CHASE FOR THE NASCAR SPRINT CUP
ELIMINATOR ROUND MEDIA DAY
NASCAR HALL OF FAME
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPTS
OCTOBER 27, 2015
TEAM CHEVY CHASE CONTENDERS:
JEFF GORDON
KURT BUSCH
MARTIN TRUEX, JR.
KEVIN HARVICK
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 AARP MEMBER ADVANTAGES CHEVROLET SS
PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
JEFF GORDON: I’m excited. I think a lot of people didn’t count on us to do this or expect it.
I think for us, we’re carrying just a lot of confidence and momentum and pride right now knowing that we’ve had to grind it out just to get ourselves in the Chase. That grind and that fight that we have in us is what we’ve been putting out there these last six weeks that have gotten us to this round.
Now we get to continue that fight and grind, but we get to go do it at some tracks that we legitimately have a shot at competing for wins.
I’m pretty excited that we’re where we’re at and that we’ve made it this far.
Q. What is your view of Sunday, the end of the race, one green-white-checkered?
JEFF GORDON: Well, now I think I have a clearer understanding that we got the green flag but we didn’t cross the line. I don’t know if I’ve gotten verification from NASCAR or read the rule book on that. I probably will clarify that before the race in Martinsville.
But that seems to be what allowed that second green-white-checkered to happen. So I’m fine with it. I’m disappointed that the fans didn’t get to see a green-flag finish to the checkered because it was certainly going to be spectacular, and there was an awesome crowd there. At the same time I thought there was a lot of good racing that went on there. Certainly plenty of drama because of the Chase and everything that’s going on with the points, what happened there on that final restart.
Q. Would you like to see the same thing at Daytona in February?
JEFF GORDON: I would. Just from the driver standpoint, I think it’s too much risk that’s involved to do multiple green-white-checkereds. Each time you have a green-white-checkered, there’s so much aggression that goes on on those restarts. You’re putting everyone in a position to not lift, to not hold back, to do things outside their comfort zone. That’s what’s going to cause some big wrecks.
I think doing it one time is enough.
Q. What is your strategy for this round? How does it change as you’ve moved on in the Chase?
JEFF GORDON: Our strategy, obviously we’re focused on Martinsville right now being the next race. I just left my team in the shop doing our debrief, analyzing what’s been working for us the last few races there, especially earlier this year with this aero and power package. Then I look at the improvements we’ve made as a team with cars, power.
We qualified pretty well there, but that number one pit stall is so huge and we want that thing bad. Looking at the race and some things that we dealt with, how we can be better prepared for that.
At the end of that race, other than having the issue on pit road where I was trying to jump into my box, got caught speeding, trying to execute that a little bit better, but also get ourselves in a position at the end, I think we have a shot at winning this race.
One thing that we’ve done so well that I think will continue no matter what, because it’s just this team, is we never stop fighting and grinding. That’s what we’ve had to do. Now we’re just in that mode. That’s just what we do. We seem to really do a great job being consistent and getting the best finish. That’s what we’ve been certainly doing in the Chase.
If we do that for three more weeks, I think we make it to Homestead.
Q. What are your thoughts on the controversy afterwards with the 4 car?
JEFF GORDON: I think it was inconclusive. I don’t think that it’s a clear-cut thing. Do I like the fact that there’s somebody with an engine that is under-powered starting right in the middle of the pack? No. If this Chase format wasn’t the way that it is, I don’t think somebody would do that.
There’s no doubt that the way that Kevin started that last restart was to cause chaos. I don’t think that he intentionally tried to do it. I can’t see anything from what I saw that he was intentionally trying to take somebody out. I think the restart before that he moved up and got out of the way and let people go by. This one he didn’t. I think that’s pretty clear that he wanted there to be chaos. That was his shot. He did what he had to do.
You can’t blame somebody for that.
Q. It shows how high the stakes are.
JEFF GORDON: You have no idea. You guys have no idea how high the stakes are. When competition is at the level that it’s at, and you’re seeing that opportunity either slip away or in your grasp, the things that you will go to, the level you’ll take it, you don’t even know yourself until you’re in that position.
Q. As the last Hendrick guy left, any effort to pull resources from other guys?
JEFF GORDON: Of course, I mean, our teammates already, Jimmie and Kasey, have been phenomenal since they were knocked out. I look the same to happen with Junior as we move forward. That’s continuing the level of information that we have.
I know that, just like if it were us, we would want to see a Hendrick car win this championship. I think there’s probably even a little added motivation because these are my final four races. So I think everybody wants to see us advance to that next round, to Homestead, and have a shot at it. We’re all going to be working hard together.
I feel confident about Martinsville, but we’ll always take all the information we can. All three of our teammates have run really good at times at Martinsville either this year or last year. We’ve got tremendous resources to fall back on.
Of course, we never have too much pride to not go after every bit of information or resource that we possibly can.
Q. You’ve had a storybook career. Can you imagine going out on top like that with a championship?
JEFF GORDON: I mean, I can’t imagine it. That’s why I haven’t allowed myself to really go there. One, there’s too much racing left to happen. Can’t help but give you a smile on your face that we made it further than maybe we even anticipated. It gives you that feeling that, Hey, maybe this could be our year.
The reason we’re where we’re at is because of the way we’ve been executing, the resources, the team we are. That’s where I’m at. Just thinking about doing that.
That would be a lot of fun to talk about when Homestead is over. I can’t talk about it now because I think we just have too much work ahead of us.
Q. You said you don’t allow yourself to think about it, but do you have the confidence you can get it done?
JEFF GORDON: Absolutely. There’s not one of these eight teams and drivers in this round that don’t feel like they can do it. We’ve eliminated eight. When you get down to this point, I think that everybody feels like, Hey, this is our year, this is our moment, and we have the team and the drive to do it.
So, yeah, absolutely we feel like we can. If we’ve made it this far, who knows what we can do.
Q. You’ve won multiple races in a row like Joey is doing now. What is that like?
JEFF GORDON: It’s definitely a zone. I’m pretty sure that Joey probably said, I didn’t anticipate going to Talladega and winning at Talladega. Sometimes when you’re in that zone, you’re fighting hard to win races, you have the car to be able to win it, the team to win it. You go to another one, you don’t think you have it, you’re still finding your way into Victory Lane. Next thing you know, you feel like you can win every race.
It’s amazing how hard it is to get yourself to that level of confidence. When you get there, it can carry you for a long way.
Q. Is the racing out of control now?
JEFF GORDON: No. Why? I don’t think anything’s changed. I think the format’s changed, and that’s changed things slightly in the urgency of things. But, I mean, if you took five drivers and said, All right, you have two or three more races to go to win the championship, you guys are all within a few points of one another, you would see the same thing.
It’s just the opportunity that presents itself that’s there in front of you. I don’t think that would be any different 20 years ago versus today.
Q. You said in Charlotte that all you needed to do was to get to this round of the Chase.
JEFF GORDON: Right.
Q. The fact that you’ve gotten to this point and you’re going to a track that you’re so comfortable at, how do you stay in the moment?
JEFF GORDON: Well, it’s just like the meeting I was in with my crew chief and engineers this morning. As strong as we are, I look at tracks that we led laps at this year, it’s restrictor plates and Martinsville. But that did not come easy. We struggled the first half of that race trying to understand where the grip was at, the tires, the falloff, the balance of the car. It was not easy.
We fell back and we had to fight our way back up, then we were in position.
So just knowing that tells you, even if we go there and the car is driving amazing, we qualify up front, it’s not going to be an easy task. But I also know that it is the one track, if I can put any track on the schedule to give ourselves opportunity to win at right now, I would pick Martinsville.
