NASCAR CUP SERIES
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2020
PLAYOFF MEDIA DAY 2
KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Busch Light Ford Mustang — HOW MUCH DOES NOT HAVING FANS HELPING MAKE THE RACES FEEL MORE LIKE AN EVENT CHANGE THE RACES? “I think everything has changed and I think our events are probably better than what most people can possibly imagine at this point, so I think you have to be careful in how you phrase that and how you put that because in today’s world our events are pretty good compared to what you see in other sports. Our events are starting to have fans migrate back into the grandstands and different portions of the racetrack from a camping perspective, and I think as you look at what we do we’re in a very, very fortunate spot to be able to go back to the racetrack and work and do the things that we love to do on a weekly basis, so our environment is, for what we’ve been used to at home and the things we can and can’t go do and being able to go to a sporting event safely is pretty extraordinary at this point.”
ARE YOU TAKING EXTRA PRECAUTIONS AS FAR AS TRYING NOT TO GET COVID CONSIDERING THE IMPACT IT COULD HAVE ON A PLAYOFF RUN AND WILL A DRIVER EVEN GO GET TESTED UNLESS THEY HAVE SEVERE SYMPTOMS? “It’s changed my whole life, my family’s whole life in the way that we do things. I travel by myself. I drive in the rental car by myself. I go to the motorhome by myself. I get back in the rental car and I go home. We don’t go to the grocery store. We don’t go to any social events anywhere. My son doesn’t go to school. He’s now homeschooled, so there’s really nothing that this whole situation hasn’t changed in our family’s life in order to try to create the safest environment that we can possibly create in our own little bubble, I guess you could say. It’s touched pretty much every portion of our life, trying to create an environment to be as safe as possible and do the things that we’ve done and learned throughout the year. I think the protocols and things that NASCAR has put in place for us at the racetrack, some may think it’s excessive or over-the-top, but I think when you look at the situation that we’re in and trying to get back to work, trying to keep working, trying to go by every state’s guidelines and county guidelines and make everybody happy it has to be extreme. So, I’m on the side of the fence that I would rather be overly cautious in trying to make sure that we do the things that are required to keep racing. I like going to work and I like doing the things that I get to do on Sunday and we’re trying to do our part in making sure we follow those procedures and guidelines.”
WHAT IS YOUR OPINION ON BUILDING MOMENTUM IN THESE PLAYOFFS? “You’re not gonna start that now. Four or five years ago we sat down as a team and really tried to figure out how we could playoff race every week. There’s no switching gears from that mindset into a different mindset. You know that there’s going to be (audio cuts out).
…as far as how to race in playoff form on a week-to-week basis, and do that as a team at that level and I think that, for us, has worked very well because when we get to the playoffs it’s not how do we switch gears into playoff mode, it’s keep doing what you’ve been doing at that level in order to continue that going forward, so momentum comes in different waves. Obviously, we’ve been fortunate to have great momentum throughout the year and have been able to capitalize on the weeks when we’ve had great race cars and the weeks that we haven’t we’ve made decent finishes out of what we’ve had. I think momentum is real, but it comes and goes, but starting the playoffs can’t be — our theory is not that you change gears and try to do something different, it’s you better be ready and already have been in that mode.”
IS THERE A DARKHORSE IN THIS PLAYOFF? “There always will be. I think as you look at the competition level and I think this year could be a little bit different just because of the fact of I don’t think manufacturing can keep up with engineering with the way the shops have to work, and I think a lot of the planning, especially for guys that felt like they were going to be in the playoffs, I think waiting on the cars and things that might cycle around for the playoffs will be different just because of the way that we’ve had to work. I think it’s up in the air. Everyone is waiting on Kyle Busch to knock down that wall. We all know that he could win on any given week and know that he’s had a lot of bad luck this year, but it really could be anybody that goes on that type of run with the situation that we’re in.”
WHAT WILL A CHAMPIONSHIP MEAN FOR WHATEVER TEAM WINS IT THIS YEAR WITH EVERYTHING THAT HAS HAPPENED? “I think, obviously, for us and you guys have heard me talk about this before, we’re week-to-week on trying to be competitive week in and week out. It would be great to win the championship, but it’s hard to put together that one week and let alone 10 weeks of the playoffs in order to just get yourself there. Our biggest focus is trying to be competitive week in and week out, win races, which we’ve done over the first 26 weeks and that’s our goal to continue forward and do those things. To have it all come together like it has says a lot already about our organization and the things that we’ve been able to accomplish in extreme circumstances, so winning a championship in this particular year would say a lot about the people, but being able to be competitive week in and week out and win races says a lot about the people already.”
CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE CHALLENGE OF MAXIMIZING TIME ON PIT ROAD? “I think for us it’s a lot of communication. Our engineers have a lot to do with that in the way that pit road is shaped, where your pit stalls are picked, so there’s a strategy behind everything. I think as you look at the things that we do on pit road it’s really the shape of the pit road, the strategy of the location of the pit stall and making sure that my gauges and things are set up to the way that I like them and something that works for me and our team to be able to maximize that, so it’s just like anything else, you want to maximize everything that you do on pit road, but there’s a lot of little details that go into making that happen.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON CONSECUTIVE SHORT TRACK RACES IN THE FIRST ROUND AND WHAT WILL BRISTOL BE LIKE AS A CUTOFF RACE? “Here’s the thing, I think as we’ve gone through the playoffs in the past any of these races can turn into a wild, crazy race that is the race that you all dread, and any of them can do that. So, I think as you look at the first round this year has obviously been very different already, but I think when you look at the schedule and the things that are happening with the schedule it definitely has shook things up to be able to have those short tracks come into play. As you guys know, on those short tracks there’s a lot of beating and banging and situations that could definitely affect what we do, but that could be any race, and I think as you look at the first round it’s very intriguing, especially when you go to Richmond, a racetrack that we haven’t been there this year and you kind of have to take a guess at what you need to do. It’s a high wear racetrack from a tire standpoint, so getting your cambers and everything right is going to be a little bit tricky, so I think as you look at the playoffs in general, though, the way that they’re set up is intriguing as you go through every round just because of the fact that you have different racetracks from the year before, but they’re also racetracks that can be detrimental to finishes and gaining points because of the style of race or the situation that it could create.”
HOW UNPREDICTABLE WILL THE SECOND ROUND BE? “It’s like I just said. They all can be unpredictable and they all have their own unique situations that could be detrimental to the things that you’re trying to accomplish, so, they’re pretty easy to read in. All you have to do is look at the schedule and understand the type of race that they are and you’re right.”
WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION WHEN YOU HEARD THE CHAMPIONSHIP RACE WOULD BE IN PHOENIX? “I think, for me, the first reaction was, ‘Man, we didn’t run very good there last year.’ The second reaction was, ‘We’ve had a lot of success there in the past,’ and when we got done with the first race realized that we were back on track and capable of being able to win races and be competitive there this year. Obviously, Phoenix for me is kind of like a second home racetrack just because of all the races that I’ve been able to run there and participate in and have a lot of fans that have watched me race there since the mid-nineties. It’s a place that I’ve gone to watch races for a long time, so looking forward to being able to see how it all plays out and hopefully we can have some success there like we have in the past.”
HOW MANY DOUBLEHEADER WEEKENDS OR NO PRACTICE TYPE EVENTS DO YOU SEE GOING FORWARD? “I think the most important thing, to me, is that we have a healthy sport. I think a lot of that is going to be left up to NASCAR and the teams just because of the fact we have to come out of this pandemic and situation learning something. I think efficiency and what that brings from a financial standpoint is definitely something that I think everybody is calculating into the equations, but we also need healthy racetracks and we have to have opportunities for the fans to come to the racetrack as we move forward, so there’s a lot of information that is coming out of the season that we are in, and in the end the most important thing is how do we get the race teams through this with the way that we have to work in the race shop. Obviously, with North Carolina and the rules and things that we have here and have in most of the race shops here you have to be able to work within those guidelines, so I think as we go from racetrack to racetrack we’ve learned that if things aren’t gonna work out in a certain location, we can go to a different location and everybody has been very open to that and navigated that very well. So, there’s a number of things that I think everybody has been wanting to try in the past with doubleheaders, midweek races, one-day shows and I think that we’ve all learned that practice and qualifying are really not that important to what the outcome and what the race looks like on Sundays or Saturdays or whenever that race is, so there are definitely some things that have to be considered going forward because, in the end, I don’t believe we’re in a much different position of where we can race and how we can race and who can be there and who can’t be there when we start next year.”
HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO HAVE A SEASON LIKE KYLE BUSCH IS HAVING AND TO TURN IT AROUND IN THE PLAYOFFS? “I don’t know what their thought process is or how they approach things or what the demeanor of the team is. There are just so many things that would have to go into that equation. I can only relate to the things that I know how we would approach it as a team and the open mind that we would all have and kind of creating that reset button that we talked about earlier of us not wanting to have — sometimes you have to reset the rules for yourself if you’ve had a bad year. You have to be in it to win it. I think as you’re in the playoffs and doing the things that everybody else is doing with a fresh set of point standings and elimination that comes along with every three weeks, there’s still opportunity there, so a lot of that is gonna come down to how their cars perform and how much better they’re going to be with the playoff cars compared to the regular season cars and really how it’s approached from a mental standpoint and how much they can leave everything behind them. It’s hard to tell in somebody else’s situation, but I know for us we would definitely be letting it all go and trying to hit the reset button to get started on a fresh season that could make your whole year. Here’s the bottom line with Kyle, he broke his leg, came back, missed 9, 10, 11 races — whatever it was — and won a championship, so it’s not like they haven’t been in some sort of situation like this before.”
IS THIS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT DARLINGTON THIS WEEKEND COMPARED TO MAY? “I guess we’ll just take May and combine them because we ran one in the day and one at night. It shouldn’t be that much different other than the fact that we’re gonna start the race with a couple other divisions already having been on the racetrack. We’ve been on both sides of daytime and nighttime from the two races at the beginning of the year.”
HAVE YOU AND DENNY TALKED AT ALL ABOUT YOUR WEEKLY BATTLES, OR HAVE YOU JUST FOCUSED ON YOUR TEAM? “It’s just really been focusing on our own race teams. I think everybody is aware of where everybody is and who is doing good and who is doing bad. Yeah, it’s definitely not something that we’ve been calling each other up and saying, ‘Hey, what do you think?’ It’s the distance understanding of what each other is doing and who is doing what and just trying to do the best you can for your team.”
DO YOU FEEL THE FIGHT TO STAY ON TOP OF NASCAR IS AS HARD AS IT HAS EVER BEEN? “It’s different. Winning a championship today isn’t how Earnhardt and Petty did it. I think it’s a much different style of winning a championship than what it used to be, so I think when you look at the point standings from this year, you see why the playoffs were put into effect in trying to make sure that we had an intriguing 10 weeks of racing as we went toward the end of the year. I think as you look at that it’s very difficult to get yourself to the last race of the season and be one of those four cars and trying to be able to race for let alone win a championship. It’s very difficult to put yourself in that position and once you get there be able to put everything together against the other three guys on one particular day, especially when it’s been at the same racetrack every season that we’ve gone about it this way, so I think moving those racetracks and changing the venues and keeping it mixed up has made it very intriguing for the fans and very difficult from a competitor’s standpoint with navigating the last 10 weeks of the season and having it all work out is just very difficult.”
DO YOU THINK THE NUMBER OF 500-MILE RACES SHOULD BE FEWER THAN WHAT THERE ARE NOW? “There’s no reason that any race outside of a crown jewel race is longer than 500 miles. It’s not something that is really even necessary in today’s day and age. The race, I’ll use Texas for example, 500 miles at Texas it takes forever to run that race and do the things that we do there, and we’ve all learned — and the fans and sponsors even look at it and they’re like, ‘Man, it just seems more intense when the races are a little shorter.’ But when you look at the Daytona 500 and you look at the Coke 600 and the Southern 500, those races obviously have a different type of meaning to our sport than some of the other races that have been added through the years. I think the distance of 500 miles at a lot of these races is definitely too long.”
