Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Chicago Street Race Media Availability | Saturday, July 1, 2023
Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 4 GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang, stopped by the infield media center inside the Art Institute of Chicago to talk about this weekend’s Street Race.
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang – WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE SEEN SO FAR HERE IN CHICAGO? “We came last night and did the track walk this morning and was obviously pretty impressed by the way that the track looked. Really, after driving it and the way that it flowed and everything that we did in the simulator, I think it lays out well. I think there’s a lot of excitement and buzz and when you create this kind of event to come into a weekend everybody wants to see how it goes and what happens, so there’s a lot of intrigue and I think that’s really part of what makes a great event.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU SAW ON THE TRACK WALK THAT SHOULD BE ADDRESSED? “I think that most of them that were here yesterday pretty much covered everything, so they moved some tire packs. I think the big talk was the brake markers, trying to make them something a little more visible. They put some orange tape around the brake marker signs to try to make them a little bit more visible, so, really, other than small things like that you kind of just have to wait and see what the race looks like. Obviously, Xfinity practice looked pretty decent and it looks like the cars have good grip, so we’ll just have to wait and see how it races and kind of make adjustments from there, I would assume.”
COULD YOU IMAGINE IN 2001 RACING IN SOMETHING LIKE THIS SETTING? “It was just so much different when I started because of racing at new racetracks in the middle of nowhere was exciting. I think with the way that the evolution of the sport has evolved into doing things differently, we’ve raced inside of football stadium, we’ve raced on street courses now. We’ve been on dirt. We’ve raced in the rain – all things that I would have thought you were crazy for, and pretty much everyone would have thought you were crazy for at that particular time. It’s a constant evolution of trying to make things different and exciting. It’s a much different world that we live in. It’s a different attention span of those watching, for the most part, and it requires a constant change and evolution to keep it fresh and exciting, so I think as you go through this weekend it opens a lot of doors for us. I think we opened a lot of doors for ourselves when we went to the Coliseum and now you’ve just got to figure out how to find that balance of how much you want to do things like this and the Coliseum and whether dirt is right or wrong. Is it a different track? What moves the needle? And I think that’s really what ultimately makes this event a success. I don’t know that you can make it a failure at this particular point, but how much of a success this particular event is is just measured on new eyeballs, intrigue from television viewers and things like that.”
DO WE NEED MORE EVENTS WITH RACES AND CONCERTS AT EXISTING TRACKS? “Well, let’s just take Sonoma for example. When we first went to Sonoma nobody wanted to go and now it’s one of our destination races because you can talk your other half into going somewhere that they may not particularly want to be to watch a race, but there’s other things to do. Whether it’s a concert or a race, you can kind of find that middle ground to do something different with multiple things to do at the event, so it allows you to have a compromise with the people who don’t want to be at the race in order to have other things happening in a cool city, and not only the event we have but there’s also a lot of other things to do right here. It’s not like you have to drive an hour to get to the city or go to a baseball game or whatever it may be. There’s a lot of things that you can check boxes with and activities of things to do.”
IS THERE ANY DANGER OF OVERTHINKING THIS TRACK? “I’m probably the wrong guy to ask. My road racing street course ability is one event and it was in 1999 around the L.A. Coliseum. I think as we’ve gone through all of this, to me, this one looks easier just because you can connect the dots. Everybody is starting with the same experience level. It’s not something where you can go and drive other cars or have a racing past of things that you’ve done. I think the good road racers are still gonna rise to the top, but, for me, with all of the markers and simplicity of the way that everything lays out, I think you can connect the dots and still do pretty good. It’s different than going to Road America for the first time where you’ve got a bunch of guys who raced there in the Xfinity Series or raced there in other cars and have experience there, or whatever the case may be. We’re all starting from scratch and, for me, I feel more comfortable with where we’re going to start than where we did at say Road America.”
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THAT OTHER RACE? “The only thing I really remember is that we ran through a big gutter and it would rip the rocker panels off, so we’re one step above that here so far today from what I’ve seen.”
