Grant Enfinger Updates

Post-Race Quote: Grant, you get the win and you get an extra $50,000; that’s gotta be awesome!

“I forgot about that Regan! It’s just so hard to win these races, and if it’s about money, we would have quit a long time ago. But thank you to CRAFTSMAN for that, thank you so much to Champion Power Equipment, Maury Gallagher, Mike Beam, Ron Booth, Jeff Hensley, those guys behind that pit wall right there. Big Jim has been with me forever. Thank you to everybody for keepin’ on believing in us. It’s been a rocky year, but these last five races I feel like we’ve come to our own. We’ve had speed; I was a little disappointed yesterday – I felt like I nailed my lap and we were 10th. I looked at the lap tracker and I felt like we were 10th and that we weren’t a contending truck. But Jeff Hensley made the right calls.

I mean overall, it was just a great day and the stars aligned. I don’t know if we were just on the limit right there on the end, but I think Ty just did what I did last year to Zane. I think Tic Tac (Chris Lawson, Crew Chief No. 38) made the winning call there, and I just got loose underneath of them. It’s just so hard to make those moves here but I’m just so proud of these guys. I’m proud of Champion Power Equipment. It’s just as good a time as any to announce that we are expecting another baby, so Michelle, I’ll be home tonight to see her. Life is good!”

Post-Race Quote: “[That was] a solid finish for sure for our Champion Power Equipment Chevrolet. We were pretty good in practice; the first stage we fired off good but then about 10 laps in I just lost all my drivability. We still had pace, but I couldn’t move around. I’d get bottled up by someone slower in front of me and then I would get passed by about three or four of them. We lost our track position a little bit, did some other stuff, struggled a little bit on pit road, but man those guys rallied and we had a good pit stop the last time. Tyler Monn and I were able to choose a good lane choice for once and the last restart worked out for us. I feel like we were a top-three truck there at the end. There were parts of the race where we were a 25th place truck and there were parts of the race where we were pretty solid. I’m pretty happy with everybody’s fight and with Jeff’s calls on the pit box, so anyways, we’ll go home with a P5 and smile.”

Post-Race Quote: “I hate that our race finished the way that it did, because we were in a good position to come away with a clean top-five finish tonight at Darlington. Jeff Hensley and the rest of the guys on my No. 23 team worked really hard to bring me a piece to contend with, but we had some struggles throughout the race and it was hard to maintain our track position there. I’m thankful to all of our partners at Champion Power Equipment, Chevrolet, Maury Gallagher, Mike Beam, Ron Booth, and everyone back at the shop at GMS Racing including the guys in the fab shop for sticking with us through the good nights and the bad nights. I hate that we let them down tonight but I’m optimistic that we can continue to move forward once we head to North Wilkesboro next weekend.”

Post-Race Quote: Grant Enfinger, you have been so close here in the past at Kansas, what was different for you tonight with this dominant win? 

“Kansas has been a good track for us, but we haven’t had a dominant truck like this in a long time. Jeff Hensley did this for me a few years ago. But lights out, we had the best Chevy Silverado out here. Thank you to Champion Power Equipment for sticking with me. It’s been a dismal year and a half. I know we came up with a win last year but overall, the season has been a little sluggish. Our first seven races was a little sluggish. I was disappointed in our execution, but Jeff talked to me before the race and gave me some encouragement. He did a heckuva job tonight but the biggest thing was these guys brought me an unbelievable Chevy Silverado. Thank you to GM and their Military Appreciation Initiative. It’s pretty special, we’ve got a red white and blue truck so definitely very very cool. Thank you to Dayne and everyone at Chevrolet, thank you to Dennis Trine, Todd, Marty, everybody at Champion Power Equipment that’s stuck with me. I definitely think this team is capable of doing this each and every week and I’m glad we sealed the deal today.”

Grant, can you break down the pass that you made with about 30 laps to go? You did a two for a pass, passed two guys for the lead. Walk me through that. 

“You know Zane helped me out there they side drafted each other a little bit there, but at the end of the day, what made that pass possible was we had the best truck out here so thank you to Jeff Hensley, everyone at the fab shop, Jerry, GMS Fabrication, everybody that’s worked so hard on these things. I don’t think we’ve truly showed it but a few times in the year and a half I’ve been over here, but we’re going to show a lot more of it this year. They got side-by-side, and made it a little bit easier on us, but I feel like we had the best truck anyway.”

Post-Race Quote: “Pretty frustrated with how things went for us on our Champion Power Equipment Chevy. I feel like we had overall a decent truck to contend with, but we opted to try a differing strategy than what most of the field chose to do, and had it went green we would have been in good shape, but we never got to see it play out all the way. Regardless, I’m thankful for everybody’s effort this week. It’s been a tough few weeks for our No. 23 team but I think we will be able to get regrouped over these next two off weekends and come back stronger in Kansas.”

Post-Race Quote: “Solid day, honestly, I just want to thank everybody on this No. 23 Champion Power Equipment Chevy, GMS Racing, and GMS Fabrication. We needed this. We just haven’t had a clean couple weeks. We didn’t have a winning truck tonight, but I feel like we executed well. I felt like we got all we could out of it. I think we were three wide about ten percent of the race. They did a great job prepping the track. Fortunately, we got to race and hopefully we can use this to build some momentum up.” 

With all the unpredictability that is dirt racing with the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Trucks, how adaptive do you have to be?

“I think you always have to be adaptive. The track changes a lot here and it did seem like the bottom prevailed for the most part. Most of the time here it will go bottom, top, then middle but the bottom prevailed. You could make the bottom and the top work if you had to. Shoutout to everyone who prepped the track. I think they did a great job.”