HOW WOULD YOU SAY DARLINGTON FITS YOUR STYLE AND WHAT MAKES IT SPECIAL? “The thing that makes Darlington so special is it just has such deep roots in our sport, and winning the Southern 500 is something that all the drivers want to do and all the teams want to do. They understand the significance and the history that comes with winning that race, so I think for me it’s been a very good racetrack for us since we’ve come together at Stewart-Haas Racing and it’s a racetrack that has some very unique corners and tire fall-off and a lot of things happen there that don’t happen at other racetracks, so you have to adapt and adjust as you go throughout the run and throughout the day and night and so there’s a lot of things to wrap your arms around, so it’s a challenging racetrack and I think that’s one reason that it fits so well at Stewart-Haas Racing and the things that we’ve done on the 4 car over the past seven years.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 10 Smithfield Ford Mustang — YOUR NAME CAME UP MULTIPLE TIMES AS A SLEEPER. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT? “I’m good if they do. It makes no difference to me what anybody else thinks and that’s an attitude that I’ve had for a long time. I’m the type of guy that just really puts my head down and goes to work with my race team, and that’s all I really care about is working with Bugarewicz and the guys on my team. What anybody else thinks I really don’t care because only I and my race team really know what we’re capable of and areas where we need to improve and areas where we feel like we’re doing a good job. I am excited about the playoffs. I do feel like we have a lot of potential. We’ve run really well. We’ve made some mistakes along the way that we certainly have to clean up going into the playoffs to be a contender, but I do feel like our speed and the way that we’ve been running, the capability is certainly there.”
WHAT IS YOUR THOUGHT ON THE IMPACT THE CHOOSE RULE WILL HAVE IN THE PLAYOFFS? IT WILL BE IN 8 OF THE 10 RACES. “I think it’s a good thing, honestly. I think it’s nice to not be stuck in a certain lane that may not be an optimal lane and potentially lose spots because of it. At least now if you come off pit road third, this is the ultimate scenario for me that I see is used to if you were running fourth and you come down pit road for a late-race caution and your pit crew does an awesome job and they get you off pit road third, it used to be you were like, ‘Oh, man. Good job guys, but now we’re gonna start third on the bottom lane,’ and potentially you could be fifth or sixth or seventh by the time that first lap is over, where now if you’re third, you have the opportunity to choose. You can choose if you want to start in the outside lane or if the guy in second decides to start behind the leader, you could start on the front row. So, I think having that option is nice to not just be stuck in a lane because that’s where you came off pit road after pit stops.”
WHAT OTHER DRIVER COULD SURPRISE PEOPLE IN THE PLAYOFFS? “I don’t know. That’s the crazy thing about our sport is people get hot at different times and you see it happen. Obviously, throughout most of this year we’ve seen the 11 and the 4 be consistently the best cars, but in year’s past we’ve seen other guys get really hot when the playoffs start and go deep into the rounds and it be unexpected. I always remember back to when my boss, Tony Stewart, went through most of the regular season running average at best and he has a famous quote summertime of that year saying, ‘I don’t even care if we make the playoffs. We don’t deserve to make the playoffs with the way we’re running.’ And lo and behold they make the playoffs by points, one of the lower seeds, and then he goes on to win five or six races in the playoffs and wins the championship, so it’s just a matter of who hits it at the right time and who can be perfect. These playoffs demand perfection. There’s no real room for error, especially the guys that don’t have a lot of bonus points. The 4 and the 11 basically have a mulligan per round with how many bonus points they have, but everybody else doesn’t have that luxury. You’ve got to be perfect.”
WAS THERE ANY DOUBT YOU WOULD BE STAYING IN THE 10 CAR AND DID YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH BUGA HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT? “I think my relationship with Buga and how well we’ve run certainly played a factor, not only with me having that opportunity again at Stewart-Haas Racing, but certainly with the sponsor. They have certainly appreciated being a lot more a part of the broadcast, running up front, leading laps and being in contention to win races on a more regular basis, so all of that certainly played a factor. I’m just so grateful to continue to build on that relationship with Smithfield. They’ve been a great partner of mine for nine seasons now and next year is gonna be going on our 10th season together and I feel like that’s something to be said. There are very few driver-sponsor combinations that go that long in our sport and I think that’s a true testament to Smithfield and their commitment to our sport and their commitment to me, and then on the flip side just how hard I’ve worked to try and bring them value to their company in exchange for them sponsoring a race car that I get to drive.”