On one hand I’m excited and confident, and on the other hand I know we’ve got to work our butts off to make it happen.
Q. Last year you were one of the best teams. You’ve had Chases also where a sixth-plate average finish wasn’t good enough. Are you amazed you’re still alive in this thing, I can’t believe we’ve had this kind of a season?
JEFF GORDON: I think back of how frustrating it was earlier in the year when we were taking a 10th-place car and finishing 15th with it. What we’ve been doing lately is taking maybe what could have been a 15th and turning it into an eighth or a 10th.
What I’m most proud of what we’ve done this year is that when those times were tough and we were at one another’s throats and we weren’t happy, we were discouraged or frustrated, we fought through it, we continued to communicate. We actually bonded and grew from it. That’s why we’re one of the strongest teams that exists out there.
Even though we’re not maybe bringing the fastest racecars to some of these mile-and-a-half tracks, I think we’re one of the strongest teams when it comes down to sticking together, fighting through adversity, executing to a high level.
Q. Does your history at Martinsville and Phoenix give you an edge at all?
JEFF GORDON: I mean, I look at this round, I feel like not only are we capable of being very consistent, but we’re capable of winning at each of these tracks. Of course, Martinsville I’m more confident in. But that doesn’t mean that I feel like we’ve got this thing. We don’t. We’ve got to go out and we’ve got to earn that.
Texas, even though we haven’t been great on the mile-and-a-half’s, it’s a track that has an older surface, the tires wear, there’s falloff, you have to search around the racetrack. Our cars are better than they were earlier in the year. I feel more confident about Texas than the other mile-and-a-half’s.
Phoenix, we finished second there last year. We tested there. We weren’t the fastest car on the short runs but I thought we were pretty good on the longer runs. A track I feel pretty good about.
Homestead I would put in the same category as Texas.
I think the way we’re performing right now, I look at the tracks coming up, yeah, I feel good about it. But we’re still under the radar, and still I don’t think anybody expects that to happen, and we like it that way.
Q. Harvick has led a lot of laps, Logano is on a hot streak.
JEFF GORDON: I hope Joey continues to steal the headlines and we sneak our way to Homestead, then we can steal some headlines.
Those guys are strong. We give them credit, give them a lot of credit. We got to find our own way to get there and our own way to get it done and not focus on what they’re doing.
Q. So much of the season was lackluster for you. What has happened since the Chase started?
JEFF GORDON: We just stopped making mistakes, number one. I feel like we were maybe trying too hard. I think we’ve improved our racecars. Through the adversity that we had to overcome, I think we became a stronger unit as a team to know that, man, if we can overcome some really poor results this year, still make it into the Chase, then do what we’ve done since the Chase, there’s no telling what we’re capable of.
Q. Has the driver been better, too?
JEFF GORDON: I made less mistakes, yes (laughter). Probably a few less distractions. Been really focused. Then the team, all of us, have been doing our jobs.
Q. How much do you think their attention or focus has to do with knowing it’s your last year?
JEFF GORDON: The team’s?
Q. Yes.
JEFF GORDON: I think everyone at Hendrick and certainly everyone on the 24 team is certainly aware that these are my final four races. I would say when I think of Alan, our conversations, there’s no doubt that it’s on his mind that he wants this to be special not only for his own accomplishments and the team’s, but for me. Knowing we have four more chances to work together, I think the cool thing we have is I believe he’s the best crew chief out there, and I believe he thinks I’m the best driver he could have out there.
The fact that we get to do that, what we do every weekend, four more times, we want to make the most of it.
Q. Getting to this round, the success at the tracks we’re going to, where is your confidence level?
JEFF GORDON: Much higher (laughter). This past round was the one I was most nervous about. Two mile-and-a-half tracks that have rock-hard tires. That does not suit me. I want a tire that falls off, that wears out, that slips and slides around. That was not Kansas or Charlotte.
Then Talladega, I mean, I can’t remember the last time I finished a race at Talladega with a car in one piece, or a restrictor plate track for that matter.
So, yeah, I didn’t have a tremendous amount of confidence. But I had a lot of confidence in our team, what we were capable of in the way that we’ve been going about it. I keep saying ‘grinding it out’. If you analyzed the races the way we analyze our races, you have no idea how much we’ve had to fight for those finishes.
Now Talladega, a little bit different, because restrictor plates have been really strong for us this year. But mistakes getting to pit road, maybe a miscue on pit road, some bad decisions during the race. I went through a lot of video before this Talladega race to try to make sure I didn’t make those same mistakes.
This time they didn’t happen. We did everything we were supposed to do. So this round ended up being our best round so far when I didn’t expect it to be. So we can’t let looking at these next few races, having confidence in those tracks, let us get off what we’ve been doing to get this far. We’ve got to fight really, really hard.
But, yeah, I mean, when you just scratch and claw your way in, you don’t expect to get very far. It’s pretty awesome that we have.
Q. Being the only Hendrick car in, does that benefit the team in any way? You were in this position a year ago.
JEFF GORDON: Yes and no. We’re still going to have to battle against them for wins. I think of this race coming up last year. We were in the same situation. We were the last Hendrick car in the third round. Dale Jr. wins, we finish second. That win could have gotten us to Homestead.
We’re going to work together on how we work together, which is sharing information, helping when we can. I felt like at Texas Jimmie and I were battling on restarts. He was really I felt like working with me well. I had a very fast racecar, but he had a shot at winning. That last restart he got a little bit better one than I did. He goes on and wins the race. It still kept us alive because had Brad won that race, we were pretty much out of it. We went to Phoenix, did what we did there.
There’s certainly advantages. When you’re getting the amount of information in more focus as one group with all those resources, yes, it’s beneficial. But you still got to go out there and race those guys.
If you could just get all the information, then they pulled over and pulled off when the green flag was dropped, yeah, that would be a little bit different, but that’s not the case.
Q. You talk about falling under the radar. Do you see yourself as an underdog?
JEFF GORDON: Absolutely. Absolutely. Of course I do. We have not shown the strength that other teams have that are still in this thing. We’ve not been the dominant cars and team.
I hope after this round that changes. But I think if we can run strong at Martinsville, and we run strong at Texas, we make it through this round, I think people will think different. But up to this point we’re definitely the underdog.
Q. Can it change that quickly?
JEFF GORDON: You got to understand tracks change things a lot. They make a huge difference. We’ve had a lot of mile-and-a-half tracks up to this point. I think of Chicago. Chicago is a more worn racetrack. Even though that tire doesn’t fall off that much, there is some falloff. You move around the track a little bit more, the tire is not as rock hard as the Kansas tire or the Charlotte tire. We performed well there.
I think that the track changes things a lot.
Q. Do you want to be the guy with the momentum?
JEFF GORDON: I just want to be the guy and the team that we are right now. Honestly, I do. Because I feel like we have this ability, and I truly meant this, we might not have the fastest cars, but I do think we have the strongest team. It’s because we haven’t been riding at the top. We haven’t been just super confident. We’ve been having to work extremely hard for everything we’ve gotten, just pulling ourselves up there to climb that ladder.
I think once you get there, that can be a strength that can separate you.
FastScripts by ASAP Sports
KURT BUSCH, NO. 41 MONSTER ENERGY CHEVROLET SS
PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
KURT BUSCH: To me, I think the way you win it from here is, this is a four-race series that it takes top-five finishes really. The way that this format worked last year, there were still three guys that made it in off of consistency, made it in, made it to Homestead.
