Kevin Harvick: “I think the way that the race ended obviously was a little bit dramatic”
Oct 02, 2007
CIA Stock Photo
THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon. Welcome to the NASCAR NEXTEL teleconference. For those who are going to cover the weekend events at Talladega, reigning champion and leader Jimmie Johnson will be the guest for the Nextel leader chat on site there in the infield media center. He will be there at 10:00 a. m. for those who wish to chat with Jimmie this week.
Our guest today ahead of Sunday’s 405 Talladega is Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 29 Shell/Pennzoil Chevrolet car. Kevin is fifth in the Chase standings, heading to Talladega, and as most of his Chase peers after the three events thus far, he’s changed positions after every race.
Kevin, welcome. Some tight battles shaping up as you guys switch spots and fight for every point. That’s been the norm so far during this Chase.
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, it’s been a fight so far. I think everybody’s had trouble. We had trouble the first two weeks and last week we finally got to finish where we ran most of the day. So that was nice for us. And I think in the first two weeks we got three flat tires. So it was a good week for us. A bad week for a lot of the others. But we have a couple of those leading up to it. It was nice to finish where we were at.
THE MODERATOR: Let’s go to media questions.
Q Kevin, could you talk a little bit about just how unknown the Car of Tomorrow is going to be and, for example, that huge run you were able to get to win the Daytona 500 plate racing up on the outside. Is that kind of thing, do you have any idea whether that’s even possible anymore? Is that all out the window? Just how unknown is this whole thing?
KEVIN HARVICK: I think it’s less unknown than obviously before the Talladega test. Obviously the biggest unknown is putting all 43 cars on the track and seeing where everybody’s going to wind up. You don’t want to fall far behind; if you get too far behind the pack gets substantially faster than it was before but it seems harder to catch up because the cars are so draggy compared to what we used to run.
So they draft a little bit different. At the test I got behind, I don’t remember who it was, but we went from the back of the pack all the way to the front. And it’s just a matter of getting in the right line and making the right decisions throughout the race, and keeping your car from getting tore up.
So it’s still going to be a lot of the same Talladega characteristics as we had before. And missing the wreck and trying to put yourself in the right spot at the end.
So I think you’re still going to be able to get help and get runs and things like that.
Q Kevin, can you clarify what the visibility limitations are in the Car of Tomorrow? Is it mainly not being able to see through the back window with a wing? Are there other things? And some drivers have said they’ve been able to find a mirror that allows them to see underneath the wing.
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I don’t know how you can see underneath a wing. But if there is, I guess I need to get up on my mirror game here.
But the cars are a little bit harder to see through just because of the wing. And you can’t really cheat these cars out because the fenders are so big. You gotta stay directly behind the car in front of you. But I think as you become used to driving these cars and really becoming accustomed to what you’re looking for and where you’re looking at and things like that, I think you’ll find other ways to make it work.
Q I wanted to ask you about Jacques Villeneuve debut at Talladega. Some are expressing concerns about having a rookie, and he’s a rookie, in stock cars debut at a race with the plates, the Car of Tomorrow. So many unknowns. They think it might be somewhat risky. I’d like to get your thoughts on that.
KEVIN HARVICK: I wouldn’t pick it as my first race, I can tell you that much. It could be a bad move if things go wrong. But hopefully they go in with an agenda of just trying to survive and just really just making laps and not trying to do anything miraculous or heroic, I guess you could say.
But it’s probably definitely not the race if I was a team owner or a driver coming for the first time to such an unknown that I would have picked.
Q Rockingham is up for auction today. And I just wondered if you could go back to the day you made your debut there and talk a little bit about what that was like for you and if you have any special feelings for that place.
KEVIN HARVICK: For me, personally, I didn’t really like Rockingham to tell you the truth. It was a place where we didn’t run really good and things didn’t ever go that well for us. And obviously that’s where I made my first start. So that was a place that I’ll always remember.
Obviously it wasn’t under the circumstances that any of us ever anticipated. So we had – I think the first time we ever went there was the best I had ever run there. So for me it wasn’t something – personally it’s something you remember for your first start, but never something that I’ve really remembered for being very good there for sure.
Q I want to ask you whether you think Kansas was just as crazy as you’ve ever seen a race, that you would ever have predicted Kansas would be that insane. And if you think Talladega is going to be any crazier from what you’ve seen so far in the Chase?
KEVIN HARVICK: That was in Montreal, that one still takes the cake for me. In Kansas, I think the way that the race ended obviously was a little bit dramatic. People can read into it what they want to read into it.
But the 16 is still pretty much – at that point all you have to do is stay rolling and the field’s frozen and it’s pretty simple to interpret the rules, in my opinion anyway. And as far as everybody, all the Chase guys crashing and getting torn up, it seems like that has been that way every week. So it’s just been unpredictable. And after the rain delay, everybody knew it was going to get dark.
And we had the caution come out right in the middle of the second rain delay and you had a bunch of guys on the tail in the lead lap and the bottom, the lap down and everybody thought they could make some ground right there. And everybody just wound up getting tore up right there after the second delay.
So caution after caution, it seemed like, and everybody was just racing hard and those things are happening. And I’ve read some things this week of inconsistency, in my opinion. I don’t think the call was inconsistent and everybody knows that I have a pretty fair opinion, pretty honest opinion. I don’t know whether it’s fair or not. But I didn’t think there was really any controversy of the results for the way that things finished.
