanted to do tonight, but take us through the night.
DANIEL HEMRIC: Yeah, first off, thank you. Really from the start of the weekend, we just struggled to make speed, that 80 percent mark on the racetrack or ride around the fence. Once we realized that, there wasn't a whole lot we could do. Throughout practice we tried to build as much movability and versatility into our race car, and felt that really paid off throughout the first stage.
We didn't qualify right where we wanted to, but to be able to drive ‑‑ heck, I don't even know what it was, second or third there and come in, and we lost a good bit of spots on pit road, but those guys rebounded the rest of the night, and although the stops were pretty solid, the white line was actually my best friend. It was the least amount of rubber. I thought the racetrack still maintained speed down there and was able to make hay for the majority of the time.
About 20 laps into the run I thought our car would really, really come on. I thought it was really going to pay off for us, but whenever we went to that next‑to‑last green flag run, and I saw the 9 car was the first one to pit, it was borderline like if you don't pit within a lap of that, then you're committed to run a long time.
You know, I applaud Danny Stockman for at least making a gutsy call to try to stretch it as long as we could, hoping a caution would come out. It never did, and we got to a point where we had to pit, and by that point we had lost, I don't know the numbers exactly, but probably at least nine to 12 seconds to the leaders as early as they pitted.
Just not ideal. Just cautions and stuff didn't fall the way we needed them to to give ourselves a shot, but I thought we did a good job of making our race car the best we could throughout the night, and just didn't have enough.

Q. Could you just talk about how close the four of you ran for most of the race? Obviously you're all going for the championship for it to turn out the way it did and for you guys to run like that.
DANIEL HEMRIC: I think it just solidifies the process of the playoffs and the way the cream kind of rises to the top, and that's a testament to this system. Proud to have made it for the last two years and giving our 21 team a shot at a championship both years. When you start a race like that, obviously this is one of the toughest racetracks we come to, but when you start a race in the day, go into the nighttime, it goes through a huge swing. I thought we did as good a job as we could to manage that and just keep those guys in sight, right. That was the goal. If we could see them when the last run happened, which I didn't expect it to go green that whole last half, but when that last run happens, if you can see them, you've got a shot.
I talked about the sequence of that last green flag pit stop; we just got off a little bit on‑‑ heck, you don't know, it could have been the call to win the race, right, go along, pit, got better tires, extra tires. It didn't work out, but we tried to do something. Okay, we can see them, let's give ourselves a shot to do something different, and doing something different didn't work out.

Q. Daniel, how long will it take you to kind of put tonight behind you and get focused on what you do during the off‑season to get in the No.31 Cup car?
DANIEL HEMRIC: It was behind me 20 minutes ago. You know, I'm happy to know what's on the horizon for me, and because knowing what was ahead of me, I was able to a hundred percent focus on the task at hand over the course of the last couple weeks in the playoffs, and wasn't lack of effort on anybody's part why we didn't obtain the goal that we set out to do 33 races ago.
But proud of how far this race team has come, how far this organization has come on the Xfinity side of things, and to know that myself and my group of guys have been a huge part of getting it to where it's at, obviously congratulations to Reddick and those guys. He's coming over to be a teammate on our Xfinity program next year. I'm excited to work with him again, since it's our first time back together since our Keselowski days, and I promise‑‑ I told him before the race tonight, I said, man, these race cars are getting way better, so enjoy and you're going to reap the benefits of it. I'd look for him to do something very similar next year.

Q. Daniel, what's the opportunity or chances that we might see you run a partial Xfinity Series schedule similar to what we saw Austin and Ty Dillon do?
DANIEL HEMRIC: I told Richard I'll race as much as he'll let me or put me in one. I don't have anything set in stone or a schedule by any means, but if we can find the right partners to step up and give me a shot to run a couple races, I'll run whatever the max is if we have cars to do it.
I think just racing is good, period. You ask any racer, right, he'd run a wheelbarrow if he could in a race. Just driving something I think is a benefit, let alone having an opportunity to be on the racetrack that much more any given weekend. It's going to be hard to answer that considering the package differences and whatnot.
But any time you can be on the racetrack and be ‑‑ pretty much the Xfinity and the Cup Series run the same tire every week, every single racetrack. Just having those little things that you can build off of if you get a chance to run the Xfinity car that weekend is always a positive.

Q. Was it surprising to you that there were no caution flags other than the stages in either of the two races so far?
DANIEL HEMRIC: A little bit. You know, what's interesting is with this racetrack and the surface and the tire and the way it all shakes out, from the beginning of the run until probably 10 laps into the run and obviously to the end of a run, the mid‑corner speed comes down so much. You're only running 135 miles an hour, 140 at times, and because of that, everybody feels like all your movements are really slow motion, and it makes it harder to lose control, if that makes sense. You're not having erratic motions at 185 miles an hour like a Texas or somewhere where you see a lot of accidents.
I think that attests to a lot of it. There's a lot of give and take. Obviously Wayne Auton does a great job in the drivers' meetings in our pre‑event meetings telling everybody ‑‑ Wayne being our series director, telling everybody that they know what's at hand. You see guys giving the Championship 4 a little bit more room, and because of that, I think that translates throughout the whole field, throughout all three series, so I think that's‑‑ to attest for why it's been that way, and at the end of the day, I think the biggest thing, though, is that corner speed and how low it gets.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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