HAS JOINING SHR EXTENDED YOUR CAREER AND REINVIGORATED IT IN REGARDS TO HOW LONG YOU PLAN ON BEING IN THE CUP SERIES? “Absolutely. This is a performance-driven business, no doubt about it. You can occasionally get opportunities for various reasons, but at the end of the day you have to perform and if you don’t, your days or your years will be numbered, and so, yeah, me joining Stewart-Haas Racing and performing at the level that I have over the last three years and being a consistent playoff contender — my first year there in 2018 going really deep into the rounds of the playoffs and ultimately finishing fifth in the points was reinvigorating for me and my career, absolutely. I went six seasons before that and never really seen that type of success, and there’s only so long you can stay in this sport and be average, and that’s just being truthful. I was grateful for that opportunity in 2018 and I took that opportunity knowing that I was gonna do one of two things, I was either gonna perform at a high level like Stewart-Haas Racing I know is capable of and I was either gonna rise to that occasion, or I was gonna be average and my days were gonna be numbered and I was probably gonna leave this sport, but at least at that point I would be able to sleep at night knowing that I got a great opportunity and I wasn’t as good as I thought I was, or I got a great opportunity and I performed at a pretty high level with that opportunity. So far, I’ve been able to have some success. I still want more. I still have a burning desire to win more races, lead more laps and ultimately win a championship, but, so far, we’ve been successful.”
HOW DO YOU AVOID MISTAKES AT DARLINGTON AND BRISTOL? “Again, you still have to be perfect. You can’t go to Darlington and wipe the right side off of it and finish 29th. You can’t scrape the wall and have a fender cut down a tire and go two laps down during a green flag cycle. You can’t afford those kind of mistakes, so you have to be mindful of that, and the same thing at Bristol. Both those places you typically run right on the wall, so there’s very little margin for error and that’s something that’s very mindful for me is that you’ve got to get 100 percent out of everything, but you can’t try and get 102 percent out of anything because that’s usually when mistakes happen.”
YOU HAVE A PAINT SCHEME HONORING FIREBALL ROBERTS. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN TO YOU? “It’s really special and, first of all, I’m glad and thankful that Go Bowling gave us this opportunity to do this on this Throwback Weekend. It means a lot to me through getting to know and understand a lot about the paint scheme that we’re running and to learn more about Fireball Roberts. He was from Florida, just like myself, and he played baseball most of his early life much like myself. I played baseball all the way up through high school, so I feel like we had a lot of similarities and he had a lot of success at Darlington, which I have not, so in that fact we differ, but I’m hoping that his paint scheme will bring us some good luck and we’ll go run really well at Darlington in the Southern 500.”
HOW HAS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH BUGA EVOLVED AND HOW HAS HE CHALLENGED YOU AS A DRIVER? “Our relationship has obviously grown a lot. I’ve worked side-by-side with him in the shop and competition meetings and the garage area when he was a teammate, but now having him as my crew chief we’ve grown a lot, not only as crew chief-driver, but as friends. We have a lot of similar interests. He enjoys cycling. I enjoy cycling, so through the pandemic we went on several bike rides together. His wife and kids come over to our house and had dinner together. We’ve built that sort of relationship, which has, I feel like, made an impact on how we perform. However, he has challenged me in ways that I haven’t been challenged before just from the fact that he is probably the most intense crew chief that I’ve ever had. That guy, I don’t know when he sleeps. I know he does get some sleep. It’s not humanly possible to function with no sleep, so I know he sleeps sometimes, but I don’t know when. He’s always working. He’s sending me emails at crazy hours at night. He’s just so intense and he pays attention to every single detail on the race car, every single detail on simulation. He’s on top of every single guy on our race team, making sure that they’re paying attention to every single detail. He’s just so intense and that makes me accountable and he holds me accountable, and I appreciate that. I know that he is a fiery competitor and I love that about him, and I feel like I am the yin to his yang because I’m a very fiery competitor, but I’m very even keel and don’t show a lot of emotion. I don’t yell and scream a lot. I’m pretty laid back, but I do car tremendously and I work really, really hard at it, so I appreciate that side of it from him.”
IS THIS THE MOST CONFIDENCE YOU’VE HAD GOING INTO THE PLAYOFFS? “Absolutely. In 2018 I had a lot of confidence and it was kind of nice because there was very low expectations for us. We were a new team. It was my first year at Stewart-Haas Racing and nobody really paid any attention to us at all, and so having that confidence and low expectations we performed really well and through the summer leading up to those playoffs that year I saw the potential that we had. We went really far in the playoffs and almost made it to Homestead, came up just a little bit short, but we finished fifth in the points, which was an incredible year for me professionally and personally. And then going through this year I feel like we are performing at a higher level than 2018 when I had that much confidence going into the playoffs, so I am looking forward to the playoffs. I feel like we have the potential. We’ve been all around it, we just haven’t put it all together to win races, but we’ve been so close. We’ve led a lot of laps. We’ve run top five a lot and when you do those things, typically you’ll find yourself in victory lane, so maybe the Good Lord is just making me be patient and wait for the playoffs to come.”
