What drivers said after the NASCAR playoff opener at Chicagoland Speedway

Martin Truex Jr. drove away to win Sunday at the Chicagoland Speedway, the opening race of the Monster Energy Cup Series playoffs. Chase Elliott finished second, with Kevin Harvick in third.

During the first stage of the Tales of the Turtles 400, pole-sitter Kyle Busch looked like he would overwhelm the field in leading 85 of the first 87 laps. But his day took a turn south when a pair of miscues by his Joe Gibbs Racing necessitated two unscheduled trips down pit road, dropping Busch two laps behind. He would rally to finish 15th.

Here is what Truex, Busch, Gibbs and others had to say following Sunday’s postseason race:

Truex, the No. 1 playoff seed, on whether his series-best fifth win of the season sends a message to the competition:

“I don’t care much about statements, I’m just having fun. I’m proud of our pit crew for doing what they did and everyone on this team. It’s important to come here and not let the pressure get to you and I think we did a good job of that. Every time you go to Victory Lane, it’s special.”

Busch on his pit crew, which was moved from teammate Daniel Suarez’s car last week to better Busch’s chances of winning the championship:

“It’s just disappointing that we had trouble on pit road like that. We just never had the opportunity with how the cautions fell to get back on the lead lap. We’ll get back to the shop and talk about it, and really all we can do is move on and put it behind us.”

Gibbs on whether Busch and Suarez will switchback pit crews:

“We felt like this was the best decision for the team. You always look at everything, and we do. But we make decisions like that, you hope things work out for you, sometimes they don’t. We all go up, we all go down together.”

Adam Stevens, Busch’s crew chief, assessing the litany of mistakes on pit road:

“Just piss-poor execution all around. Made a lot of mistakes on pit road, and when you make back-to-back mistakes, it’s tough to recover from them.

“Track like this, everyone knows you’re going to get longer green flag runs; you’re not going to have a lot of cautions to get those laps back. We had a fast car. Best car I’ve ever been a part of here and not much to show for it.”

Elliot on finishing second following a performance downswing entering the playoffs:

“Just a huge step in the right direction. Days like this are the days we are going to have to have. There is no way around that. ... I didn’t have anything for Martin. I thought we made the most of our day. Without some luck I wasn’t going to get around him unless we had a late-race restart or something. I had a solid day and frankly, it is a lot better than we have been doing and we’ve got to have days like this to keep moving forward.”