Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Date: Friday, March 3, 2017
Event: Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500
Series: Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series
Location: Atlanta Motor Speedway (1.5-mile oval)
KEVIN HARVICK, POLE WINNER PRESS CONFERENCE
KEVIN HARVICK (No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Fusion) — WALK THROUGH THAT FINAL ROUND QUALIFYING LAP. “Yeah, that was the best our car had been and for me the most comfortable because I could see where I was going into turn one. I knew I got to the green very good and felt like I got through one and two good and just needed to hit the bottom. I hit the bottom perfectly and got in the gas and was able to stay in the gas around the corners. It was good timing on hitting the best lap from the seat and they hit it the best we had hit it in the three rounds. It all just lined up and wound up being out best lap. It says a lot about our team and organization. Obviously winning the Daytona 500 last week with Kurt (Busch) and having a strong speedweeks in general. Coming down here and feeling good about our race car, feeling good in race trim. They just do a great job. They are good at what they do and I am fortunate to be able to drive it and have fun with going fast and doing the things that we do. Seeing the transition to Ford has been a lot of fun and they have just done a great job. I am pretty excited about everything.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE INSPECTION ISSUES TODAY? “I just drive. I don’t worry about the rules.”
ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT IT PERSISTING AS YOU GO THROUGH THE SEASON? “It isn’t my department.”
HAS THERE BEEN A CHIP ON YOUR SHOULDERS AT SHR TO VALIDATE THE MOVE TO FORD AND ALL THE HARD WORK? “I think so. I think everybody has a chip on their shoulder just wanting to do well. It isn’t anything against anybody it is just wanting to go out and not miss a beat from where we were. We have worked hard. I have been with my guys the last two or three weeks and we have been in the simulator and we have been testing in Phoenix and on the phone and obviously in Daytona for 10 days. I think everybody, not just our team, the other teams are working hard as well. It is fun to kind of open pandora’s box I guess you could say. You have to turn every leaf over and look at everything in the company because everything is different from top to bottom. The one thing that has stayed consistent are very good people. It is fun to see a group of people come together to try to make things better. It is a major undertaking to do the things we did. Ford has been a big part of it. Stewart-Haas has obviously done a great job with the work but Ford has been a very big part of giving us the resources and manpower and support that we need to do the things that we do. You line that up with Gene and Tony and the resources we have at SHR and it hopefully is to the point where we have a baseline. Obviously it is going to be okay and we can start to grow and get better from here.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS AERO PACKAGE NOW THAT YOU HAVE BEEN ON TRACK? “I think the cars are going to be a handful. They always slide and move around here but it seems the falloff is going to be greater. The cars want a lot different setup than what they have had before just because there is not the downforce on the car that there was. You have to have different shocks and springs and think about things from a balance standpoint differently. It is definitely not like it was. You have to do a lot of things different, whether that is the new aero package or some of that is the balance on the Fords or whatever that is, every time we get on the race track and do something we get a better idea of things that we need to do.”
LAS VEGAS VISITORS AND TOURISM AUTHORITY IS SCHEDULED TO VOTE ON A SPONSORSHIP PACKAGE WITH SMI TO BRING A SECOND CUP RACE THERE STARTING NEXT YEAR. WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF A SECOND RACE AT VEGAS? “I love Vegas. I think it is a great atmosphere and it would be good but sometimes you can turn one great into two mediocre. I think that is something you have to be careful of and look at and really evaluate. Vegas is a great place to race and I enjoy going there. If it did wind up with a second race I would be fine with that but I would be cautious to look at a California type situation where we have the one great event there and when we had two it wasn’t so great. You just have to be careful of not doing that.”