ARE YOU ALL-OUT FOR THE WIN IN THE FIRST TWO ROUNDS OR POINTS RACING WITH THE GUYS AROUND YOU? “Honestly, I think the two go hand-in-hand. You see it already. You’ve seen it throughout the year, the guys that win have the most points. Kevin Harvick has dominated and Denny Hamlin has led a lot of laps. They’ve won a bunch of races and they have the most points, so I think that, for me, is where our focus should be. You can’t really have one without the other. If you lead laps, you’re gonna win stages. If you win stages, you’re gonna get the most stage points for that stage. And if you win races, you’re gonna advance through the rounds of the playoffs and carry those bonus points from round to round, so I think our focus is still the same. We’ve got to go and try to be competitive and try to win.”
WHAT IS THE CONFIDENCE LEVEL LIKE AT SHR OVERALL WITH ALL FOUR CARS IN THE PLAYOFFS? “I think our race team is as confident as ever. I think they’ve been doing an incredible job navigating building fast race cars through this pandemic with all the shift work. It seems like our shop is operating around the clock with all the different shifts that are coming in in different waves. We’ve got a morning shift. We’ve got a late afternoon shift and we’ve got an overnight shift. What all the men and women at Stewart-Haas Racing have been doing to rise to the occasion through these challenging times with the pandemic and things not being normal, showing up to the racetrack with cars that have never hit the racetrack and their first lap on the racetrack is gonna be the green flag for the race, I think that’s a true testament to the organization. It’s not about just the individual team that has fine-tuned the race car throughout multiple practices to get ready for the race, it’s really about the organization, the preparation that goes into building the race car and making sure that no stone is unturned, and that every detail is paid attention to so that when those race cars get to the racetrack and line up for the race, that they’re not only fast, but that they stay together — that stuff is not falling off of them, you’re not having part failures and things like that. I’m really proud of our organization and I think Stewart-Haas Racing has a lot of confidence going into the playoffs.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Discount Tire Ford Mustang — WHAT DRIVES YOU TO KEEP FIGHTING FOR MORE CHAMPIONSHIPS? “First off, I don’t like to suck, so that’s one thing that drives me. If you’re gonna do something, do it well and winning races and going for a championship, in my opinion, is doing something well. So that drives me because I don’t want to embarrass myself, but beyond that, building a team, seeing them come together, being a part of it and the camaraderie, that’s pretty darn cool. I like to see other people come together and I like to be a part of it, so there’s a lot of things that drive me and those are probably the two biggest — not the only ones. I think in a lot of ways I’ve been blessed as much as many of us have to be here at this time and point in my life, in my career, in the history of the world. We have the opportunities we have, so why not make the most of them? I met with my team yesterday in a socially-distanced gathering and I told them at the end of this 10 weeks someone will be holding the championship trophy. Why not us? I still feel that way and that’s my approach. Why not us? We can do it just as well as anybody and I’m ready for that challenge. I want to do it as a team and I think that’s exactly what we’re gonna do.”
WAS THERE ANY HESITATION TO DO ANYTHING IN PERSON OVER THE NEXT 10 WEEKS AS FAR AS NOT TRYING TO GET COVID AND DO YOU THINK DRIVERS WILL BE ANY MORE CAUTIOUS OR QUIET ABOUT ANY SYMPTOMS? “There is a lot of hesitation to get together as a group. I wanted to do lunches and dinners and I love to eat with people. I like to eat to begin with, but I like to eat with people because it’s a different atmosphere and you can talk more freely and so to not be able to do that with my team is really a letdown. It used to be probably eight or 10 times a year I would gather the whole team together and have a team lunch, breakfast, dinner or whatever it might be, and so not doing that is kind of a bummer. It’s one of the things that I really enjoy about being a race car driver is being around the team and, like I said, that camaraderie, so we stopped all that because when you eat you can’t have facemasks and all that kind of stuff, so that’s a big bummer.”