But years past, like when Jimmie Johnson was on his roll of winning championships, when I won a championship back in 2004, it’s off of solid, consistent finishes. So the years that Dale Sr. was winning championships and Jeff Gordon was winning championships, seven is the average number. If your average finish is more than seven, then you have a good shot at it.
Q. How do you finish seventh or better? Do you have to be careful a little bit or not?
KURT BUSCH: No. I think our team is strong enough to not have to worry about a certain strategy to gamble to get seventh. It’s a matter of just going out there and executing and doing our job.
The first round we averaged 13th for those three races. This round we averaged seventh. We did exactly what we needed to do.
Now we have to adjust a little bit, though, if we feel like the competition has raised the bar, such as top fives, top fives only from here on out. That’s what we’re shooting for. Seventh is kind of the last resort.
Q. The three tracks coming up, seventh should not be a piece of cake, but it’s not one of your better tracks, but you’ve won at all of them.
KURT BUSCH: I’ve won at all of them. Top five should be attainable at all of them. The track that I like the most is Texas, and it’s the most valuable I think of the next three because it’s a sister track to Homestead. So guys that run good at Texas will run good at Homestead.
Q. You tested at Phoenix. That should give you confidence going in there, as well?
KURT BUSCH: Yeah, we were out in Phoenix I think two weeks ago working primarily on the 2016 package and helping Goodyear find a tire that fits the low downforce package. But there was a day at the end where we went into the 2015 downforce package that we currently run and showed equivalent speed to guys like Kenseth that were out there testing, and Keselowski that was out there testing.
Q. With this format, where you can’t afford to have a bad finish, when you have an issue, how challenging is it to want to come in? What is it like in the cockpit, decision making, when there’s a potential issue? Do you go in, stay out?
KURT BUSCH: With this system, if you have a bad race, you still have a chance to go for broke and go for a win. That’s the bottom-of-the-ninth moment. That’s the two-minute drill in the NFL. It’s the last minute in hockey. It’s the last second in college basketball or football. You have a chance to win it at the end.
It all depends on your points position and where other guys are running. So what this system makes you do, is you have to think of the others that are in the same points system that are still alive.
So in the first round you have 16 guys to keep track of, then you have 12, now we have eight. The best thing about it is the further you get into this, the more you’re worn out, but at the same time there’s less cars to count.
At Homestead, which I hope we get to, is you have four guys to worry about and your dead even in points.
The year I won the championship down in Homestead, there was three guys. There was Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and myself. At the time I had 17 points as a cushion, which in today’s world, that would be three and a half. So you use what you can for your points advantage. But with this system there’s no advantage at Homestead.
So it’s really easy to go and race the competition. That’s what this system is all about that’s very different than years past. You used to race your own individual race, accumulate as many points as you could, and keep moving through the Chase. Now you’re racing the system and you have to race the other cars in the system.
Q. If you have a potential mechanical or a potential tire issue, does that make it easier to gamble and stay out, thinking you have another race you can win and get in?
KURT BUSCH: You know, I have a perfect analogy. I’ll try to tell the story the best way I can. It’s a tool my dad taught me early on in racing.
He saw one of the races where I had a problem with the car, and I didn’t get the best finish possible. He wanted to teach me that you’re not going to win every race, you’re not going to finish good or perfectly every race, and you’re going to have mechanical things you’re going to have to diagnose within the car. Could be an electrical issue. Use your nose to smell it. Is it a wire or a rubber tire burning because you have a tire rub? You have to use other things and other smarts to figure out how to advance.
What he said at the end of this was learn how to get the best finish possible with whatever cards you’ve been dealt with for the day.
Q. You’ve advanced through the first two rounds avoiding pretty much all the drama that surrounded some of the other drivers. Is that a good place to be?
KURT BUSCH: I think it is. For us, we’re doing our job with our game plan on the 41 car to get the points we need. We knew the first round was going to have its moving pieces. Then we knew this round was going to have Talladega in it.
To me, these next four races are all about the same. You go there to win or you go there to run top five.
Q. You mentioned stick and ball earlier. Especially with the World Series right now, you’re not going to see a tie game determine the world champion. Can you imagine a time going into Homestead where you would have one green-white-checkered and that race end under caution? At that point do we have to end one of these races that are so integral in determining our champion, do we have to race them out to see what happens, or is it just okay to have a caution and not have the opportunity for drivers to race to the green?
KURT BUSCH: Well, your question is almost invalid for the rest of the year because we have multiple attempts at green-white-checkereds from now until the end. We just had the one at Talladega which created this freeze-the-field moment. I don’t think we’ll have that issue at Martinsville, Texas, Phoenix or Homestead because we’ll have three attempts at green-white-checkereds. So there’s no way we’ll finish in a frozen moment.
Q. You don’t see a time when that can happen? Even going back to Talladega for a future race, something as important as that determine the eight guys?
KURT BUSCH: I’ve said all along Talladega shouldn’t be in the Chase, it should be the cutoff race to get into the Chase. Switch Richmond and Talladega and that will help out.
We’ll worry about next year’s green-white-checkered issues. It’s a safety concern because we keep trying to put cars in the grandstands. We can’t have that happen. When you have multiple green-white-checkereds at a restrictor plate race, we’re going to go until we run out of cars. That’s what this new rule was supposed to do. Hey, let’s give these drivers a chance at it. If it doesn’t work, well, at least we’re on the safer side of things.
Q. Did you understand the rule with the aborted restart, the way that happened?
KURT BUSCH: To me we were all lined up. We were all in second gear. We began to accelerate. We had cars spinning. My sarcastic moment here is, a six-time champion named Jimmie Johnson doesn’t wreck under yellow. Kyle Larson doesn’t wreck under yellow. We were in a live condition. That was an attempt.
It was a genius rule that NASCAR implemented that we didn’t get to the start/finish line, and that meant let’s give it another shot. They did that because we only had one attempt at a green-white-checkered. If we had multiple attempts at a green-white-checkered, that would have counted as one.
Q. Just to clarify, you used the words ‘sarcasm’ and ‘genius move’.
KURT BUSCH: Sarcasm and genius, put them together. Probably not the best. I should probably clarify.
Q. How about Daytona next year?
KURT BUSCH: I have a Chase to worry about. These three races are very important coming up with Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix. We need to get our job done to get to Homestead, then race them down there to get this championship.
Q. What is going to be important this weekend? It’s a short track. Track position is going to determine pretty much everything this week?
KURT BUSCH: Martinsville?
Q. Yes.
KURT BUSCH: Martinsville is a short track. It’s almost eerie how similar it is to a superspeedway. That’s because cars are so close to each other all the time. An inch can mean a big difference with somebody bumping in to you or if somebody gives you an inch or if somebody wants to take an inch.
Superspeedways, there’s a side effect to cars wrecking. At short tracks cars get into each other and you have the potential for tire rubs, an extra pit stop that you didn’t want to have to make.
Q. If you have an issue on a pit stop, you’re penalized, lose track position, is it more difficult there to make up that ground than it would be somewhere else?
KURT BUSCH: It is. Short tracks it’s always more difficult to make up the time. You hope that you have a nice, smooth race, that you’re executing well, that your pit strategy is on the right sequence.
That’s another factor at Martinsville. A lot of times you get a group of A cars on their program, a group of B cars on their pit strategy. If you end up on the wrong one, it’s tough to make it back up.
Q. What’s it like going around that corner on pit road?
KURT BUSCH: Turn one is tight. You’re trying to keep track of pit road speed as well as not run into cars that are pulling out from their pit stop. Or even the last time I won there, Brad Keselowski took forever to pull into his pit box. He didn’t see Kasey Kahne pulling out.