So maybe I interpret the rules wrong, but that’s just the way that I saw it.
Q Due to the playoff nature of these last ten races, do you think that NASCAR should have tried to finish the race under the scheduled distance, whether that be on Monday or whatever?
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, I think you have things you can’t control and you have things you can control. Obviously the weather is something that we can’t control. And I think we could have just ended the race and been done with it after the second rain delay started and just everybody went home. But I think with them waiting it out and letting the rain come through and getting as much of the race in as possible, I think with logistics and where we are in our sport, I think sometimes you just have to do the best that you can.
And I think they did a good job doing the best they could to get the race in, and to me it’s unfortunate that we have to read so much into everything. The Chase means a lot but you can’t control the weather. Just like every other race you still have 43 guys. You still have the same schedule. You still have everything that you have to do next week. And some things just aren’t possible to do like that. And the rules are if you get halfway, and we were over halfway, they did everything they could to get the race as far in as they could.
So it’s just unfortunate that everybody has to read so much into things and put things on our sport that really aren’t really necessary to put on it to make it look worse than it really is.
Q Kevin, you’re only 126 points out of the lead, which is a heck of a lot better than most of the other guys in the Chase. Can you sort of talk about your approach to the final seven races?
KEVIN HARVICK: Our approach hasn’t changed. We go and try to be as aggressive as we can every week and make our cars run as fast as they can to put ourselves into position to win. If you can’t do that, then you have to make the best day possible out of the days that you’re having.
The first two weeks we had some tire trouble, three different tire problems, just cut tires and had bad luck and we made decent days out of those particular days, and that’s what’s helped keep us where we are in the points, because we didn’t give up. My team did a great job getting everything back together and making laps up and just putting ours into position to finish the races and other people have had trouble finishing in the high 30s and low 40s. So we’ve avoided those days and in order to win this thing you’re going to have to be consistent and have to go out and run good every week.
When you have those bad days you’ve got to prevent them from being disasters.
Q Back to the Villeneuve question, you had 70 Truck starts, 33 Busch starts and one 16th place at Talladega and seven Cup starts going into your first Talladega race in a Cup car, did you feel you were prepared going into Talladega and do you think that Villeneuve should maybe wait until a later date to go to Talladega?
KEVIN HARVICK: I think from an experience standpoint, I don’t think you can really ever prepare yourself for Talladega. Obviously didn’t do very well in his first Truck race. Going to Talladega, I think there’s a lot of things that with a lot of things on the line and being one of our places where you know that you’re going to have some trouble probably that you’re going to have to avoid, there probably could have been – probably could have been a better place for him to make his Cup debut.
So the Truck Series and the Busch Series are there to gather that knowledge and be able to race and understand the cars and Talladega is a place that’s so unpredictable.
He’s probably going to be able to do it and probably going to be fine. But it’s just the odds are definitely not in his favor.
Q Kevin, with Talladega you would usually be in the place in the Chase where it makes a mess of things, scrambles up the standings, do you see any particular irony this time that the thing has already been scrambled at Kansas City, is it possible that possibly two wrongs could make a right, that two messes might kind of even everything out after you get away from Talladega?
KEVIN HARVICK: I don’t know. It just seems like last year to me it seemed like things kind of started off the same way and as we went through the Chase they calmed down. I think every race is going to have the same little characteristics. It seems like a lot of the same guys have run good at the last restricter plate check.
Obviously going in this time we have a lot more variables than what we’ve had before. So I think Talladega is just Talladega. We could have the same mess like in Kansas and tearing up cars and everybody is being aggressive trying to get everything they can. And unfortunately everybody’s kind of had some trouble the first three races and none of us have been able to put three weeks together.
Heck, we could come out and be turned upside down again for sure.
Q Sorry, just a follow-up on Rockingham, could you talk about how difficult a day that was to make your debut there under those circumstances and did you get the sense that was the start of the kind of special career that you ended up having?
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, we’ve moved on from a lot of those things and obviously that was a tough day for everybody. Really the only thing I remember about that day was getting on the wrong helicopter because Delana and I were going to Vegas to get married. That was about the biggest mix-up we had that day. And obviously the emotions and everything were the week before and going forward, I mean, it was – it was not a situation everybody wanted to be in.
We’ve come a long way since then and hopefully looking forward to keeping everything going as it has been the past few years.
Q What do you think about when you go to Talladega, what’s on your mind at Talladega? Is it hard to keep your concentration up? Do you worry about people making mistakes or do you focus on your game? What do you do to make it all possible to go that fast and watch out for yourself?
KEVIN HARVICK: I think going into this race, I think you want to – when you go to Talladega it seems like you want to be up front and as close to the front as you can to avoid as many accidents as you can and sometimes they start in the front and you’re in it.
So you just go to Talladega with the mindset going as hard as you can and put yourself in the right position that hopefully you can find the least amount of troubles in that particular day.
So sometimes trouble finds you and I’ve been there and made mistakes and caused trouble, too. So it’s just – it’s all about making the least amount of mistakes from your part and trying to Dodge the rest of the mistakes that people make on their part. So everybody’s going to make mistakes and you have to avoid it as best you can.