DO YOU THINK DRIVERS WILL BE ANY MORE CAUTIOUS OVER THESE NEXT 10 WEEKS AND WOULD THEY HESITATE TO SAY ANYTHING UNLESS IT’S BAD? “I don’t know how we can be any more cautious than we already are. I basically fly in an airplane almost by myself. Every once in a while I’ll have another driver or two ride with me and sit way behind me in the back row. You get on the Penske airplane and I’ve flown with them and everybody has got masks on and nobody is eating or drinking. You have to keep your mask on the whole time, so things like that. And then when I get to the racetrack I’m basically locking myself in a bus by myself for three or four hours until it’s race time and then I get in the car to race and I’m by myself for another three or four hours, so I’m not really sure, other than just doing nothing, what more precautions we could take. So I feel pretty good about that. As far as somebody getting sick and hiding it, I don’t know. I don’t believe necessarily at this moment that the testing is strong enough for me to have confidence that somebody does or doesn’t have it more times than not. So, I guess it’s a really open-ended question that I don’t know if I have an answer for.”
NASCAR WEEKENDS ARE EVENTS. WHAT DOES IT MEAN THAT MANY PEOPLE WON’T BE ABLE TO COME NOW THAT THE PLAYOFFS ARE STARTING? “It definitely takes some things away, but it also adds some opportunities. It’s hard to create a scorecard as to negative versus positive as the end result, but I think it’s important to recognize there are some gains and losses for us as an industry. If we start with the losses, it’s hard to have those intimate relationships with sponsors that are so key to a race team’s success and survival with the current business model and climate. We want to be able to host them. We want them to be able to host their customers. We want to be able to connect and have those conversations. People like to do business with people. They don’t want to do business with companies, they want to do business with people and more often than not what that means is connecting with them in unique ways, whether that’s in person or at events or experiences, and that’s one of the things sports entertainment offers for businesses, so to lose that it’s hurtful to the business model — not just for NASCAR but for all sports. So that’s certainly a loss. I think there are probably some gains for the sport in all of this. We’re operating much more efficiently than we were beforehand, and that’s doing a couple things. One, it’s reducing costs to the car owners and teams. Two, it’s reducing a lot of waste. There was a lot of waste previously that’s being cut out with this system, so I’m proud of those things and probably the third thing is there’s significantly less competition, which, if we’re doing everything right as a sport, we should be able to capitalize on with respect to rating and so forth and consumption digitally. So, I think it’s hard to create a scoreboard and say positive versus negative — end result, but I also think it’s important not to just focus on the things we’ve lost, but also recognize some of the things we’ve gained.”
DOES IT FEEL LIKE EVERYBODY IS POTENTIALLY RACING FOR TWO SPOTS AT PHOENIX WITH THE WAY THE 4 AND 11 HAVE RUN? “They’ve got a lot of bonus points. There ain’t no doubt about that. That’s gonna serve them really, really well as they go through the rounds, but I tell you, I don’t know if there’s enough bonus points in the world to get you through that second round. That second round is hairy. Talladega is gonna be hairy. The Roval is gonna be hairy. You’re gonna want to go to Vegas and win, and the way the format is set up it’s intentionally designed to not allow somebody to just coast through no matter how good your regular season is, so I suspect that at least one of those two guys will find themselves in a spot at some point in time that they didn’t want to be.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE TRACKS IN THE OPENING ROUND? “First off I’ll say that I really like the change made to the playoff schedule this year. It’s different than what we’ve had in years past, but I think it’s different in a good way. In some ways it’s more challenging and a lot of way, in my opinion, more exciting to have these combination of events put together the way they are. I think if you look at the finale of each round — Bristol — well, first off, the start of the regular season at Daytona I’ve been advocating for that for six years now and I think it paid off in spades. We had a great race Saturday and a great run to the playoffs accordingly, knowing that Daytona was gonna be the last race and the uncertainty that comes from that. But then I look at the cutoff rounds like I was saying a minute ago — Bristol, one of the most famed NASCAR tracks on the circuit. It’s just so fitting that it’s one of the cutoffs. Then of course you have the Roval, a track I think most of the drivers would say makes the hair stand up on the back of their necks, and then Martinsville — a track that’s been around for going on not quite 80 years — something like that. Long story short, what a terrific playoff schedule, much better than any format I think we’ve seen to date with respect to the actual schedule, so I’m really pleased to see our sport make those kinds of adjustments. But looking at the first round, the first round is your tried and true NASCAR tracks. Darlington, South Carolina — a tough track, 500 miles, one of the most historical events in all of sports, and then you throw in there Richmond, which is again back to one of the more traditional short track beating and banging short tracks and Bristol. That first round is a power round with tracks that I think should have been in the playoffs from Day One, but we can’t live in the past. You’ve got to look to the future and I’m glad that they’re in now.”