You have a lot of things moving and shaking at Martinsville’s pit road.
Q. You mentioned that this format you race the competition instead of always worrying about what your race is. We’ve whittled the field down again. Who of the competition are you pinpointing that look good enough to get to the final round?
KURT BUSCH: I need to go back and look at my bracket when I filled it out before it started. Sometimes you do it for fan purposes. I filled one out for Phoenix International Raceway. That was my Chase track for Chase Around America. I put effort into it. I think I have seven out of the eight right that are still in it. We probably both chose Martin Truex Jr. Not to be here. They’re a wild card in this whole mix. Otherwise, everybody that is here we knew would be here. They’re the cream of the crop. No weak link, soft driver. All eight that are in it have a shot to win.
Q. Winning your first championship changes your life. What would championship number two do for you?
KURT BUSCH: Well, I don’t want to get ahead of myself. It’s been an amazing run as a champion in this sport, but it’s also been just as tough to win a second one. There’s a lot that goes into winning a second championship. It’s been a challenge. It’s been a task that has questioned on some of my decision making.
Also, at the same time, it’s made me realize that this team sport is about the people and it’s about positioning yourself with a top team, top sponsor, top manufacturer, and having everything clicking on all eight cylinders. If you have one ingredient missing, it’s tough to do because you have the competition against you that will swallow you up if you don’t have everything running on all eight cylinders.
Q. It sounds like you compare it to your first championship run. The formats are different. How do you look at it? Similar, different?
KURT BUSCH: There’s more out of your control in this format. Everybody looked at the first Chase format as, Wow, anything can happen in 10 races. It doesn’t seem right to race for 26, then have 10 at your playoff. We want it to be 36 straight.
Now here we are it’s three, three, three, then one. Three can change things a lot quicker than 10 can. It’s the format, it’s what it is, and we have to race it.
Q. One of the final eight is a teammate. What is that like for you as a competitor?
KURT BUSCH: Well, you want your teammates to help you. If they’re in it, they’re still going to be at that top level pursuing those wins and giving it that full effort. If you’re out of it, you switch into next year’s mode on what should we work on to be better when we start next year.
So it’s good to have a couple teammates already in that mode. We have Tony Stewart and Danica Patrick helping working on things for 2016 already. Here it is with Kevin Harvick and myself, Let’s go, get the best we can in 2015.
Q. Is it tough knowing one of your toughest competition is your teammate?
KURT BUSCH: We knew he was going to be tough all year long. All defending champions, they have the target on them. It’s because they have the fastest car on track.
Q. You talked about your strategy. You’d like to get that first win in that first race. Talk about your strategy going into this round.
KURT BUSCH: It’s a matter of getting good, consistent finishes. The sooner you get that done, the easier each round is.
Now I think this is even ground, the top eight drivers. You have to accumulate as many points as you can these next four no matter what.
Q. If you average top seven, that gets you in. Are you still trying to weigh the risk, try to go for the win?
KURT BUSCH: It depends on how the others do. If everybody ends up in a wreck at Martinsville, I’m the only guy that got through it, it changes the game.
Q. With Kevin’s success at Phoenix, in some of these races it’s been a big margin, which you don’t always see, how do you explain what he’s been able to do there? I think some of the things he does and you do are separate, so it’s not like you can take everything and match it.
KURT BUSCH: You look at Phoenix. Statistically you think Kevin Harvick. He’s dominated for so long, it’s like, When is he going to have a bad race? When is that setup going to tail off?
You can look at each race, Jeff Gordon is the favorite at Martinsville of the guys left. You can look at Harvick, he’s the favorite at Phoenix. If you look at Texas, Texas is a sister track to Chicago, and so who won at Chicago? Denny Hamlin. We were leading with nine laps to go. There’s certain guys at certain tracks that you’re going to have to beat. The setups that Harvick uses and that I use are very similar. I hope that it helps us at Phoenix.
If we’re going to win this title, we’ve got to go through the 4 car. That’s part of it. He’s still alive, the defending champion, and he’s been the fastest car on the track, next to the 22, all the way down this stretch run.
Q. If you get to Homestead, other than family, who is somebody you would like to be there, to be a part of that experience? A couple people that have mattered to you outside of family?
KURT BUSCH: Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. It’s family, it’s close friends, different sponsors over the years. This summer when I was inducted into the Hall of Fame in Southern Nevada, it gave me a moment to reflect on everybody that had helped out in my career.
I had a doctor that was just a race fan, and he gave me a thousand bucks one time. He said, I just want to buy a set of tires for your late model to say that I helped out Kurt Busch.
I looked him up, found him, gave him an invite to the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame. He couldn’t make it because he had another obligation. We talked on the phone and shared five minutes together.
That’s what having championship runs is all about. It’s great to have different connections in time come together and enjoy a new moment together when we were there in the beginning.
Q. He was in Vegas?
KURT BUSCH: This was Southwest Tour days. It was in Las Vegas. It was a doctor that another friend knew that wanted to buy a set of tires. Guys like that, will be calling up and want to go to Homestead to try to share in on the experience.
Q. You had short track success in your day. Going into Martinsville this weekend, how crazy do you anticipate this next three-race segment being starting at a short track?
KURT BUSCH: It’s almost the same as Talladega where there’s so many unknowns that can take away your chance at the end of the day. You’re going to have the emotional side of guys like Hamlin, Kenseth and Junior. He won the Martinsville race last year that didn’t advance out of the Talladega round.
Lots of different emotions. We’ll have to see how it all plays out. Ultimately with our yellow spoiler on our car that symbolizes the fact that we’re still Chase-eligible, you couldn’t rely on the respect you should be given, but you hope that it happens, and you hope that it happens at a short track.
Q. You mentioned the emotions. Being one of those Chase-eligible guys, this is one of those races that if scores are being settled…
KURT BUSCH: You don’t want to be collateral damage and you have to keep an eye out for that. You have to keep focused on the things your team needs to do.
Everyone on the Haas Automation Chevrolet, the No. 41 car, has to do that.
FastScripts by ASAP Sports
MARTIN TRUEX JR., NO. 78 FURNITURE ROW/VISSER PRECISION CHEVROLET SS
PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: It’s real special. It feels awesome. For us when the year started, our goal was to do this. It’s been a good season. Now I think not a lot of expectations on us, not a lot of people expect much from us. Most people had us counted out of the first round.
Good to be here. We’re excited about the next three tracks coming up. Feel like we have a good shot at getting to Homestead. That’s what we’re here to do. So the guys are working hard, they’re pumped up, and we’re excited to get going.
Q. You mentioned the next three tracks. You were in the top 10 in all three earlier in the season. Which one do you think might be the best opportunity for a win?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: I honestly feel like we could win at all three of them. I really do. I think Martinsville was always a track throughout my career I had trouble figuring out. But I feel like the last couple years I really learned a lot and feel like I’m getting closer. This spring was probably the best race I’ve ever had there. We qualified up front. We had to go to the back because we had to fix a power steering issue. Came through the field. I think we finished fifth or sixth. That one would normally have me the most nervous. It’s probably the one that there’s more potential for things to go bad.
But really all three tracks, feel really good about them speed-wise and what we can do. So looking forward to them.
Q. This is exciting and stressful at the same time. As a driver, how do you balance the stress of the Chase but still enjoy the moment?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: It’s really been pretty easy for me. I think in years past I would have been a lot more nervous, a lot more on edge than I’ve been this year. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know if it’s all the stuff I’ve been through off the track or the fact that we had such a bad season last year and really just appreciate the opportunity and feel like it’s a special thing that we’re getting to do.
