Blake Harris, crew chief for Alex Bowman's No. 48 Chevrolet, chats with Alex Weaver after his first Cup Series win as a crew chief at Chicago.
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00:00Here in victory lane with the winning crew chief for the first time in his NASCAR Cup
00:04Series career.
00:05Blake Harris, the driver of Crucian, the number 48, your driver there put on quite the show.
00:09But four teams from Hendrick Motorsports is now locked into the playoffs.
00:13The call to stay on those wet weathers.
00:15Why?
00:16Yeah, I think we were right at that threshold of going to slicks, and I knew a lot of guys
00:20would do it.
00:21We needed the stage points to write prior to winning.
00:23I was like, All right, well, worst case scenario, we get nine or 10 points here.
00:27And then I knew we had a shot with the time rolling off, and I'm like, Man, it's gonna
00:31be tight, especially if some of those guys get clear and it stays green.
00:34You know, we were gonna be in trouble, but they've wrecked a lot.
00:38They wrecked again.
00:39They cut some of that clock down for us, and really, he just did a hell of a job staying
00:42on top of it and really proud of him.
00:45I mean, it's an easy call when I ask him, I'm like, Hey, man, I'm gonna have to put
00:49you back to 20th now that we got those stage points, but we got a shot to win the race.
00:53What do you want to do?
00:54He goes, We ain't gonna win, but anywhere but here on these tires, I'm like, All right,
00:56let's do it.
00:57So, you know, and I feel like that's just fitting for, you know, how our season and
01:02a half together has been.
01:03You know, it's kind of all weigh in on what we need to do, and he went and got it done.
01:07This team will race for a championship.
01:09You're locked into the playoffs.
01:11What's the effort look like now to make sure that this team is championship ready when
01:14the playoffs start?
01:15Yeah, I mean, these last seven or eight races, you're forecasting, you know, until we're
01:19locked in, you're like, Oh, man, I gotta maybe throw some shots that we maybe pull ourselves
01:24out of a shot to win and make sure we get the points.
01:26We can throw all that out the window.
01:27Now, I feel like we've been a little bit conservative at times trying to make sure that we've got
01:31solid points.
01:32Days.
01:33It's all the top ten shot at top fives.
01:34That's all out the window.
01:35Now we go for some wins, go for some stage points and just keep tacking it on and get
01:39get into the playoffs.
01:41Finally, first one is a crew chief.
01:42How's it feel?
01:43Yeah, there's there's nothing to express it.
01:46You know, fortunate at this point in my career to be with such a great group and everybody
01:53at Hendrick Motorsports, the engine shop, the pit crew department, I mean, everybody
01:58that works there.
01:59I mean, we walk in every day, you know, off of a year and a half winless streak.
02:04And the first question out of everybody's mouth is, What do you need?
02:07What can we do to get the 48 victory lane and to have that kind of support starting
02:10with Mr Hendrick and Jeff Gordon all the way down, you know, just to be able to go execute
02:16and get it done.
02:17I'm really happy for all of them.
02:18Congratulations.
02:19Go celebrate.
02:20Thank you.