WERE THERE THINGS YOU HAD TO DO DURING THIS OFFSEASON THAT YOU WOULDN’T HAVE HAD TO DO IF YOU HAD STAYED WITH CHEVROLET? “There are a number of things that we wouldn’t have done. I think everybody knew it would take some extra effort to get up to speed and be where we needed to be. From a company standpoint when you look, I would say one of the biggest benefits today was having the Xfinity program and all those extra laps. I had three extra practice sessions today. I feel like from the simulator to the race track in the Xfinity car, we didn’t have a lot of time, but I felt like I was in a great rhythm when I came back to the Cup car from practice. I felt like I was in a great rhythm and that is the most important thing here. Running that high line is not something that we have done a lot here in the past and it kind of evolved today into needing to run up there. Without that Xfinity car I don’t think I would have been in the rhythm I was in. That is a commitment Stewart-Haas made to start that program. Cole will run full time but allowing me to run five or six races in that car and doing that here today – they could have easily said no but everyone went over the top with effort to come to the second race of the year. We started a full time team, added a part time team, switched four teams over and added about 100 people. They could have easily said no but I think that is the commitment to the sport, commitment to our team, commitment to Ford that Stewart-Haas Racing made to put all those resources and tie them all together to push this company to another level. Hopefully this is the start of something great.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS THE XFINITY PROGRAM FOR THE COMPANY? “I think the part time team is important for the fact that it gives us a good baseline to make sure Cole’s performance and the things he is driving and being given are up to par so we can kind of baseline those things. I used to do that with my company. I would run four or five races through the year to kind of quality control check everything and make sure the cars or trucks at that time were where they needed to be and give them a direction to work on things. That way Cole can work on the experience of racing. That is a big step for us. Now we can start to build up pit crew people and team people and engineers. You teach those people because the way we have done it is just like our Cup program. It flows just the same way, does the same things, is the same preparation. You can walk across the parking lot to the shop. Now when I get in that car, my seat is perfect and everything feels exactly like my Cup car because the same people are putting that stuff in the race cars. The details of those types of things are important. You get everyone’s mind thinking about racing. It is like going to the simulator, you get everyone’s mind thinking about the week. You go to the Xfinity garage and get the second step of that process getting everybody’s mind twisted about things that are happening. That evolution of the week and the Xfinity and Cup and now it will happen the same way tomorrow. You will go through qualifying and the race and Cup practice and next thing you know you are going to have another conversation about all those things before we race again on Sunday. There is a lot of information and a lot of good people. The flow of everything we are still working on but it is off to a pretty good start I think.”
HOW IMPORTANT WILL TRACK POSITION BE HERE? “You are going to have to manage your tires. You don’t have an abundance of tires anymore so you have to manage what you have. With the stages, it is just like tomorrow, the amount of tires that you have you don’t have a choice but to run the 40-lap stage with one set of tires. You don’t really have a choice but to run the second stage out with one set of tires. If you have a caution or have things happen, every time the caution comes out and you don’t put tires on they become more evil to drive. That should be fun to watch.”
KNOWING YOU START THE RACE ON THESE TIRES, DID YOU TRY TO CONSERVE THEM AT ALL IN QUALIFYING? “Honestly, I didn’t even think about that. It is too late now though, right? You know, we have talked about that and I think obviously NASCAR made some amendments to some rules this week about how everybody started the race on their tires because if you were to start on stickers and start in the back you would probably pass the whole field in about 30 laps. I think everybody will be pretty close on tires with used tires. I think it is an element that we won’t even talk about as we go forward but we were going after the pole today and will worry about how hard we beat up the tires later.”
YOU HAVE BEEN GREAT AT ATLANTA OVER THE YEAR BUT HAVEN’T GOTTEN THE WINS. IS THE POLE THE MISSING LINK TO GET YOU TO VICTORY LANE? “I don’t know what that link is. We have been in this position before and this really goes back to 2009 when we really started running well here. We have led a ton of laps here but just haven’t won a race. It is a little frustrating because we have own a whole bunch of races in the other two divisions with the same performance on Sunday. It just seems something happens at the end of the race. Hopefully this is the year we can close it out.”
SOME OF THE 41 GUYS SAID THEY THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE EASIER STARTING TWO NEW TEAMS THAN GOING THROUGH THE TRANSITION FROM CHEVY TO FORD. GIVEN THE SUCCESS OF WINNING THE 500 AND YOU ON THE POLE HERE, IS IT A TESTAMENT TO THE DEPTH AT SHR? “I think it is a testament to the depth that we created knowing we were going into this situation. You stack that depth on top of good people and you give those guys a direction and they start working toward that. Without good direction it could have been or might still be a disaster. It hasn’t been so far. I think everyone has done a really good job. You are only as good as the people around you, no matter what you do. We are very fortunate to have two great owners, a manufacturer that loves to race, all three of them, and they give us all the resources to do what we need to do and sometimes that costs money and we spend it. When we need people we go hire people and they are not scared of change. They just want to progress and make things better. It was a big gamble but so far it seems to be working out okay.”
