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[/media-credit]NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
KOBALT TOOLS 400
LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
MARCH 9, 2012
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET, met with members of the media at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and discussed his chances this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Baby ‘Otis’ and other topics. Full Transcript:
TALK ABOUT YOUR OUTLOOK THIS WEEKEND AT LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY:
“We have run well here the last couple of years. Obviously, the season has started off well. We look to hopefully continue that success over the weekend and looking forward to getting the day started.”
THERE ARE SO MANY 1.5-MILE TRACKS ON THE SCHEDULE HOW MUCH EMPHASIS TO YOU PUT ON THESE STYLE TRACKS AS WE GO FORWARD? “Well they let us build a new car for this track. Obviously, they must be figuring that we are going to use it so we didn’t have to remodel one. 1.5-mile stuff is obviously the most important thing that we come across through the year because there are so many races.
“This track is a little bit different just because it is pretty rough. It holds on to its speed pretty well. Early in the year you go to a lot of different types of 1.5-mile race tracks, but you definitely no matter what type, apply the same characteristics. It’s an important weekend to see where you are at on this particular style of track.”
TWO YEARS AGO YOU CAME WITHIN A TICK OF WINNING. LAST YEAR YOU WERE 17TH. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT THIS YEAR GOING FORWARD? “Yeah, you read the finishes you don’t read the small print. I think we were running about the same spot last year and I got us in a speeding penalty there towards the end of the race. It’s been a good track for us over the last few years so we just have to continue doing the same things. I feel confident in the adjustments that we have made over the winter and we just have to get out on the race track and see where we are at.”
BOB OSBORNE (CREW CHIEF FOR CARL EDWARDS)TOLD ME THEY HAVE CARL’S HOMESTEAD CAR HERE TO SEE WHERE THEY STACK-UP COMPARED TO WHERE THEY WERE LAST YEAR. ARE WE ABLE TO TELL WHERE ANYONE STACKS UP YET? DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU KNOW WHERE YOU STACK UP AS OPPOSED TO LAST YEAR? “Not really. I’d be mad if they brought my Homestead car because that means they didn’t do much over the winter. Obviously, their stuff has been really good on the 1.5-mile race tracks through last year. They are in a little bit different position. We were kind of hit or miss on the 1.5-mile stuff. They brought a new car and feel like hopefully we have made our stuff better since Homestead.
“Honestly, you don’t really know, there is a lot of different, we might have gone down the wrong road and their stuff is still solid and they made the right decision and we made the wrong decision. It’s just a matter of getting through this weekend and deciding on what direction you need to work in as a team. In their position do you need to get better or did we work and not get ourselves in a better spot and need to back pedal a little bit and try to do some of the things that we did last year. This weekend will tell us a lot more than the previous weeks we have had cars on the track.”
I KNOW THE MILITARY ISSUES NICKNAMES TO BIG OPERATIONS. WHERE DID YOU AND DELANA GET ‘OTIS’ FOR YOUR UNBORN SON? “I don’t even know to be honest with you. I wish I could tell you (laughs). It is just something silly that we came up with as we have gone through the few months. That has been the most common question as to what we are going to name the boy. We don’t really want to tell anybody until it’s time so we just came up with a code name and that is what we came up with. It’s really Krissie Newman’s fault to tell you the truth. She calls me that every once in a while so we just called it baby ‘Otis’. At least it has some kind of name; you can refer to it as something. I keep wanting to call it ‘it’ and DeLana gets mad at me. She’s like ‘you can call it ‘son or boy’? “So we just came up with ‘Otis’.”
SINCE THE RECONFIGURATION OF THE TRACK THE NUMBERS SAY THERE HAVE BEEN MORE WRECKS AND MORE CAUTIONS BUT THEY ALSO SAY THERE HAS BEEN MORE PASSING MORE SIDE-BY-SIDE RACING. HOW MUCH DIFFERENT HAS IT BEEN SINCE THE RECONFIGURATION? “It’s definitely a totally different style of track. It’s just really fast and you have to really work on the aero side of your car. At this particular race track it has to ride the bumps well. Where before it wore the tires out a lot it was a very flat race track, you had a big difference in lap times throughout the run. Here you are going to have a little bit of difference in lap time but it’s going to be if you run 50 laps in a run you are going to run 50 qualifying laps so it’s a pretty fast place. Luckily the temperature is staying pretty level throughout the weekend so it shouldn’t lose a lot of grip with the heat. Just a really fast race track, but it also has a lot of bumps that you have to really work on your car to be able to maintain that speed that you need to throughout the whole run and keep the tires happy.”
About Chevrolet
Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world’s largest car brands, doing business in more than 140 countries and selling more than 4 million cars and trucks a year. Chevrolet provides customers with fuel-efficient vehicles that feature spirited performance, expressive design and high quality. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.
