NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
DAYTONA SPEEDWEEKS
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
FEBRUARY 22, 2015
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 4 BUDWEISER/JIMMY JOHN’S CHEVROLET SS met with media and discussed the SAFER barrier issue, Kyle Busch’s injury, varying conditions surrounding today’s race such as weather temperatures, race day routines, momentum carried over from 2014, and more. Full Transcript:
GIVE US A SUMMARY OF YOUR OFF-SEASON, AND HOW YOU FEEL GOING INTO TODAY’S GREAT RACE
“I’m excited that today is finally here. It seems like you put in a lot of time out of the race car and a lot of things going on with the New Year and sponsorships and production days; so it’s been a busy off-season trying to get our offices and everything moved to Charlotte. So, I’m just excited to be here and heck, I race the car for a living so, things could be a lot worse. I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to hopefully try and put our name on that trophy again at the end of the day.”
IN 2007 YOU LED ONLY FOUR LAPS AND PASSED MARK MARTIN TO WIN THE RACE. HOW IS THIS RACE DIFFERENT FROM ALL THE OTHER RACES THAT, THAT HAPPENS SO MUCH?
“There are a lot of things that usually happen during SpeedWeeks and I think as you get into the race today, this is very typical. You go through a whole week and then you show-up on Sunday and the weather is 30 degrees hotter than it has been at any point that we’ve practiced in; or it’s colder or there is some kind of scenario or there’s something going on or a rules change. There’s always something to manage. But I think when you look at that year; we’d actually had some trouble there toward the end of the race. And everything just has to line-up for you. The first thing you have to do is finish, so you have to have luck on your side today. If it’s your day, it’s your day. And if it’s not, you’re going to wind-up on a tow truck. We’ve been on both sides of that. This is just kind of it’s own beast. There’s a lot of hype. There’s a lot of work and effort that goes into this one particular race to lead off the season. Everybody has had all winter to prepare for it.
“You have to try to control your emotions at the beginning of this race because you’re more amped-up for this race than you are for probably any race you’re going to go to all year; and just try to minimize the mistakes because there are a lot of ‘firsts’. The guys have jumped over the wall, but they’ve really only jumped over the wall one time and there’s not been all the cars on pit road and all the cars together on the race track, so you don’t really know what you have with your race car until you drop the green flag and all 43 cars are out there together. There are a lot of unknowns still as we go into the day with a complete drastic set of circumstances, weather-wise, that are much different than we’ve practiced or raced in all week.”
YOU’VE BEEN VOCAL ABOUT THE LACK OF SAFER BARRIERS. YOU WERE IN THE TV BOOTH YESTERDAY. WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION WHEN KYLE BUSCH CRASH IN THE AREA WITH NO SAFER BARRIER, AND THEN AFTER JOIE CHITWOOD’S ANNOUNCEMENT LAST NIGHT?
“Well, I think that’s just it. It’s a reaction from the race track, unfortunately. I hit the same wall a little further up, last year, at this particular race and kind of voiced my opinion and unfortunately I was just a ‘dot’ on the chart and there was no reaction. Now there’s a reaction from the race track. So, hopefully this is a lesson learned. You don’t want to have a reaction. The race tracks have to be proactive and they have to look ahead of an accident that did happen. They have to look ahead and look for accidents that might happen. And there’s been great improvement. We know what fixes these walls and that’s to put a wall in front of them. And that’s why we wear a helmet. That’s why we wear HANS. That’s why we wear fire suits. That’s why we have fire bottles. It’s for that one moment that you have to protect yourself against. Ninety-eight percent of the time, 99 percent of the time, things are going to be fine. So, help us by trying to prevent that one situation. Just like we did with Dale Earnhardt. You have Kyle Busch, one of our sport’s biggest stars, who is out and not being able to race because of the lack of attention that it takes to the safety on these superspeedways and instead of being proactive, the track was reactive.”
HEADING INTO THIS RACE, THERE IS A TYPICAL EXUBERANCE TO THE START OF THE SEASON. IS THAT MUTED AT ALL GIVEN WHAT HAPPENED TO KYLE BUSCH YESTERDAY?
“Well, you feel bad for the sport in general, the fans, Kyle himself, more than anything. Kyle is a big part of this sport and carries a lot of weight and has a lot of fans and a big part of the show. And now, he’s not in the race today. And that’s a big hit for everybody in this race today. It’s unfortunate and I hope we all take something from this and learn just as we did. And fortunately it’s not a situation of the magnitude of Earnhardt’s, but it’s a wake-up call in my opinion to make sure that we do things right.”
GIVEN THAT IT’S BEEN A WEIRD WEEK WITH DIFFERENT STORYLINES, PLUS KYLE BUSCH’S INCIDENT YESTERDAY. IS THERE ANY SENSE, DUE TO THE DANGER AND DISLIKE OF SUPERSPEEDWAY RACING, THAT THERE MIGHT BE A LITTLE TREPIDATION WHEN GUYS ARE PUTTING THEIR HELMETS ON AND GETTING IN THEIR CARS TODAY?
“This sport is still a tremendous amount safer than it was 15 years ago or 12 years ago. This is a very safe sport. Unfortunately yesterday we had that one situation where all the stars lined up and things happened. We’re going to tear up some race cars today just because that’s just how you race here. And nine times out of 10, the cars aren’t making the mistakes. It’s the drivers. So, you’re going to have to be aggressive. I don’t see that changing with what’s on the line today to win the Daytona 500. Everybody is going to push and shove and do what they have to do to try to put themselves in position to win.”
