JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 AXALTA CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED 4TH

“You need everything to go your way in a race like this. I almost had a shot at the No. 41 (Kurt Busch) but I just couldn’t quite clear him and then he kind of took off there. All in all it was a solid night. Congrats to (race winner) Denny Hamlin. Qualifying well and that number one pit stall means everything and once you get out front, it’s so hard to get by.”

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS BEING YOUR LAST ALL-STAR RACE AS A COMPETITOR?

“It’s too early for me to put that into perspective. I have so many races ahead of us before the season is over. I think Homestead is going to be the one that really impacts me the most. It was really amazing in pre-race to see all those signs. I was surprised. I didn’t know that was happening and I got out there and I was pretty overwhelmed by that. We would have liked to have had a win in our last one.”

DID YOU LIKE THE ALL-STAR FORMAT AND THE CHANGE THEY MADE TO IT?

“Yeah, the track is racy, the cars are racy; I just wish track position wasn’t so important. But I like the format. I think the format helps a lot because if you do get a bad restart, or you didn’t qualify as good, you can work on that average finish. I thought we had a pretty decent average and I felt like we were a third or fourth place car, and we finished fourth.”

TOP FIVE FINISH FOR YOU HERE TONIGHT TALK ABOUT YOUR NIGHT HERE:

“Yeah, pretty happy with that. Obviously we came here to win and this is kind of a win or go home type of situation, but we also know that this is a test session for next week. I thought we showed signs of some good speed, learned some things on some restarts and got a couple of things we can work on to be even better for next week.”