Notable quotes from 2025 Cup Playoff Media Day

Before the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs begin Sunday at Darlington Raceway (6 p.m. ET, USA Network, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), all 16 drivers visited the Charlotte Convention Center to participate in Playoff Media Day. Read on to see each driver's most notable quote before the 10-race postseason officially commences. 

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William Byron on the strength of the No. 24 team: "I think our strength is just that we're fast at all the different tracks. I really don't see a track that we're at a big deficit. So I think at the same time, though, you never know what everyone else is going to bring and how fast they're going to be. So we’ve just got to keep working. We can keep getting better, but that's our strength."

Chase Elliott on the hardest part about the playoffs: "Ten weeks is a long time. Like, that's a lot of racing, and it's almost enough time for someone to have a good few weeks, go through a stretch of not-so-good weeks and then get good again. It's a lot of racing, you know, over two months. So, I think sometimes you kind of get these questions about the playoffs, and it's like, oh, there's just the playoffs, like, it's just one thing, right? And it's not. It's a long period of time. And a lot of long hours working, in the shop, and travel. It’s just there's 10 races and a lot can happen in 10 weeks."

Denny Hamlin about what makes his 19th postseason appearance any different: "It’s just another chance to roll the dice. That’s it. I don’t feel any better or any worse than what I have last year or the year before that or the year before that. They're all very, very similar. I feel as though our team is as strong as it's ever been, but we’ve seen in the short sample size, it's just a matter of whether you get unlucky at times or you catch a caution at the right time or not. Do you stub your toe on pit road? Those are the small things that decide whether you move on in the playoffs or not."

Bubba Wallace on what success looks like for the No. 23 team: "We’re not settled on the Indy win. It was a great opportunity that we capitalized on to set ourselves up for the ultimate goal, which is what we had in store at the beginning of the year, which was to be a champion. And so immediately after Indy, I skipped the next four or five -- whatever it was -- and looked at the playoffs. Honestly, got really excited about each and every race that’s coming up. I don’t look at any round as, 'oh man, this might be a struggle for us.' Then, I also look at the playoff field the last couple weeks and man, no one is really running away from it ... no one’s had like a breakout. You have a guy who can get on a hot streak for a couple races and then it’s somebody else."

Chase Briscoe explains his optimism level for the 2025 playoffs: "I was telling my wife a couple weeks ago, 'this is really the first time I've ever legitimately thought I could win a Cup championship.' In the past, you make the playoffs, and it's exciting, but down deep you kind of know that the odds of you winning are pretty slim, right? Whereas now, not to say that I'm the favorite by any means, but I feel like I have a legitimate chance to go do it, where at SHR (Stewart-Haas Racing), you never really felt like you had a legitimate shot to do it. Definitely feels different this time around.”

Shane van Gisbergen on if his Xfinity Series Playoffs appearance last year will help him this year: "I remember last year, the way it was approached was different to the rest of the season. We got caught up in the moment a little bit too much. We did a silly strategy at the (Charlotte) Roval. It was an unexplained mistake, really. I think this year it's been good … just trying to stay level-headed, take it week by week. We're in an amazing spot to be here, and we have no expectation to make it through the second round. No one knows what we're going to do. If we go and perform, we can surprise some people."

Kyle Larson on if the No. 5 team is heading in the right direction after an inconsistent summer: "I do think we are. I would love to have been leading a bunch of laps, but Richmond's not really the place that we're going to go lead laps anyways, and Daytona's just a different style race. But it still was good to get two solid finishes in a row and get through another superspeedway without a crash. And then, it leads into Darlington, which is a great track for us. So yeah, I look forward to getting the playoffs started. I think our team has been through a lot. I think we've seen a bunch, and we're prepared for a lot of different things. But we’ll see. You just have to go out there and execute like any other week.”