So I don’t know if it’s that my outlook has changed or what, but I’ve been at ease and feel good about it. A lot of that is the confidence I have in my team, what we’re doing, feeling like this is just a beginning for us. There’s going to be a lot more opportunities for us to go through this situation.
Just enjoying it right now. Living in the moment. Taking it one race at a time. Hopefully we’ll get to where we want to go.
Q. You mentioned your run at Martinsville in the spring. Is there such a thing as momentum carrying over from a spring race to a fall race?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, I think there is. Not only the things you learn about your racecar and what it takes to make things work there, but just confidence in each other as a driver, the decisions you make throughout the weekend on your car, having a little foresight on what the track is going to be like.
Martinsville’s one of those places where you practice all weekend and you never know exactly what the track is going to do in the race. In the race, it always surprises you.
Just having that data, having that notebook on kind of how the race went, what the track was like, because when they changed the tires, everything about that place changes throughout the weekend. Having that notebook is definitely going to help us, for sure.
Q. Rubber didn’t pick up, rubber did, or it took a lot longer?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, I mean, the temperature of the track and the tire they bring, sometimes it rubbers up really bad, it gets that buildup where you hit it, it’s like hitting grease, the car slides off it. There’s other times where it doesn’t get that. You kind of have to set your car up differently if you know it’s going to go one way or the other.
It’s a tricky place because the track, throughout the whole weekend, is never like it’s going to be when the race starts or after you get 40, 50 laps into the race. It’s hard to know exactly what you need in practice. You could be completely sideways all weekend, start the race and the thing won’t turn. You’re like, How the hell was I supposed to know that? You know what I mean?
The guys are good there, understand that place, understand you can’t worry about now, you have to look forward and kind of look into the future.
Q. Last week with the end of the race, the aborted restart…
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: The first one?
Q. The first one. Did you understand that?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah.
Q. I think there was a lot of confusion.
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, I mean, the best I could tell was the green flag was never waved, so therefore it was not a restart. You can’t have a restart unless the green flag comes out, right? That was kind of the way I looked at it.
When the guys started spinning out, all the mess started happening, I was pretty sure we were going to get to do it again. A lot of times, I guess short-track racing, that’s kind of how it is. If something happens, they don’t throw the green, you get another attempt at it. They kind of restack the field, reline you up, so you don’t lose your position, if the green never came out.
I can remember days back racing short tracks, it was like that. Somebody jumped the start, they didn’t throw the green, they put you back in the spot you were supposed to start in then. Kind of had that feeling to it.
Q. Can you take me through that first one. Correct me if I’m wrong, you were behind the 48?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah.
Q. So there was contact?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Oh, yeah. I knocked the hell out of him (laughter). But it wasn’t me. Like I was getting hit. I was on the brakes. I was not on the gas at all. I just kept getting hit, kept getting hit, kept getting hit. Finally he spun out. I got hit I don’t know how many times. I don’t know who was hitting the guy behind me. You could feel there was more than one car back there hitting, you know what I mean? So, yeah, I spun him out. It definitely wasn’t my fault. He was okay with it, too. I already checked.
Q. Because you’re still in title contention, that was a driver that wasn’t, regardless of who it was, did you feel like you had to go talk to that driver, Jimmie in this case, let him know what happened so it ends there?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: I don’t think it was any different than any other week. If I had gotten into anyone at any point in time throughout the season, I would want to tell them what happened, give them my side of the story, whether I just screwed up or whether I maybe did it on purpose.
I guess if I did it on purpose, I wouldn’t talk to them. You know what I mean? In general, try to clear the air, make sure they’re not pissed off.
Q. You did it after the race?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: I seen him out there on pit road.
Q. At what point in the season did something like this seem possible to you, to get this deep into the Chase?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Well, I mean, you never know for sure. I mean, I think we felt good about our team all year. I think probably after race five or six when we were sitting there second in points, we’d been to all different types of racetracks, our cars had good speed everywhere, we were doing all the right things, that was when it was like, All right, this is a special group, we’ve got a really good opportunity this year to do some great things.
We just started clicking off the finishes, starting leading laps. Then we finally won at Pocono. It’s just been a lot of fun this season. It’s so exciting to go to the racetrack each week and see what they bring, see how it’s going to go. It’s just been a lot of fun. It’s been a pleasure.
Q. (Question regarding consistency.)
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, I mean, that’s what got us here. That’s obviously what it takes to stay here. Each and every week, when you only have three races in each of these rounds, there’s no room for errors, there’s no room for things to go wrong. We’ve seen it in each one of them so far, that some of the guys that were expected to go all the way are gone. One of them was in the first round. A couple of them were in the second round.
I don’t think anyone is safe. It doesn’t matter how fast you are, doesn’t matter how good you are, it’s all about just getting it done. I mean, one thing goes wrong, any one of us could be gone after Martinsville.
It’s just about taking it one race at a time, racing hard, getting all you can get.
Q. The pressure each and every race…
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: So far I like it (laughter).
Q. High drama. NASCAR wanted that.
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: That’s exactly what they wanted. They got it. It’s been crazy. The last 20 laps at Talladega, it was insane. You didn’t know what was going to happen.
I never thought about the points or looked at them. I haven’t even watched the race to see how many times it changed, guys were in and out, in and out, all that. Hell, we were out for 120 some laps of that race because we got stuck a lap down.
You just never know what can happen.
Q. What are your thoughts on what happened with the 4 car? You weren’t directly involved with that.
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: I really don’t have an opinion on it. I don’t have any thoughts on it. I haven’t really seen it. To be honest, I don’t really care how it went down.
I was in front of him. I was very happy to be there. I was worried about what I had to do. You know, it is what it is. I’m not real sure.
Q. Does it show you like, I’m going to do whatever it takes to advance? Whatever it takes to get me to the next round, that’s what I’m going to do.
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Well, I mean, yeah. You’re probably willing to do just about anything if it comes down to it. You’re wounded, you’re just trying to save your day. Damage control. What can you do to have the best chance possible? In every situation we’re put in, that’s what you ask yourself: What do I have to do to put myself in the best position possible to move on? That’s what everybody does.
Q. How does your driver code change as you get deeper in the Chase? You’re so close, but there’s only three opportunities to advance, one mistake, as opposed to earlier in the season?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: I’m not sure yet. My driver code has really never changed. That’s something I may have to look into. I may have to do something different. I don’t know. I hope I don’t.
It just depends on the situation, I guess. Again, say we’re at Phoenix, we need that one spot, there’s probably not a lot you won’t do to get it.
I think you have to be smart about it. You don’t want to go out there and just run over a guy that’s not in the Chase because next week he’s probably going to wreck you.
You got to be smart about it. I think everybody’s going to keep ramping it up, racing more aggressively, racing harder, take more chances. But you don’t want to go overboard and just run people over and take people out of the race. That’s not fair. Everybody has the same opportunity. Everybody has the same right to be on that racetrack.
I’m sure I’ll race just like I always did, but I’ll probably be a little bit more on that edge than ever.
Q. Can you give me a sense from your perspective of how you feel like things have ramped up as this Chase has gone on from the first round to the second round, what you’ve seen?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: I haven’t seen that it’s changed all that much throughout the first four races, five races, whatever it’s been, six. Yeah, six. Sorry. I haven’t really seen it, to be honest with you.