HOW HAS IT BEEN HAVING JENSON BUTTON AROUND? “I haven’t spent much time around Jenson. I’ve had one conversation with him in the two races. I don’t think his experience can hurt anything. I think as we go through the whole process it will be interesting. I have not sat in any of the competition meetings with him, so I think as we do that tomorrow it’ll be interesting to hear his feedback, but definitely can’t hurt.”
HOW DO YOU THINK THE SIMULATOR TIME IS GOING TO TRANSLATE TO THE REAL COURSE? “Really, the biggest thing for me is just memorizing the track. I think things like what direction am I coming up on next, so that’ll be the most important thing to me is getting all the new markers on the actual racetrack. I think the lap time will be a little bit faster than what we practiced at in our simulator, so just memorizing those markers and getting comfortable with exactly where I need to be in the braking zones and how wide the racetrack is, which corner is coming up next, where all the bumps are, that’ll be the main thing for me is to memorize all that stuff in the first 50.”
WHAT ARE YOUR FEELINGS ON THE RESTART ZONE AND WITH HOW COTA ENDED IS THIS A WAY TO SOLVE THAT PROBLEM? “I think the theory was to spread the cars out more getting into turn one, so it seemed to work well at some of the racetracks like Portland. Sonoma didn’t really have that same type of problem with the way that it’s laid out. Hopefully, when you look at Portland it allowed the cars to get spread out and not have that huge effect of four or five cars nose-to-tail. It’s a tough balance just because of the fact that the car is so durable. I think it’s tough just because you know the car will do that and you start to get frustrated and participate because you at some point were on the other end of it getting spun out, so it’s a fine balance.”
BLANEY HIT A CONCRETE BARRIER AND NASCAR SAID IT WOULD LOOK AT OTHER TRACKS, BUT IS THERE A FRUSTRATION OR UNDERSTANDING THAT CARS WILL FIND DIFFERENT SPOTS AND YOU CAN’T COVER EVERYTHING? “I don’t think that’s a good excuse. I think that spot should have been covered. We’ve gone to some of these new racetracks and had bare walls and I think that probably needs to be done a little bit more aggressively in order to make those situations right. It’s just a firm reminder that we can hit anything anywhere. You’re not guarding for the everyday accidents. Obviously, it helps them, but you’re guarding for the weird incidents like we had with Kyle Busch at Daytona and Ryan’s was very similar to that. That’s really what you’re looking for, so definitely needs to be a little bit more thorough on erring too much, not enough.
CHASE ELLIOTT SAID HE WAS PLEASANTLY SURPRISED WITH HOW THE COURSE LOOKED. DOES THIS GIVE YOU A SENSE THAT NASCAR CAN DO THIS MORE OFTEN OR IS THIS A DIRECTION NASCAR HAS ALREADY BEEN MOVING? “I’m fairly certain they own all of the barriers, so it definitely opens the door to being able to do this type of event in other spots. I think you just have to measure the success and how far it moves the needle and know that you may not have to spend as much money because you don’t have to buy the barriers next time, but the amount of money being spent to put this event on there obviously has to be a level of excitement that moves the needle in order to keep doing that. I think you have to start somewhere and you have to step out of that box and do things differently, and I think we have a lot of room to still explore and do things and show our product off in different cities to different people. I think they told us that over 80 percent of the fans here this weekend will be people who have never watched a NASCAR race. If you’re gonna grow the sport, you’re gonna have to do stuff like this and I’m the same. When I walked the track, and luckily Julie (Giese) was the last person that I saw before we walked across the track, they’ve just done a good job. It flowed well on the simulator and it looked like it flowed well in practice for the Xfinity cars, and I don’t expect anything different with our cars. From the time I walked in the hotel and the way that it was organized and structured, it felt like old-school NASCAR to me with just the things that have happened since I’ve walked off the plane to come into the racetrack and into the hotel, so it’s been a great experience so far.”