Ross Chastain on his strengths and weaknesses entering the playoffs: “I'll start with the weakness because it's the easiest one. It’s just, are we going to be fast? Are we going to roll off the truck fast for practice at Darlington, and are we going to be able to stay fast on Lap 10 of that run, Lap 20, Lap 30 and transfer that through into qualifying for one lap, and then back to long run for the race? That's the ultimate question for Trackhouse, in my mind is, can we go fast? And if we can do that, can we execute? We can call strategy, right. We'll miss calls. All the little things, I think we can do really well, but it's holding ourselves accountable to keep doing them well. I don't just rest on what we've done, but you need to make sure we do the little things right.”

Austin Dillon explains how doubters are motivating him: “I always use it as fuel, but I feel like I have really a good confidence and a calm about it. I don't have anything to prove in that sense. I'm just really happy with where we're at as an organization because first quarter of the season I would have said differently. But now I feel confident. I feel good that we can execute and make a good push. We're one of the last teams to win on a regular oval, so.”

Tyler Reddick on what his No. 45 team needs to do differently in the playoffs: “Pretty much don’t do what we did the first 26 races. We’ve been in a position to win and lose, we just -- don’t take ourselves out. Yeah, there’s plenty of things on a more serious note to go over and look at how we’ve been doing things. Everyone on the team has been looking into that, working hard, reflecting. And, yeah, the word reset has been thrown around a lot today. I feel like that’s a good way for us to look at it as well. Yeah, we’ve had a tough regular season. Yes, we’re behind the cutline and everything else, but the points margins are all closed up quite a bit with the playoff seeding. We’ve just got to go out there and do what we’ve been capable of all year -- just do it this time.”

Alex Bowman on if his approach changes from the last fee weeks: “I don’t think anything changes. You’re preparing at a high level for the last eight months and continuing to prepare at a high level for this week the same as we did last week and the week before. So while it's certainly not like a ramp up, because we're already there, we're just kind of going to work. … business as usual.”

Ryan Blaney on if Team Penske cars should be expected to return to the Championship 4: "You’ve got to get there first. It’s a gauntlet to get there. Everyone thinks it’s easy to get to Phoenix and you go win Phoenix. You’ve got to go through nine weeks of hell to get there. It’s tough, but I do think it’s nice to have all three of our cars and the 21 car in it, so it’s just how do we execute week in and week out through the rounds and how do you minimize your mistakes and don’t put yourself in a hole. I do like where our group is at, our company as a whole, with pace and people and things like that and just preparation, and then you just hope you can execute when the day comes and try to just take it one race at a time. That’s all you can do."

Joey Logano on his confidence level as he looks for his fourth title: "Honestly, the years I felt like we should have won the championship, we didn’t, so I think the key lesson of all that is you're never out of it. Until you are out, you are not out. Even last year when I thought I was out, I was not out. It's a very interesting 10 weeks that’s gonna come at us and it’s unpredictable. I don’t know how exactly it’s gonna play out. Nobody knows. That’s why the plan is one week at a time because you just don’t know what the next race is gonna bring at you, so you handle what’s ahead of you and you just take it one week at a time. You handle today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. It’s no different than what our parents taught us. It’s the same stuff.”

Josh Berry on making his first career playoff appearance: "It’s really cool and it's definitely been unusual as early as we won, and that was a big goal for us setting out this year – it was to win my first Cup race. I hadn’t won a Cup race up to that point, so it’s easy to look at that as the first goal on the list, so to accomplish that and obviously make the playoffs is something that we’ve been looking forward to throughout the year and really it just comes down to three races at a time now and we just have to have solid races and keep ourselves in contention and see what happens.”

Austin Cindric on if the competition is underestimating him: "I guess I haven’t considered that because I guess I don’t care. It doesn’t really change the results or I don’t think it would change how I’d be raced, either. I think the way this season has gone I don’t think there are any clear favorites. I think the playoff grid is as tight as it has ever been. Somebody told me that today, so I feel great. I feel like we have a lot of things that we can rely on within our team to be able to make performance, but also the process is in place to execute well."