I think that since Chicago started, everybody’s been pushing hard. Nothing sticks out as saying, That was the time, that was the move, that he would have never done that if it wasn’t the Chase. I haven’t really seen any of that, aside from the little bit I seen of the restart at the end of the Talladega with Harvick, how that all went down.
That’s really the only thing that stuck out to me and said, He would have never done that had it not been an Elimination race, you know.
Q. He said you’ve got to give yourself a chance.
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: You’ve got to give yourself a chance, especially when you’re wounded.
Q. You’re on the edge of racing for a big championship, you could have been a fishing boat captain.
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah. Still could be (laughter).
Q. What happened there? You were involved in the business for a while.
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, that’s what I did in high school, straight out of high school, to afford to be able to race. Obviously my dad owned a team, had cars and things. But getting started, it was all about how much could I do with what I worked for.
I pretty much worked as hard as I could to race. Figured out real quick that I ought to figure out how to be good at this racing thing because I don’t want to be working on these boats the rest of my life.
I think it helped, put the pressure on, to say, This is what you could be doing, you’re pretty damn lucky to drive racecars. I think about it all the time. I think about it every time I have a bad day at the racetrack. I think about I could be working on a boat, could be going out tonight 3:00 in the morning, banging ice off the thing when it’s freezing up.
It’s a pretty good gig.
Q. Did you do that as a teenager?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yes.
Q. What did you do on the boat?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: I was a deckhand. Basically you did the grunt work. You ran the boat. I mean, you didn’t drive it, but you did all the heavy lifting, the sorting, the gear work, just the rough, dirty, stinky, cold, sweaty work.
Q. Clamming, too?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Clamming, yup.
Q. Is that worse than crabbing or some of the other stuff you see on TV?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: It’s similar to Deadliest Catch, I would say. Weather’s not quite as bad. The season’s a lot longer. It’s year-round. It’s 24-hour trips usually.
We probably usually did four or five trips a week. They were anywhere from 18 to 26 hours each probably. So, yeah, it was similar, but a little bit different.
Q. Any incidents? Did you fall off at all?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: No. Thank God I didn’t fall off.
Q. When was the last time you did it?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, it was about – let’s see – ’99 or 2000 when I quit. I didn’t quit. I went and worked full-time at the race shop. I started running Busch North. There were only three of us there so I went full-time working at the race shop.
Q. How did the crew initiate you?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: They were fine. Actually my cousin and I were the two main deckhands on the one boat I worked on full-time close to two years after high school. We did everything. I mean, we pretty much ran the show on the deck. It was cool. We had a lot of fun with it. We worked hard, made a lot of money. We enjoyed ourselves with it.
Q. Is the boat similar to like the Deadliest Catch boats?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, mostly. The biggest one now is like 150 foot. The one I worked on was like 96, I think. A big steel boat with a big dredge on the back that you drug on the bottom to dig up the clams.
Q. What was the boat’s name?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Roberta Lee, my grandmother’s name.
Q. Did you have any rough seas that got your attention ever?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah. There’s bunks underneath where you sleep on the way in, the way out. This was I think about a three-hour steam that day to where we were working. We were coming home. We were laying in there sleeping in the bunks.
I just remember just about getting rolled out of it. Getting up like, What the hell is going on? Get out of there. All the drawers are flying out. All the drawers had come out of all the cabinets in the galley, in the kitchen. The refrigerator door had flung open, crap flying everywhere. You had to walk up the little set of like steel steps that were kind of straight up, almost like a ladder, from downstairs in the galley to up in the wheelhouse.
I just remember climbing up the stairs, hanging onto the railing, looking out, and saying, Holy hell, this is bad. I mean, it was nothing but white as far as you could see. It was like 14-foot swells we were in. Taking them over the bough. It was pretty nasty. We had about an hour and a half of that. That was the worst weather I’d ever been in. It was pretty freaky out there in that.
Q. Your dad still runs the company, right?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: They still do, right.
Q. Big operation?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Absolutely. It’s pretty big. I don’t know how many employees they have now. I mean, I think the last he told me, it was like 1200 or something. I mean, it’s a big operation. It goes from plants and boats all the way from Virginia to Rhode Island, up and down the East Coast. Pretty big operation.
Q. Sea Watch?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Sea Watch International.
Q. All about clams?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: That’s what they catch and process. But they sell other stuff through their plants. The only thing they actually catch and process is the clams.
Q. Looking at who has made it to this round, Kurt Busch said your team would probably be the one that many would take as the surprise to have made it this far.
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah.
Q. Do you want everybody now to know you’re here or do you like flying under the radar?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: That’s a good question because I like both sides of it. I like being under the radar. I like that a lot of people don’t have many expectations for us. I mean, honestly, everything I’ve read, we should have been out in the first round.
That’s cool. It’s cool to surprise people. It’s cool to overachieve, I guess, in a sense. It is frustrating at the same time because if you look at what we’ve done all year long, I don’t think it should be a surprise.
I think my team deserves more credit than they’ve gotten. Certainly for being a single-car team out of Colorado, I mean, that alone, to be able to do what we’ve done is a big deal.
I don’t think we’ve gotten enough credit for what we’ve done. At the same time, you know, it’s a fair assessment that we are the underdog because of those things.
It could go both ways, but I think it’s a cool spot to be in. We’re having fun with it.
Q. You don’t feel like you’re overachieving? You feel like you’re doing exactly what you’re capable of doing?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Honestly, I think up till now, throughout the Chase, we’ve probably underachieved. I think just about every race that we’ve had, we’ve run better than we’ve finished. Those are the things we’re looking at fixing. Those are the things we have to do better going forward in these next three or four to get where we want to.
Guys are working hard. We’re looking at every avenue on what we can do better. Hopefully we’ll be able to put it all together in the next four.
Q. Can this team win the championship?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Absolutely. No doubt about it.
Q. Do you get tired of the single-car team based in Denver? As a group, do you say, Judge us on our merits, judge us on the fact that we’re running well?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think we get tired of it. I think we’re proud of it. It’s as big a deal for us as it is for people that talk about it. It’s definitely not easy to do it the way they’re doing it.
I mean, just look at the sheer numbers, the amount of people that we have. I talked about this six weeks ago when we came here. We have 50 some employees. Hendrick has 500 something, four teams, four satellite teams, their own engine shop. I mean, there’s so many things that are smaller when it comes to our group, what we do.
I think it’s just impressive. It impresses me every weekend what our guys do with what they have. I tell everybody all the time how lucky I am and how awesome it is to drive for this team, because they’re incredible what they’re doing. It’s been fun to be a part of that.
Get tired of it? Not really. I think it’s a cool story.
Q. Do you also stop and reflect of where you are with Furniture Row and where you’ve come from at the end of a large split?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, no doubt. Those things are unforgettable. The things that I’ve been through between that and what I went through with Sherry last year, the season last year. Those are things that are part of who you are. That makes you who you are.
Certainly I’m a different person today because of all those things. I feel like part of the reason I’ve been able to be successful, you know, not let the pressure get to me. I’ve been cool, you know, not had any issues throughout the Chase.
I think in years past, this probably would have freaked me out. I think that I’d have been a lot more nervous, I’d been a lot more scared. I would have felt a lot worse had things not gone right than I do today.
Today we go into the racetrack saying, It’s just another race and we’ve got to do the best we can do. We have to be proud of that effort when we’re done.
Q. If you get to Homestead racing for a championship, other than family, who is somebody you would like or hope to be there to potentially share in that experience?
MARTIN TRUEX JR.: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think most importantly my family would be there. My dad, my family, has been the most important thing to me for all my years, whether it be racing or whatever it’s been. So I think the most important people will already be there.