WHEN ONE OF THE DRIVERS WHO YOU MAY NOT HAVE HAD THE BEST RELATIONSHIP WITH, DOES IT CHANGE HOW PEOPLE REACT TO A SITUATION LIKE KYLE BUSCH FACES? “It doesn’t matter whether you like or dislike somebody on the race track. It does not ever interfere with the fact of doing what is right in a situation. He has a wife, and parents and people around him that love him. You want to do whatever you can do to try to help. I’m sure they have everything under control, and trying to do the best that they can in the situation. But, that’s not how this garage is. This garage is open arms no matter who it is in any situation. Everybody wants to make sure your family is in as good a shape as possible and do anything you can to help in any way that you can. What happens on the race track is never anything that is personal. It is so hard to maintain what you do as a driver and as a person yourself with your own job that you have to do everything you can. Everybody does everything they can outside to help each other. Sure, you might not be best friends or something like that. But you never want to see people hurt.”
WHAT MAKES YOU THE FAVORITE TODAY? “I think we’ve done a good job of managing the week. I think obviously the Hendrick engines are running very well. They have a great speedway program at Hendrick Motorsports. We’re glad to have a piece of that at Stewart-Haas Racing. I feel like we have managed our week well and we have what we feel like is our best car to race in the 500, and that was really the main goal. But, those guys have produced the results this week, they should be the favorites.”
ARE THERE ANY RACE DAY RITUALS THAT YOU DO TO PREPARE? “I pretty much developed a routine that I am comfortable with as far as when I eat, what I eat. We do our hospitality appearances at the same time pretty much every weekend. For me I probably get a little bit quieter. My hearing becomes a little bit impaired on the weekends as far was what I hear from people around me. I just kind of go into my own little zone to try to concentrate on what I’m getting ready to do. This is our biggest race of the year, so you have to be ready to go when the green flag drops.”
YOU KNOW YOUR CAREER CAN BE FLEETING FOR VARIOUS REASONS. WHEN SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPENS DOES IT CAUSE YOU TO STEP BACK AND REEVALUATE YOUR PERSONAL PLANNING AND PREPARATION FOR YOUR LIFE AFTER THE SPORT? “Not right now, no. I think as a driver I woke up this morning trying to make sure I was prepared for what I need to do today. I think our guys do a great job inside the race car. NASCAR does job in making sure that the seats, the chassis and everything… and the inspection process of these cars that NASCAR goes through is a big reason why Kyle’s entries aren’t worse than they were yesterday driving straight on into a wall. NASCAR has done a great job in making continuous advancements in the safety of the cars. We feel like we’ve stayed up with everything that’s been made available to us through the safety team at NASCAR. This is an unfortunate situation with Kyle, but it could have been a ton worse if NASCAR wasn’t ahead of the game and doing what they’ve done with these cars and taking bold steps with what was the Car of Tomorrow that is now the Gen 6 car with the seats and everything that go with it. It has advanced a lot.”
THERE IS SO MUCH BUZZ AROUND THIS, THEN GOING TO ATLANTA IS A SNAP BACK TO REALITY AS YOU GO BACK TO RACING MILE-AND-A-HALF AND NORMAL RACES AGAIN. WHAT DOES ATLANTA MEAN TO YOU, AND WHAT IS IT THE DIFFERENCE FOR THE SECOND RACE COMPARED TO DAYTONA? “Right now, this is it. I’ve never been a guy to think too far ahead. It is one goal at a time, and right now it is the Daytona 500. I’ll get back to you on Monday about Atlanta.”
IS THERE A POINT DURING SPEEDWEEKS THAT THE MOMENTUM YOU ARE CARRYING FROM LAST YEAR STOPS, AND THE NEXT GOAL TAKES OVER? “I think when we pulled in the gate here, everybody knew that we were faced with a new task I guess you could say. And that was to try to defend a championship and how to do that and what we needed to do. We don’t really know. We don’t really know what is ahead of you as far as the year and the things you are going to have to react to. Every year is going to be different. Every situation is going to be different. The thing that I do know is I have a lot of confidence in my team. I know the team has a lot of confidence in me and in the organization. Everything that we did last year, we had a lot of pretty extreme circumstances that the organization dealt with Tony’s situation. We had built a whole new team with new people that came on board. As the year went, the confidence just kept getting greater and greater. And, now you know you can do it. You know that your team can react to situations. You know that your guys on your team are going to have each other’s backs; you are going to have their backs. It is just a great feeling to be a part of a team and have everybody pulling in the same direction and supporting each other. I’ve said this before, I hope everybody gets to experience it like all the guys on our team have, and myself. It is a pretty special feeling to have that many people doing and wanting to accomplish the same things together. That is rare.”
YOU GOT RAVES DOING THE TV BROADCAST DURING THE XFINITY RACE YESTERDAY. DID YOU HAVE FUN DOING THAT? DO YOU WANT TO DO MORE IN THE FUTURE? “I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would actually. It was kind of a new challenge. For me I felt like you bring that perspective to the booth of right off the race track and being able to really relate to what’s going on out of the race track with being able to keep it elementary enough to relate to the race fans so you an keep it simple so they understand. It is something I definitely enjoyed and had a lot of fun doing. I think my next one is Las Vegas during the Xfinity race and Dover after that. I’ll have a chance to do a few of those this year. Still parking in that garage and the competitive spirit is what drives it. That’s what related to that booth up there and really being able to send the message out and really be able to give a real understanding of what’s going on the track to the fans.”
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