NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
DAYTONA SPEEDWEEKS MEDIA DAY
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 16, 2012
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET, met with members of the media at Daytona International Speedway and discussed last year’s performance, changes over the off season and his impending role as a new father. Full Transcript:
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON AUSTIN DILLION? WHAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP DO YOU HAVE WITH HIM? “I think for me, I kind of feel responsible to help Austin and Ty. They are good kids. I have grown up around the organization since they were barely old enough to walk. For me it is fun to see them come along and they do a good job in the race cars and are very respectful of the things that they have and realize the opportunities that they have. They make it easy to help them.”
IN REGARDS TO HOW THE DAYTONA 500 WILL PLAY OUT: “The playing out part is tough to answer. I think even from the test there are a lot of unknowns. I think a lot of us are anticipating getting our first practice underway and the Bud Shootout to really see what all is going to take place. This is just a wide open race. There is a lot of anticipation, a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of hype and build up and usually you see something crazy happen at the beginning of these races. You want to make it through the first parts of the race and try to keep yourself from getting torn up. I think we made it 23 laps last year and had an engine failure. You never know what is going to happen. I think this weekend is important.”
HOW COOL WOULD IT BE TO SAY SON THE YEAR YOU WERE BORN WAS THE YEAR I WON MY FIRST CHAMPIONSHIP? “ That would be pretty cool. This has been a long time in the process and there has been a lot that had to take place before everything to happen the way that it has. You guys have seen all the moving parts and obviously you didn’t have all the information that went with it. It’s been great to start the family aspect of our life with Richard absorbing most everything that we had at KHI. To see the depth and the people that it has brought to the RCR organization is great to have everything under the same roof and to put it all into place and to see how it’s all unfolded. A lot of people were looking at us like we were crazy in September of last year, but it’s all worked out great.”
IS THAT THE BIG REASON YOU SOLD THE RACE TEAM? “That was the biggest contributing factor, yes.”
HOW HAS YOUR LIFE CHANGED SINCE LAST YEAR? “At first it was hard to really understand what you were supposed to do. We have been so used to getting up in the morning and going to work. You see what problems have occurred on that particular day. You go in and try to unravel them and fix them. For us this winter was more about how to relax and take care of yourself, work on the house, go on vacation and really use the off season as what it is meant for. Seems like the off season has gone on forever because we have always been so busy in the past, it flew by. I’m excited to get back at the track and excited where our life is headed.”
DO YOU HAVE A NAME? “ Yes we do, you will find out what it is in July.”
IS THAT A FUTURE BABY BLOG? “The baby blog shut the website down yesterday. It did. I know it seems silly, but DeLana posted her baby blog up yesterday. First thing it did was crash the website.”
DO YOU SEE THAT AS A POSSIBILITY BEING ABLE TO WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP THIS YEAR? “We made a lot of changes, obviously the family decision led into a snowball effect of things that started to happen. When we made that decision obviously Austin was coming to the Nationwide Series and it made a very sensible change to take the Nationwide teams and put them at RCR. The situation with (Clint) Bowyer, when that happened, there was some downsizing on the Cup side that had to take effect. You had four teams with a lot of people you could cherry pick from to make the best teams possible. It gave us a chance to start working on a lot of things. We made a lot of different decisions. I told them earlier that I have changed everything from my chiropractor to my race team. Anything you can think of in between we have worked on and tried to make better.”
YOU ARE THE ONLY DRIVER WHO HAS FINISHED IN THE TOP THREE IN POINTS THE LAST TWO YEARS WHICH IS A STAT MANY PEOPLE TAKE A SECOND LOOK AT. YOU MADE A LOT OF CHANGES, BUT HAS THIS BEEN THE BEST STRETCH OF YOUR CAREER AND BEST CHANCE TO WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP? “I think from a mental aspect, this is the best. I never really realized how much an effect it takes on you with all the things you have going on, on the outside that frame of mind that you are able to put yourself in is much more relaxed. We made a lot of changes. We brought Drew [Blickensderfer] from the outside to bring in some new ideas. Shane (Wilson, crew chief) have worked together a lot so we have made what we felt were the best decisions to try as an organization to take ourselves from finishing third to win the championship. I feel like we may go out and it all may just crumble but with what we have underneath us we feel like this is the best opportunity that we have built for ourselves over the winter.”
HOW WAS THE REALIZATION THAT YOU ARE GOING TO BE A FATHER CHANGED YOU AS A PERSON? “You obviously have to think about a lot of things. The good thing about it is a lot of our friends have already gone through the process. I tell a lot of people all the time, we will probably be the most mature people at the school lunch or the PTA meetings. We did wait a little longer in life, but I think our life is a lot more settled than most parents going into these situations. I’m 36 and DeLana’s 38, we are looking forward to it. We have been through a lot of challenges together in our lives. Whether it was 2001 or starting race teams or getting rid of race teams we have had to make a lot of decisions and been hands on with a lot of things. When something like this is yours, you do everything you can to make it right. A lot of things you would change in your life that you want to do better to make your child’s life better, you talk about a lot of those things. It’s going to be a great challenge. It definitely changes the direction of the things you think about and do in your life, but we are looking forward to it.”