I’m sure if I had the chance to do that, one of the first two people are already going to be there but would come to see me are Dale Jr. and Ryan Newman, two of my closest friends to this day, that I would not even know if it were not for racing. It would be cool to see their reaction and see what they thought about it, I guess.
FastScripts by ASAP Sports
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 4 OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE CHEVROLET SS
PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
KEVIN HARVICK: Look, I’ve thought about this a lot, as you listen to what other people say. Obviously we were in a unique position with the caution still out, the way that things all shook out.
You know, they can look at it a hundred different ways, but you can’t just roll over and be done with it and say, We tried our best. I quit once in my life and I’ll never quit again.
From their perspective, I can understand their frustration of not being in the Chase or whatever the circumstances may be. So I’m not going to throw stones because I don’t believe that’s probably the right thing to do.
You know, look, I didn’t cause the first wreck. I definitely don’t believe that I caused the second wreck either. It’s just one of those situations where I did the best I could on the restarts to get going. I got out of the way. I never even really saw the 6 car until he was by me and doing what he was doing.
So it’s just one of those situations where you can’t stop, you have to continue to try to let it play out. It really did play out. Those guys wrecked the first time. Obviously the situation with the restart was what it was, so… We moved on.
Q. You say you didn’t cause the wreck. You did cause it. I’m not saying you did it intentionally or unintentionally, but it’s clear you were the one.
KEVIN HARVICK: I definitely restarted the race, hit the gas. As I was going up, Trevor was coming down. That was definitely the beginning point of what happened.
But I was trying to just get going. That was really my biggest thing. I thought if I could get going, I might be involved in a situation where something else happened like it did on the first one.
Second attempt of one attempt, we had more happen.
Q. Does it hurt that people are saying this? Do you feel like you need to defend yourself?
KEVIN HARVICK: No. I don’t need to defend myself. Here’s the deal. If those guys were in the same situation, and their car would still function, it’s like a football player. If his knee’s blown out and he’s playing in the Super Bowl, he’s going to try to play as long as he can.
We maintained the speed on the caution. If all the circumstances would have been different, it might have had a different outcome. Those guys have been throwing stones all year, so you just go on with it.
Q. You seemed to be looking in the rearview mirror a lot. Was it your intent to hold the line up?
KEVIN HARVICK: My intent was hoping that somebody would actually push me to get going and just try to go and hope that something happened like it did on the first of the attempts.
Q. Did anyone from NASCAR contact you to explain or did they come to their own decision?
KEVIN HARVICK: I have no idea.
Q. You didn’t talk to anybody?
KEVIN HARVICK: I didn’t talk to anybody. I’d been at the doctor.
Q. Were you concerned NASCAR might?
KEVIN HARVICK: I just control the things that I can control. I told you exactly the same thing I told you today after the race. I try to control the things that I can control.
Look, I’ve been at this for a long time. There’s going to be good situations, bad, in the middle. You navigate through them with whatever you think is your best routine.
I’ve been to the doctor. I’ve been to the car pool line. I’ve been to lunch with my wife, done all the normal things I do on a normal week.
Q. (More questions regarding the restart.)
KEVIN HARVICK: I’ve never been in that position where the restart got waved off, except for maybe an All-Star Race. Even though the caution wasn’t thrown until you were kind of halfway around the track and everything is sorted out.
Maybe I didn’t understand that part of the rule, that if the caution came out that fast, that didn’t count. I’d have to read the rule book, that section, maybe a little bit further. Maybe you guys can help me.
Q. It’s not in there. I looked. It’s not clear.
KEVIN HARVICK: Okay. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to speculate on something. There’s a lot of sections of the rule book that have some pretty fine detail on how things work and how you have to sort through them. I just wanted to make sure.
Q. On the first non-attempt, you pulled high, whereas the real attempt you stayed in line. What was the rationale there?
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I mean, they were wrecking when I pulled up at some point during all that. You try to get going as best you can. The second one, you try to do the same thing and get going as best that you can.
Q. Back to the first restart, do you agree with the rule, the way they called it?
KEVIN HARVICK: I didn’t really know. I didn’t really pay attention to it. The explanation on the radio, the caution came out before I guess we got back to the start/finish line. I didn’t know to complain about anything because I didn’t know there might be something more to that rule that I hadn’t seen before, so…
Q. You said you’re never going to quit again because you quit once in your life. When was that time?
KEVIN HARVICK: My senior year in wrestling. I had what I thought was a great junior year in wrestling. That would have been ’94. ’93 I went to the Valley Championship and got beat in the first round. The second year I went to the divisionals and should have won those easily. If I went to the Valley that year, it would have been the opening weekend of race season. In hindsight, probably should have just finished what I had started.
I don’t know, felt like I let a lot of people down at that particular point. Looking back at it now, you look back at it as a kid you don’t really care, but now you look back at it as that’s probably not the right thing to do. Let my team down, let myself down a little bit on probably what I was due with success as I went forward through the end of that year, so…
It was just a bad decision.
Q. Did not going end your career?
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, that was it.
Q. You don’t know what would have happened?
KEVIN HARVICK: Right, yeah. If you don’t play things all the way through, you never know how they’re going to play out. That was just one of those situations. It was a good life lesson. I think that’s a little bit in my DNA as we’ve gone through the years, you really push things to try to let them play out, finish things.
Stewart is the same way. Last year we went to Homestead. That will be a piece of advice that sticks with me for a long time. He is like, Whether you’re winning or losing, you can’t let your guard down, you have to give it 100% the whole time because you never know how the circumstances are going to play out.
We were behind last year. You’re like, Man, I’m behind, 13th, 14th, whatever, with 12 laps to go, whatever the case may be. Wow, that might not have been the right decision.
At that point you have to mentally clear your mind, stop, refocus on what you’re doing and try to make the most out of the situation. Obviously it worked out last year.
Those are two pretty good life lessons that you really have to let things play out and finish them.
Q. Were you ever concerned with the condition of your car that you might not even be able to make it around? You had to do another one and a half laps.
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, the biggest concern was I thought it was the ECU. I thought we had a broken tailpipe. I turned the ECU off, it didn’t fire back up immediately, to fire it back up.
I don’t know how the valve and everything got situated in the head to keep running. It’s not very often that they do that. I’ve only had that happen once one other time, and it was in a late-model car several years ago now.
Q. So you don’t know what was wrong with the car, with the engine?
KEVIN HARVICK: The engine was blown up. Not blown up, obviously. It was injured.
Q. Why are you so good at Phoenix?
KEVIN HARVICK: Look, right now we’re focused on trying to get through Martinsville. We’ve had a really sloppy six weeks. We’re very fortunate to be sitting here today.
Our cars have had plenty of speed. Had the engine problem this week, transmission problem the week before, pit penalty the week before that, Charlotte was okay, Dover was okay, then just a couple mistakes and things happening in the first couple weeks.
This is a one-week-at-a-time battle. If we can get to Phoenix in a better position than we’ve been in the first two weeks… The first six weeks have been pretty sloppy.
Q. Is Joey a clear favorite with three in a row?
KEVIN HARVICK: I think it’s all back to zero. I feel like we’ve been as sloppy as we’ve been in two years, since I’ve been involved in this race team, and we’re still hanging around. I feel like our pit crew is on point. We’ve had speed in the cars. Those have been really the only two things that have been 100%. Physically I haven’t been 100%. We’ve had some parts failures and things go wrong with those pieces of it not being 100%.