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO HAVE SUCCESS AT DARLINGTON? “To be good at Darlington you’ve got to run up against the wall, as close as you can for 500 miles and not hit it while still going super, super fast. The tires are falling off, you’re wearing out. It’s super-hot outside. You’ve just got to be perfect. The pit crew has to be perfect. They have a lot of pit stops because tires wear so much. You’ve got to hit that. My team two years ago when I won the race, great pit stops propelled us to the win, and then four or five years ago we dominated the entire race and lost it on the last pit stop. You’ve got to be perfect. I’ve had some great cars there that I’ve screwed up. I bounced one off the wall while running up in front and having a chance to win and kind of ruined our chance, so I just think of it as a track that you just have to be absolutely perfect at to have a shot to win.”
WHAT WAS THE REASONING BEHIND THE ‘WHY NOT US’ STATEMENT WITH YOUR TEAM? “I think it’s probably driven some things that are hard for me to explain verbally, but I’ll give it my best shot. I think I’ve been in this position now seven of the last eight years — in the playoffs, really eight of the last nine years and I’ve brought it home once, which is great. I’m super-proud of that. It’s more than I thought I’d ever accomplish in my entire life. And so I’ll always be proud of that, but that doesn’t mean that I’m wanting to stop there. It doesn’t mean that I want to leave this sport with my one Cup and go home and tell my grandkids about it for the next hopefully 40-50 years, however long I’ve got to live. I’d rather tell them about two than one, but the reality is a championship is much bigger than a driver. They put the driver’s name on the trophy, but I’ve never seen a driver win a championship. I’ve seen a lot of damn good teams win championships. I’ve never seen a driver win a championship, and I think what gets caught up in all of that is the mentality oftentimes that you’re only as good as your last race, as good as your last few weeks, and the last two or three weeks have not been as strong as I’d like them to be as a team. We went out and kicked some serious butt at Loudon, New Hampshire and I was really proud of that, but we weren’t as strong as I hoped we’d be at Daytona and Dover, and I think there’s moments as a team where sometimes people reflect on that a little deeper than is needed — not just as a team but media — and you have to remind yourselves what you’re capable of and sometimes the easiest way to remind yourself what you’re capable of is, in my mind, eliminating the fears of what you’re not capable of and so I guess why I think why not us is my way of saying, ‘Give me a legit reason why we can’t win this championship right now?’ And we’ll come up with it and we’ll hammer it down in the ground with a 100-pound sledgehammer and we’ll fix it. Why not us is as much a rallying cry to addressing and fixing all the little gaps. You have to be the best you possibly can as anything else, and I think if you’re asking yourself that as a team every day, that’s what becomes of it. What becomes of it is a culture, a mentality and a mindset of continuous improvement to eliminate your weaknesses and hopefully there’s a tenacity born out of that that will serve us.”
HAVE YOU ACCEPTED THAT MENTALITY BECAUSE JEREMY IS YOUR CREW CHIEF NOW AND THE FACT THAT HARVICK AND HAMLIN ARE GETTING MOST OF THE ATTENTION IS IT EASIER TO FLY UNDER THE RADAR? “I’ve been in Joey Logano’s shop a couple times in the last year or two and he’s got this sign hanging up in his shop. It’s a sign from Jeff Gluck’s Twitter handle where it’s a picture of the big three of that year and they’re sitting at the conference table after the Homestead race and Jeff’s got some kind of caption underneath it like, ‘Not how the big three thought this would end.’ Hey, I’ve been in that. I’ve lived those shoes and I think 2014 stands out the most to me, maybe 2014 and ‘15. I had a great team and it didn’t come together — ‘14 probably for reasons just as much of luck as anything else, ‘15 was probably more my fault with some things I didn’t execute at the level I needed to execute. But all together the scorecard was still zero and we had efforts that were capable of winning the championship those two years, so that stings. I’ve been on that side of it, so I know how easy it is to get caught up in your own press clippings, to become overconfident and I’m just as happy as can be if you all just keep talking about them and leave my team alone. We’ll just do our thing and be the best we can and let the results show on the track.”
