Quote: How does this help the team continue to move forward?
“Well, we’re finally moving forward at all! This is my first win since [Martinsville]. [We had a] terrible [regular season], not because of these guys behind me, you know we’ve just been a little off as an organization. I can’t say thank you enough to Mike Beam, Maury Gallagher, Ron Booth, everybody at GMS Fabrication, and everybody on this No. 23 team. We’ve been working so hard because, we’ve been sucking. It hurts to say it, but we have had a terrible season to this point, but we had a great No. 23 Champion Power Equipment Chevrolet all day. It felt like every time we got to the lead, the caution came out. It put Hensley in a bad spot, but I knew from experience to just trust his gut. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut every time I kept trying to edge him on, but I had one of my Pop Pop’s Bible verses in there, so it’s a pretty special night and I’m definitely very, very thankful.
I did hear that a few times, you said ‘Just go with your gut’. Where does that trust come from between the two of you, you and Jeff Hensley?
For four years, we’ve rode the roller coaster together. We’ve been in the lows, we missed the playoffs in our first year together, but we haven’t missed it since. We’ve had some success together, he’s a racer and I’m a racer, and neither of us are very smart, but we put it together tonight.”
Quote: “We fought a handling issue throughout the majority of the race tonight at IRP. Our No. 24 Chevy was really tight, and my guys made a bunch of adjustments to fix it, but unfortunately we just could never get it to turn as well as we hoped. While I’m disappointed in the finishing result, I’m glad that we were able to see the checkered flag after the brutal past few weeks we’ve had. I’m really happy for Grant and the No. 23 team, this is a big win for the entire GMS Racing organization as a whole and I’m happy to see them pull it off. Onto Richmond.”
