Ford Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Ford 400 Advance (Homestead-Miami Speedway; Homestead, FL)
NASCAR Championship Media Day
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Fusion, is one of two Ford drivers gunning for the NASCAR Championship at Ford Championship Weekend on Sunday. Harvick participated in breakout media sessions as part of the NASCAR Championship Media Day.
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Fusion
When we were with you at Bakersfield earlier this year, that whole atmosphere, growing up there, what are the biggest lessons that you took growing up as a kid? Is it just work ethic?
KEVIN HARVICK: “I think the work ethic in that particular town is different than a lot of places that you will go. There’s a lot of oil field jobs, a lot of things are a lot of survival I guess you can say. Still go back to the best four years of my life were spent in the wrestling room, learning about yourself, the things that you do. Growing up in Bakersfield, it was a racing town. I always had a lot of support there. You see that when you go back. It was fun to go back. I think as you look at everything that we’ve been able to accomplish, to be able to still go back and contribute to the town is something I’m proud of.”
Question inaudible: “What was his take? He just kind of looks at you, shrugs his shoulders, walks off. He just doesn’t understand. There will be a moment where you can get that across to him understanding and him understanding that you have to have a good work ethic, but you also have to have that survival mode in there, as well. Part of that survival mode is giving everything that you have, even when it’s not going good. It would have been easy to do last week. There’s been a number of situations before, that’s just kind of been a character trait that I’ve had I feel like throughout my whole career of doing things that you’re not supposed to do, winning races late, making up ground when you’re not supposed to make up ground. Those situations are good because they never go away. You always remember them. But they’re all character‑building moments that make it great.”
What happens in those moments? A surge of adrenaline? What happens inside you? “Well, I would consider last week survival mode. You go from qualifying on the pole, leading both practices on Saturday, leading every lap in the first stage to a flat tire dragging the ground, wondering if the tire is going to peel off, rip the fender off. The first thing I thought about it, How do I get this car to pit road without tearing a fender off? Tony Gibson’s first thought was, We have to put two tires on before we go two laps down. You digest all the information. It’s like, Okay. For me, I never said a word. I just asked what happened, what do we need to do. We had a fast enough car that was still together at that point to get ourselves back in a position for the Lucky Dog, and the caution came out. That was just the beginning of going a lap down again, pitting early, lap down again, taking the wave‑around. There’s a lot of things that you had to digest and had to take in. But in those instances, you also have to perform and go as fast as you can on the racetrack. We were able to do that.”
When that happened, you were very calm on the radio. Is that something you consciously do to try to keep the team calmed down? “I learned over the last five years the less I say on the radio, the less I say in general for the most part is usually more effective for my team. In that moment, we had controlled all the things that we could control very well throughout the whole weekend. That was what we needed to do on that particular weekend in order to get here. In that particular moment, the only thing that you could do is put the tire on, go back out on the racetrack, start over again. That’s what we did.”
Did you feel like you raced with a chip on your shoulder last week after the penalty?
“I feel like we race with a chip on our shoulder every week. For me, there’s always some incentive in proving people that you can do something that isn’t what they think you should do. I think as you look ‑‑ you can look at my whole career. You shouldn’t win. You couldn’t win. Then you did. Last week it was, This penalty is going to slow them down. Like I told you last week, when they take 10 away, we find 20. It’s just the mentality of the race team. It’s always push the limits. When they back you against the wall, make it better than it was before. I think up until the flat tire, that was the pace that it was on to do.”
Do you ever surprise yourself? “Sometimes I just laugh. You keep yourself in the game. Sometimes you know situations you get that adrenaline going. In those situations you just have to kind of walk out of there and chuckle sometimes because of the fact that it just seems to happen a lot. It’s part of what makes it fun. You can crumble and take those situations and fall apart, or you can take those situations and succeed, chuckle on the way out.”
In this season where you’ve consistently been the best, if you don’t win the championship, is that a letdown? “Obviously with everything that’s happened this year, you want to win the championship because obviously you think it would be icing on the cake with everything that you’ve accomplished. But it’s just not that easy. Coming here this time of the season, just like us last year, we didn’t run well in the first half of the season. You look at the 22 car, they didn’t run well in the first half of the season. They came on late and have done well. Obviously that’s the goal, is to go out and try to win the championship. I don’t know that it would be. There’s nothing that’s going to devastate us to the point of not being able to function any more. But to go along with everything you’ve done this year, it definitely would seem fitting to add that to the year end. This is a very unique place that isn’t like any other place that we race from a mile‑and‑a‑half standpoint. It’s always warm. It’s always worn out. It always goes from day to night. The conditions change a lot. There’s so many different things here that it’s really hard to put everything together to the point of making your day perfect, because it’s just not going to be perfect. That’s just not the expectation going into it, to think that everything is going to be perfect. You want it to be perfect, you control all the things that you can control, but you have to go in in the back of your mind knowing you’re going to have to adapt and adjust at some point, just like we did last week to adversity, something going wrong. You can’t let that rip everything apart.”
