Budweiser Racing Team Notes of Interest
After a weekend off, Kevin Harvick and the No. 29 Budweiser Chevrolet team travel to Richmond (Va.) International Raceway for Saturday’s Crown Royal presents the Matthew and Daniel Hansen 400.
This weekend the No. 29 Budweiser Chevrolet team will utilize chassis No. 332 from the Richard Childress Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stable. Harvick has raced this car twice so far this year. Earlier this month he drove chassis No. 332 to Victory Lane at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway and in February he finished fourth in the same car at Phoenix International Raceway.
Last year at Richmond, Harvick and the No. 29 team started seventh in the spring race, led one lap and took home a third-place finish. In the fall event at the track, he started 20th and finished ninth.
· In 20 starts at Richmond International Raceway, Harvick has earned one pole award (September 2005), one win (September 2006), five top fives and 13 top-10 finishes. He’s completed 98.6 percent (7,887 of 8,003) total laps and has led 727 laps at the 0.75-mile track. Harvick has an average starting position of 18th and an average finishing position of 12th at Richmond.
· Harvick has scored top-10 finishes in 11 of the last 12 races at Richmond International Raceway. His average finish in that span is 8.6.
· Harvick owns a number of notable loop data statistics at Richmond International Raceway as he enters this weekend’s race: first in laps run in the top 15 (4,425 – 92 percent), first quality passes (379), second in average running position (7.3), second in laps led (680), third in drivers rating (112.1), third in fastest laps run (358), third in average green-flag speed (116.834 mph) and fifth in drivers fastest late in a run.
· Eight races into the 2011 season, Harvick is ranked fourth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver point standings after earning two wins, four top fives and five top-10 finishes.
Kevin Harvick discusses racing at Richmond International Raceway and the start of the 2011 Sprint Cup season:
There have been seven different winners in the first eight races. Talk about what that says about the level of competition at the Sprint Cup level?
“I think it’s a great sign for the health of the sport to see all the different organizations competitive. Really, since the Chase has started, it’s been so competitive trying to get into those top-10 or 12 spots for the Chase. It seems like from race one to 26, you do everything you can in order to get into one of those spots. Everyone is digging from lap 1 to get everything they can for their teams and sponsors to make it happen.”
Richmond has been a good track for you and your team.
“Richmond has probably been our best track on paper in both divisions. We’ve been fortunate to win some races there. We look at that place as if we’re having a bad start, that at least when we go to Richmond, we expect a top 10 out of the car. If everything is running well, you expect to be competitive and running up front.”
Talk about why you think you’ve performed so well at Richmond.
“When I was growing up, we spent a lot of time at Phoenix racing and really from day one we’ve always been successful on the flatter type race tracks through the years. Richmond has been a very good race track for us. I think it’s just kind of how I was brought up. We just adapted well right off the bat to those types of race tracks.”
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