NASCAR: QUAKER STATE 400 PRESENTED BY WALMART

July 11, 2021

Matt McCall

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by our race-winning crew chief, Matt McCall, with the No. 1 GearWrench Chevrolet from Chip Ganassi Racing. Why don't you take us through those couple laps from your point of view.

MATT McCALL: Yeah, obviously we lost the lead there on the green flag cycle. We'd been pretty good on the long run, but we had been building a little bit tight, so we tried to get it free enough, and he said tight like lap 4 or 5, and I'm like, Oh, man, we didn't go far enough.

Then we got lucky there. The 42 ran a line that helped us to get us caught up to the 18 get in front of him. And at the end the biggest thing you're worried about is tires. Most of the tires we took off looked pretty good, but they were still on the verge of coming apart.

That's the biggest thing. Once you get to the lead you don't want anything to happen, and that was the biggest thing that crossed my mind for sure.

Q. Going back to losing the lead on the green flag cycle, are you sort of a sitting duck in that situation to some degree? Just take us through, did you have a lap number that you wanted to pit on and he just got one ahead?

MATT McCALL: Yeah, you know, we just didn't want to end up with too many green flag laps. That was the biggest thing, is trying to not end up with 50 laps on your tires. We saw the 18 pitted, and that's when you had to pit. Me and Kurt talked about it. He got on pit road a little bit slower than what he did the previous time, and that was probably enough time to lose the lead. He had an okay gap, so it happens quick, and then that little bit of time was enough to lose the lead.

Q. Where did this come from today? It's not just winning on a mile-and-a-half track, but dominant win where he led over 100 laps. It's not something we've necessarily seen from you guys. What do you attribute this to?

MATT McCALL: Well, a lot of work. Know what I mean. We're working every single week. We feel like there's times during the race this type of speed we have, and we've just not been able to put it together. We believe in everything we're doing, and we just keep pushing all the details that we think are going to make us faster.

When you've got Kurt Busch in Atlanta, we wanted to make sure we had all we could bring for sure.

Q. Your team is known for one kind of flukey maybe random win every season. With the amazing setup you had today, will that transfer to any other races in the playoffs?

MATT McCALL: Well, I guess they all can tie together. It's momentum. We've had some decent runs here recently. We felt good coming here, and obviously Kurt is good here. He's good everywhere, obviously.

But yeah, it all carries over. Every time you work on something, even if it's a short track to a mile-and-a-half, most of the stuff can carry on.

Q. You guys, Ganassi as a whole, was really all over the place to start the season, but starting at Sonoma last month, both you and the 42 have been consistent with finishing in the top 10. What have you hit on as a team that's contributed to this success?

MATT McCALL: Yeah, honestly we started the year really good. We should have had a chance to win Homestead, and after that we got in a wreck here and it was a dismal next eight or ten weeks.

To your point at Sonoma, just working together. Us and the 42 work really good together and try to make sure we're working on what's going to make our cars faster. So that's what we're doing each week.

Q. Following up on the teamwork about the 42, Kurt obviously gave Ross a ton of credit. How much were you guys in contact with the 42 letting Ross know that that battle was approaching?

MATT McCALL: Yeah, obviously no contact with Ross. Obviously for us, just sort of mentioned to the 42 guys, Hey, if you can run the line where we think 18 needs to run, we'll take it if you can.

I don't know any information that was relayed from there, but it definitely was to our advantage, though.

Q. Just some question for your guys on what's going to happen next year. What does making the playoffs mean for this group amid the uncertainty?

MATT McCALL: Yeah, we've talked about this last week. I think that unfortunately I have a group that's crazy veterans. They've been around for a long time. Yeah, we took the news by shock, nothing that you'd want to hear, but it hasn't changed our approach each week to come and push each week harder.

It doesn't hurt for sure. Obviously when you start the year you plan on making the playoffs, so now we're there and we've got to keep on going. This is just the beginning for us hopefully.

Q. Let's say Ross is not in that position; do you still feel like you catch Kyle and pass him in traffic?

MATT McCALL: Based off how bad it appeared 18 was behind cars at times, I think there's a chance, but that's hard to know for sure.

It looked like the 18 got really, really tight there the last five or six laps, which paid off for us to get away from him a little bit.

So I don't have the answer to that completely. I would say that Kurt would have gave it all he had for sure.