Was there a point in your career when you learned that? I would think the penalty last week would make you angry or upset, come back and do this again. How do you channel not letting that anger or frustration… “I haven’t always been very good at channeling my anger (laughter). Look, if I was jumping over the hood of a car right now, went into my house, had a six‑year‑old saw me trampling, do you know how embarrassed I would be to walk in the front door and answer that question. Hey, dad, why did you jump over that guy’s car, grab him by the throat? Well, probably wasn’t the right thing to do. Then it would get more embarrassing as you take him to school, drive through the carpool lines to see his teachers that are all watching as well. Don’t say all the right things, do the right things. As you go through life, I would hope we all mature from a life standpoint to be able to be a better person. I still screw up a lot.”
People like to say the only people who can beat the 4 team is the 4 team. Is that the way you look at it, too? “I would disagree with that. We’ve been beat square up, heads up, however you want to phrase it from all these guys at some point this year.”
You talked about the investment of Ford in the Stewart‑Haas team several times. Would it be more prestigious or rewarding for you to bring a third championship to Stewart‑Haas, but under the Ford banner? “There’s a lot of incentive that comes with the Ford question just because of the fact when we left Chevrolet, there were a lot of people who said we could never contend for another championship. For us, within our walls, that’s been a lot of motivation since we started. To know how important it is for Ford to put themselves back in the mix, obviously Penske has done a good job, but to have good cars in the mix to win another Cup Series championship, to know how important that is to Ford, motivates us. So we have a couple different reasons to be motivated over that situation. You guys know me, have heard me talk about it long enough, every year, every situation you have to find those pieces of motivation that come from different things at different times. The Ford piece is definitely very motivating from a couple different aspects.”
You mentioned motivation. What would you say on a year‑to‑year basis changes motivation? Is there a single biggest motivator for you now? “I think honestly this year was a year where we thought we were going to be third in line as far as the cars went from a speed standpoint just because the Chevrolets were really, really fast at all the tests they went to pre‑season. The Toyotas were where they were last year. Obviously a lot changed over the off‑season with the way the cars were inspected, the splitter rule. All that stuff kind of seemed to fall into our wheelhouse. We were able to have a lot of speed in the car, and our guys have done a good job. As far as the motivation goes, it’s always different. There’s really nothing that’s ever the same. It would be difficult to start a year if you didn’t have anything for me that I could reach out and grab and wrap your arms around and motivate yourself. The other thing that’s fun, there’s a lot of guys on the team that haven’t won consistently for 20 years. I think as you look at those results, you get out in Victory Lane, you see the enthusiasm that comes from a lot of those guys, that’s very motivating in itself. It’s always a moving target. I think that target moves throughout the year, as well. You get into a situation like you had after Texas, then it’s your spoiler. At the beginning of the year it was the window. There’s a number of things. You could take the spoiler off, you’re going to have the same result at Texas. You come to Phoenix, you qualify on the pole, you do all those things. Those things, it’s a constant evolution of what that target is.”
People would say why do it? If you could take the spoiler off, it would be the same… “I didn’t say it would make as much downforce (laughter).”
Tell us your strengths and weaknesses at Homestead. “A lot of that depends on what your car is doing on a particular weekend. I don’t think any year is going to be the same as to what you fight. They changed the tire this year. That’s obviously a little bit different than what we’ve had in the past. It’s definitely a situation to where tomorrow is really not going to tell us anything as far as that goes, as well, because you’re going to run three laps in practice, hopefully run three laps in qualifying, then you’re going to put it into what matters, and that’s race trim. You want to qualify on the pole if you can because the pit box is an advantage, so close to the timing line. It’s a unique racetrack. You know running right against the fence is probably the fastest way around after lap 25. What happens in there’s only 20 laps left? Where do you run then? Do you run the bottom, the middle? You just have to have options here from what your car will do, what you do as a driver because it’s such a unique track.”