WILL THE ADDITION OF THE BABY CHANGE YOU AS A DRIVER? “I think it has to. I think when you are having a bad day and you go in the motorhome door it will be a lot easier to flip that switch off and separate yourself from the things that have happened during the day. I think that is the good thing. I think that is the one thing I have learned over the winter is it is good to shut it off. You hear a lot of people talk about that you want to focus on the times that you focus and give it 100 percent attention, but it will be good when you can shut that off for several hours.”
YOU ARE VERY INTENSE AND COMPETITIVE, WILLTHIS MAKE YOU THINK ABOUT THAT A LITTLE BIT? “The drive and determination I don’t think changes. Obviously, you want to set the best example that you can, but the competitor in you is still who you are. The day that goes away you won’t see me sitting here the first week of the season.”
HAVING OWNED A NATIONWIDE TEAM CAN YOU SPEAK TO THE ECONOMIC IMPACT THAT HAVING DANICA IN THE SERIES THIS YEAR: “I don’t think there is anything, obviously she will bring a lot of attention but I think and we’ve experienced this with Nationwide teams before, you can go out and win races and have the best drivers in your car and not be able to find a sponsor. I don’t think she will really have any effect on that other than it will bring a lot of attention to the series. The economy and the sponsorship fight is what it is whether she is here or not.”
IN REGARDS TO THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BUD SHOOTOUT:
“I think this is as an important of a Bud Shootout as I can possibly ever remember just for the fact that the rules have changed a little bit from the time we were here at the test. So there are still a lot of unknowns, a lot of things as drivers and teams that you want to push and want to test the limits of before you get to the 500. Basically you have practice for the Shooutout and the race itself to make a quick plan over the beginning of next week and come back and practice in the twins or duels or whatever they are called to go into next week. This Shootout is important because we really don’t know. We think we are going to have a mixed style of racing, but we really don’t know temperatures and pop off valves and things are still a little bit unknown.”
IN REGARDS TO TANDEM RACING: “Tandem is still going to win the race. I will promise you that.”
WHAT WILL WE SEE SPECIFICALLY? “The biggest thing in my mind is just the weather. The ambient temperature is going to be a key factor in how long you can push and how fast the temperatures rise. If you get a hot day, the tandem racing will be affected a lot. The cars actually run hotter in a pack; it’s harder to cool them in a pack than in a tandem. Obviously, in a tandem you can duck out and get some air, but the pack racing is hotter than a tandem for a lap or two.”
IS IT MUCH WARMER THIS WEEK THAN IN TESTING IS? IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO SEE THAT MUCH DIFFERENT FROM TESTING IN JANUARY? “It was fairly cool when we were at the test. I think they opened up the grill an inch on each side or up and down I don’t remember exactly which direction. They opened up the grill some, but if it’s 80 it’s going to be 30 degrees hotter than when we tested. There will be some scrambling I would say.”
WHEN YOU WON THE DAYTONA 500 HOW DID THAT MOMENT MESH WITH WHAT YOU HAD BEEN DREAMING OF? “That’s a good question, it was a lot more work than I anticipated. When you are standing there is victory lane and you look at that Harley J. Earl trophy and you see the names on that trophy and you start to see the recognition and the list of people you put yourself on there with it is something that is pretty special. This is our sports biggest race and everybody puts their biggest effort into this race because you have the most time. It has the most hype and it pays the most money. It has the most prestigious trophy and there is nothing about this race that is not the biggest or the best.”
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT THE CHASE IN 2010 AND 2011 THAT WILL HELP YOU IN 2012? “I don’t think we made mistakes. I think if we could combine the two Chases, that would make a great Chase. We were very consistent in 2010. We were very inconsistent in 2011. We had speed in 2010, we didn’t have the speed we had in 2010 that we had in 2011. I think you need a combination of those two things. You have to have the capabilities in your cars of speed like Stewart had last year so that you can have a couple of bad races so you can go out and knock out a couple of wins. I think if you have that speed in your car and that capability no matter how bad a day you have a couple of races you can go out and overcome consistency with wins.”
DO YOU THINK MAYBE TRYING THINGS IN THE CHASE IS NOT THE RIGHT ROUTE? “It definitely hindered us getting locked into the Chase early. I felt like we somewhat sat on our hands, not sat on our hands, I think we tried more things than we probably should have and probably we should have really looked at what we were doing well and tried to build on that. Instead of going down roads we wanted to explore. We got ourselves off target and never really found that speed that we had at the beginning of the year at the end of the year because we were kind of chasing our tail a little bit.”
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