It’s been my focus this week to try to get myself where I need to be for the next three weeks. A lot of climate change and time change, a lot of things you have to deal with physically. I need to make sure when I get to Friday, I’m where I need to be from my standpoint.
Q. When the engine got sick, were you concerned you weren’t going to advance, this would be something that would knock you out?
KEVIN HARVICK: I was fortunate to have the 10 there to help. She kept me in the pack. We were able to get ourselves situated in the middle of the pack. If I had got to the back of the pack, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the pack. We got ourselves situated in the middle of the pack and were able to make ground and maintain what we needed to.
There was a lot of scenarios that happened. I mean, obviously the 11 had his car fall apart. His situation, I don’t even know. I guess the roof hatch.
Q. It was going to fly open.
KEVIN HARVICK: I got you. There was a lot of things that played out that I didn’t really pay attention to during the race because our main focus was to just not make a mistake on pit road and stay up front. We did all that all day. All of a sudden you have something else to deal with. It’s like abort, abort, abort. You got to try to get yourself in the middle of the pack because you can’t keep up with the pack if I get shuffled all the way to the back. I tried to get myself in line and do the best there.
The way that everything played out with the cautions, we were very fortunate that it played out with those cautions. If there was no cautions, who knows how it would have turned out.
Q. You have to sort of steel yourself from reaction to it as we move into the next round? You’ve been used to that over the years. Do you have to lock any conversation about this race out and move ahead?
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I don’t even pay attention to it. I tell you guys that a lot. I just laugh. You just smile and move on. Just for the fact that there’s so much happening, so many moving parts. If you sit and think about things too long while you’re at home, you’ll get hit in the head with a football.
Q. Those that believe you did it on purpose; some say you did what you had to do to stay in the thing. Has the line of maybe code or what drivers will do changed a little bit with this format?
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, I think if you’re at race 13 and you’re in a situation like that, you probably pull in the pits. If you’re in a cutoff race at Talladega, you have to play the restart out. I mean, you have to try.
If it falls on its face, you crash, whatever the case may be, but you still have that little glimmer of hope. That’s your season. That’s it. I mean, if you’re done there, I mean, you’re still going to race. What my friends don’t understand, you’re still going to race. Playoff is over, you lost in the playoffs, but you’re still racing.
I don’t understand. You’re the loser. How do you get to keep going?
You just have to hope. Look at the football game a couple weeks ago. Who would have thought the guy drops the ball, guy picks it up and runs back for a touchdown, Michigan State wins the game. I mean, it’s just sports.
But it’s a more cut-throat system, for sure, just for the fact that it’s three, and you got to survive to stay in.
Q. Some people say NASCAR should have black-flagged you, come into the pits.
KEVIN HARVICK: I didn’t have an oil leak. My car was still maintaining speed. It’s like I got a dagger in my side, but I can still walk. You know what I mean? That one is from Denny (laughter).
Q. Have you heard from Denny?
KEVIN HARVICK: Look, Denny is a very emotional person. I would consider Denny a fair acquaintance. I don’t consider too many of them my friends because we get in situations like this.
I think as you look at that, he’s a very opinionated person. He’s going to stand behind what he believes in. That’s fair. I don’t think anybody can knock him for that. I’m not going to sit here and throw stones because I’ve been mad at situations, you know, like last week.
Q. Why not in this situation, if you don’t feel like you did anything wrong, why not reach out and stand up and shout?
KEVIN HARVICK: Because most of the times there’s no conversation with those types of situations. Then I get mad. You know what I mean? It just creates more conflicts. Sometimes there’s nobody there.
Q. Were you moving up?
KEVIN HARVICK: I was just trying to get going. I was trying to get going, thinking, trying to get somebody behind me to help me get going. Before I knew it, he was gone, beside me. It’s like I told you on the weekend, I didn’t know he was out there until he was already by me, so…
It all happens pretty fast.
Q. Were you hoping the 10 car would give you a push?
KEVIN HARVICK: I was hoping the 6 would push me. He was the car that started behind me, so…
Q. You’re going to lose your voice.
KEVIN HARVICK: I lost my voice after I talked for two hours after the truck race. But that was fun.
What do you guys want to talk about now?
Q. Is there any solution to the green-white-checkered thing, regardless of how it happened?
KEVIN HARVICK: Here’s the best thing I heard this week. I listen to Kenny Wallace on the radio. You ever listen to him? He’s great. You know why? Not that you guys don’t, but when I came here three weeks ago, he did a phenomenal job on the Sirius, the interview we were in. I walked through the kitchen, DeLana was listening to Kenny Wallace on Sirius. We might have a problem just for the fact there’s so many people with opinions. You go back. I’ve been on the other side of Bill Jr.’s decisions. Maybe there are too many opinions. You have the fan council, you have the drivers, the owners. I don’t know.
As drivers, you think that’s probably the right thing to do because of what happened at Daytona. NASCAR is in a tough spot to try to make everybody happy. Is that right or wrong? I don’t know. Everybody trying to make the sport better, but how many opinions are too many opinions? I don’t know.
I don’t know what’s right. I mean, did it need to be single file? Did it need to be double file? They got the double file because of NASCAR and the fans, people wanting double-file restarts?
In 2009 or 2010, when the green-white-checkereds were added, that was at the shootout when I beat Greg Biffle because everybody was up in arms because we were racing under caution. So we went to three, right? Isn’t that how it went?
So that week, Speedweeks, we changed the rule. Now we’re back to where we were at that particular point.
So it’s a tough spot to be in. You have to balance safety, you have to balance opinions, you have to balance all these things that come with it. But what’s right, I don’t know. I mean, the reason that we went to it is nobody wants to watch a race end under caution. Maybe that’s not right. I don’t know.
I mean, from a driver’s standpoint, we want it to be over with because of the pack and the way things push and shove, hammer down, shove the guy in front of you. If you knock the guy in front of him out of the way, you knock the guy in front of him out of the way. Bumper cars. From a safety aspect, I see it. From a fans’ aspect, I see it. They don’t want to see a yellow-flag finish. Is that right? I don’t know. That’s a great debate for you guys. You guys think about a lot more things and hear about a lot more things.
In Dale Jr. wins under caution, was it okay then?
Q. Absolutely.
KEVIN HARVICK: I mean, not even a debate then. You know what I mean? I’m not knocking on Dale Jr. or anybody. I’m just asking you. It’s a fair question.
Q. If the initial start can be clean and the restarts in the middle of the race can be clean, but the green-white-checkereds are always a disaster?
KEVIN HARVICK: Because we’re idiots, every one of us. We’re pushing and shoving. You’re pushing past the limits. You’re pushing past everything you’re supposed to do. You know it’s wrong.
What happened on the first one?
Q. Somebody hit Jimmie.
KEVIN HARVICK: So it’s just a typical thing. If everything’s not perfect, somebody’s going to wreck. The harder you can push the guy in front of you, you know the guy behind you is going to push as hard as you push, it’s like a snowplow coming through. The energy just pushes it out the front.
Q. It’s the end of the race.
KEVIN HARVICK: It’s the end of the race. Look at how important every point is. In those situations you have to be overly aggressive. You have to go over the edge.
FastScripts by ASAP Sports
Connect with Team Chevy on social media. Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TeamChevy, follow us on Twitter @TeamChevy, and add +TeamChevy into your Google+ circles.
Team Chevy racing photos are available at:
About Chevrolet
Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world’s largest car brands, doing business in more than 115 countries and selling around 4.8 million cars and trucks a year. Chevrolet provides customers with fuel-efficient vehicles that feature engaging performance, design that makes the heart beat, passive and active safety features and easy-to-use technology, all at a value. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.