How would this championship be different having Piper around? “That’s funny and Kelan and I talked about that last night. I have a picture of he and I in the bathroom at home, I have a picture of he and I sitting against the wall in 2014. I said it would be pretty cool to take one with Piper in there, as well. He said, yeah, it would be pretty cool. If you win the championship, will they let you do anything? I said, Yeah, if you win the championship, you can do pretty much anything you want. Everything is over. He’s like, We’re going to climb the fence, dad. I said, Okay, I’ll watch. You climb the fence. You can do that after we take a picture with Piper next to the wall.
Does he understand the stakes more? “No, I don’t think so. I would tell you that he understands a lot of what’s going on and what you do. He doesn’t understand the magnitude of everything. We try to let him do as many normal things as possible at home. I’m not going to shy away from the carpool line, sitting in the gym watching a high school basketball game because he wanted to go. We do all those things. We do normal things. If he walked in here right now, the first thing he would ask is, he sees me sitting over in the corner, he’d be over asking somebody where the M&M’s are, if he can have a Coke, something along those lines because of the fact that he just looks at this as he gets to hang out with dad and have a good time.”
But he wants dad to win? “It’s funny because I say that he doesn’t understand the magnitude. There will be some days where you come home, DeLana will say, He was crying on the couch because you didn’t win the stage, didn’t win. I just don’t think he understands exactly what means what at this particular point. Hopefully as he gets older, he’ll take it all in and he can come back and look at all the pictures.
Is Tony any different…? “He’s overweight and needs a haircut right now (laughter).”
In terms of obviously the other relationships, friendship, teammate, does he differ at all? “Oh, he’s different. No, he’s always Tony. You guys know him from this standpoint. I think as you look at Tony, he’s very unique as an owner because of the fact that, for instance, when I was getting ready to race for our first championship at Stewart‑Haas, I got back to the bus, he and DeLana were laying out the schedule for the rest of the week. He felt like he had been there, done that, understood what it took. Tony is good to have because he looks at it from a driver’s mentality. From a driver’s perspective, when you’re driving the car, that’s the owner, there’s nothing better because it’s all about how do we make the cars go faster to win races. So Tony and Gene are a very good mix because Gene can’t do it without Tony and Tony can’t do it without Gene. From an employee standpoint, I feel like we’re the most stable team in the garage, from a financial standpoint and support standpoint because of Ford, Gene Haas, all the things they can put into things. It’s not shut the race team down because of missing half a season full of sponsors. It’s Haas Automation on the side, we’re going to figure this out. It’s definitely a lot of fun to have owners like that. But Tony definitely brings a driver’s perspective. He’s been there, done that.”
Schedule and routine pretty much the same as it was the first year? “I would say it’s similar. The one thing about this week is there’s going to be more people around. You’re going to have to do more than one press conference and you’re going to have to answer more questions. You have to do more of anything. From a mental standpoint, you just have to be prepared to compartmentalize things to know that you have to do more work and still get in the car and perform.”
With the total package that you’ve assembled at SHR, the incredible numbers you put together in the last five years, do you regret the first 13 of your Cup career? “No, I don’t regret them at all because of the fact that Richard Childress was very instrumental in getting me the opportunity to get out of the Truck Series and get into the car. We had a lot of successful days. We had a lot of trying days. I think as you look back at it, I don’t think I would be as fortunate to be in the position that I’m in if you hadn’t gone through all those ups and downs, owning race teams on your own, gone through all the experiences we had. In the end, the race teams were really, the Xfinity Series itself, were really a release valve for the lack of performance upon the Cup side. When your Cup car wasn’t running good, it was really kind of a proving ground to go out and run good in the Xfinity car. A lot of the BS came on the Cup side was trying to keep yourself relevant because you needed to make a story. Now it’s a situation to where you can make the story by running fast in the car, you don’t have to act like a crazy man outside the car. What I’m saying is all those years and all those things of doing right, doing wrong, running good, running bad, we still won the Daytona 500, we still won at the Brickyard, had a lot of other wins in between. Now, we have won the same amount of races in five years compared to 13. But without all those life lessons, experiences of the things that we did, you’d never be here. May never have gotten the opportunity if it wasn’t for Richard.”
From a performance standpoint, do you think this has been the best season to date of your career? “I don’t think it’s been the best year performance‑wise. I feel like 2014 we had the fastest cars that I’ve ever driven in my career, but we were so new to everything, so young, we made so many mistakes, had so many things break, we just didn’t capitalize on it that year. We were in our first year. I think right now our cars are really fast and we’ve had a great year. Having that experience has helped us be more successful this year.”
