Crew chief for the No. 17 Ford Scott Graves talks with Alex Weaver about how the team's strategy worked out and the epic finish.
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00:00Here in victory lane at Watkins Glen with winning crew chief Scott Graves
00:03Well, we thought that it was going to be a varying strategy calls between all of you crew chiefs on pit road
00:09How do you think your strategy played out in your favor today? I worked out pretty well, I guess
00:14Yeah, I was back and forth
00:15I thought there was gonna be more fall off than there was which kind of led us to our initial strategy and then was a
00:20little surprised at how much flatter the fall off was today and
00:24So it made that last stage interesting
00:26But I think in the end it worked out in our benefit and then at the end
00:29It's just kind of stay out keep the track position and survive all the the the mess that happens at the end of these things
00:35so just
00:36Really proud of everybody on the team and Chris for what he did there to make sure that we we got the win here
00:40So that was a good day
00:41You said it but we also thought that tires and the fall off of the tires was going to be a much bigger story
00:46Why do you think that they weren't?
00:49You know, it's hard to say just I know
00:51There's a tendency when it's like a really clean track in practice
00:54The guys fire off and really fast laps and then it makes the fall off look more dramatic
00:57And you get in race conditions and those fast laps aren't there
01:00So it's like it just never the slow lap stayed the same
01:03But the the fast lap was much slower is what it looked like
01:06So instead of three seconds of fall off
01:08We were looking at one second and then it just cooled down towards the end and the more it cools down the more grips up
01:14And then that just fall off kind of goes away from that. Well, that was your side of the deal
01:18But your driver followed through with his side. What do you think of that move?
01:22He made on Shaman Gisbergen in the last lap. I thought it was awesome
01:25I know I know we were all thinking about back to like Kansas earlier this year and then what happened
01:30I know it's going through my mind. It was going through his mind
01:33and you know just he's gonna go get the win and I think it was
01:38People will probably argue if it was or not. It was respectful the way he did it
01:41You know, like I think he got kind of hit in turn one and he was able to get to his bumper
01:45He didn't wreck him
01:46He just you know did what he had to do to get out front and he made it a really good race and
01:50That's the way he drives I mean, he's not gonna go flat-out wreck anybody we've seen that through his whole career
01:55But I was glad that he you know, he did what he had to do to win the race there. Congratulations Scott. Thank you