IS THIS AN EVENT YOU HAVE TO COME TO WITH AN OPEN MIND? “I think you have to because I made the mistake at the Clash the first time we went and said I thought it was gonna be a disaster and it turned into a great event and a great race. I think you have to just do it because you don’t know. You just don’t know how these types of things are going to turn out, so an open mind is definitely better than walking in and just trying to figure out how to make it fail and trying to figure out all of the flaws in it because there are gonna be things that probably don’t go 100 percent right, but going through all these new type of events kind of changes your mindset to how you approach it because you see the enthusiasm. You can feel it and you can see it. You definitely don’t have this many colleagues sitting in your press room on a weekly basis, so there’s obviously something different this week that moves the needle.”
CAN YOU TAKE IN ANY OF THE SCENERY THIS CITY OFFERS WHEN YOU’RE ON THE TRACK? “It’s obviously going to be different, but I think once you fall out of those first few laps and you start to pick up all of those reference points it’ll just settle into the next corner. I think the part that as a competitor you kind of fall into this trap of not really enjoying the surroundings and all the things that go with that. I think you’ll probably see some cool pictures of things as you come out of the event and realize just the magnitude of coolness that went along with what we’re getting ready to do.”
YOU HAVE WON THREE OF THE LAST EIGHT AT LOUDON. WHY ARE YOU SO STRONG THERE? “Our flat track stuff has been really good. Our short track stuff has always been really good and I think as we go, this year our short track stuff is in the same category, so it’s definitely a racetrack that we’re looking forward to going to and I can’t wait to finally hopefully get to victory lane. After Nashville, having the fastest and having a tire go flat and Phoenix and a couple of the other places where it just seems like it all hasn’t come together, but they’re doing a great job of putting fast cars on the racetrack and Loudon is one of those places that checks a lot of boxes in order for us to go up there and hopefully have a good weekend.”
HAVE YOU NOTICED SPONSOR INTEREST IS HIGHER FOR THIS RACE? “I’m spoiled. Our sponsors have been in place for a long time, but I know the GEARWRENCH group that is on the car, they’ve brought a lot of people and activated throughout the week. We don’t have a lot of activity outside of that, but I know that there’s a lot of intrigue from people wanting to watch. You get the question of what do you think it’s going to be like. It’s come up several times in our meet and greets over the last several weeks, so there’s a lot of intrigue there. Our sponsor stuff has just been in place for a long time.”
WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE 36-RACE SCHEDULE, HOW WOULD YOU LAY IT OUT TO BALANCE THE WIDE VARIETY OF COURSES? “Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that obviously the road course number is going up. It seems like everybody wants to have more short tracks and things that go along with that side of the world. I think you have a lot of room to be flexible with whatever it is – the ‘hot ticket,’ right? I think that’s the most important thing, the hot ticket. It’s what is going to put the most butts in the grandstands and the most eyeballs on TVs. So, if it’s short tracks or street courses, we need to migrate to a few more of those. There is still a lot of room for Canada, Mexico, and there are a lot of things in North America to move to that we’ve been at before. Montreal was always one of the marquee races that opened up a different fund from the sponsorship side, and it was always full of people. I think there is a lot of room to move stuff around, especially from places that have a couple of dates that traditionally don’t have the best crowds and could be good ‘one’ racetracks.”
WHAT WOULD YOU SUGGEST? “Well, you know me. I’d change everything all the time. If it was me, Chicago is going to be a great city but I’d say, ‘I’ll see you guys again in about five years.’ You can be excited about it for the next four, then we’ll be back through the rotation. I’d rotate the championship race, the playoff races and create some sort of system that made sure there were enough road courses, short tracks and everything in the last 10. I’d move them all. There are traditional races like the Daytona 500, Southern 500… I guess there isn’t really more than that… the Coca-Cola 600 and maybe the Bristol summer race. Everything from there would be free game. I’d make sure that the markets and racetracks are held accountable to have the proper amount of people in the seats. If it’s not going the way it should, move them around.”
