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KEVIN WELCOME AND
THANK YOU FOR JOINING US.
“Thanks for having me. Wish those stats were a little bit better but that’s
the way it is so I guess we’re ready to answer some questions.”
JUST WANTED TO TALK
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE SUCCESS YOU’VE HAD IN CHICAGO, HOW MUCH DOES THAT HELP
YOU WHEN YOU GO TO A TRACK WHERE YOU’VE HAD SOME SUCCESS?
“Well, Chicago has obviously been really
good to us as far as the numbers go but a lot of other places have been good
to us too as far as the numbers have gone and nothing has really gone right
this year. We’ve wrecked too much. We’ve made a lot of mistakes. We
started off the year really well and just haven’t had anything go right since
about week five. It’s good to come to a race track where things are going
good and hopefully you get that monkey off your back and you can go on with
it.”
DO YOU LIKE THE
NIGHT RACING SWITCH HERE IN THE CHICAGO RACE?
“I don’t know exactly what the night race is
going to do for the crowd. I’m sure there is a lot to do in Chicago on a
Friday and Saturday night so it will be interesting to see how all that
works. Night racing is kind of a fad. I don’t know if that’s the best thing
in the world to have. I like racing at night but I don’t know if that’s the
best thing for our sport.”
HOW STRESSFUL IS
THIS DEAL WITH THE CHASE, IS IT SOMETHING THAT’S ON YOUR MIND CONTINUALLY OR
CAN YOU PUT IT ASIDE DURING THE WEEK?
“It doesn’t really bother me at all.
There’s really nothing you can do about, the way that it all shakes out is
the way that it is all supposed to shake out. You go to the race track and
you run as fast as you can every week and you want to do the best that you
can. Obviously with the circumstances the way that they’ve been this year,
it’s hard to control some of the things that we’ve done and we can control
some of the things that have happened too. I think that’s the one thing
about being a professional athlete you have to take those things and not let
them bother you. Obviously they make for good stories in the newspaper but
you can wear yourself out thinking about things like that week in and week
out. So you just go out and you race and you try to do the things the best
that you can and hopefully you’re in the right spot by the end of Richmond.”
WE HAVE JUST SEEN
CHIP GANASSI SHUT DOWN ONE OF HIS NATIONWIDE TEAMS FOR LACK OF SPONSORSHIP,
AS A TEAM OWNER DOES THAT KIND OF MAKE YOU A LITTLE NERVOUS?
“I don’t know that it makes you nervous but
obviously the clamps have to be tightened on everybody’s race teams right now
as far as a budget standpoint to just make sure that you’re running your
business correctly and doing things tight. We’re seeing the same things
here. The hard part about it is when you’re fighting for a sponsor with
NASCAR and trying to keep a Cup primary in the Sprint Cup Series and you’re
fighting with that with NASCAR and the team doesn’t wind up with the sponsor
and now the team’s shut down. I think in one sense NASCAR has to kind of
look at itself and say why are we fighting the teams for the same sponsors
that need to be putting the cars on the race track too. There’s a lot of
things that you have to look at from a team owner standpoint and that
particular situation the sponsor that went from the team to the series and
that’s not good for car counts.”
OBVIOUSLY YOU’RE
FRUSTRATED, WHAT CAN YOU AND THE TEAM DO TO PLAY OUT THAT FRUSTRATION? IS IT
JUST BAD RACING LUCK RIGHT NOW OR ARE YOU NOTICING LITTLE PROBLEMS AND YOU’RE
BEING ABLE TO TWEAK THEN AS YOU GO ALONG?
“I don’t think I ever said I was
frustrated. That’s just part of our sport as you go through the ups and
downs. I’ve been through a lot of these periods where you go, I’ve been on
the up side of it and I’ve been on the down side of it. There’s no
frustration it’s just that you go out and you race and things happen. I’ve
been through this for a number of years. I never said that I was frustrated
I just said that there’s a lot of things that haven’t gone the way that you
want them to go. That happens in everyday life. Things necessarily don’t
always go the way that you want them to and you have to adjust and make
things go forward. We’re building cars. You don’t want to wreck but wrecking
happens and that’s why they put the walls up. Things are going to happen and
a lot of the things that have kept us where we needed to be in the points in
the past we haven’t been able to do this year. When things are not going
your way you’re finishing races and I’ve crashed a couple cars this year and
we’ve run out of gas and last week it rained. The thing about being in the
sport long enough is you understand those things are going to happen and you
don’t let them frustrate you, you just move forward with it and once last
week’s over whether you’ve won or lost its over.”
DO YOU HAVE MORE
CONFIDENCE GOING INTO THIS RACE AT DAYTONA SINCE YOU HAVE WON THERE LAST
YEAR? “I don’t know. Our
speedway stuff hasn’t been what it needs to be over the past couple of years
as far as qualifying and things go but we always seem to race well and we
have won at Daytona. We’ve had a little bit of success there. I like going
to Daytona. I enjoy racing the July fourth race and enjoy this part of the
season. It definitely gives you a little bit of confidence when you go to a
race track that you’ve won at but like I said we’ve won at a lot of race
tracks that we’ve gone to this year so I don’t know that there is any added
confidence going from one track to the other.”
CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE
DIFFERENCE IN DRAFTING WITH THE NEW CAR VERSES THE OLD CAR AT THE RESTRICTOR
PLATE RACES? “There’s not near
as much side draft as there used to be with the old car. The side draft is
almost not effective at all. The bumpers line up a lot better so the bump
drafting is a lot more aggressive than what it was with the other car. It
was aggressive with the other car but you can really get pretty aggressive
with this car. Still the handling of the car is the most important thing
when you get to Daytona whether it’s the old car or new, so that’s still the
most important thing that we go through. As we go through the weekend at
Daytona is making sure that your car handles right and you can keep the
throttle on the floor as long as you can.”
DO YOU THINK THE
HANDLING IS GOING TO BE A PROBLEM FOR SOME OF THE YOUNGER DRIVERS WHO AREN’T
AS EXPERIENCED ON THIS TRACK WITH THE NEW CAR?
“I think they’ve all had plenty of
experience at it so far this year. We’ve already been there a couple of
times with the testing and raced it and I think everybody has a pretty good
baseline as far as what’s going to happen.”
ON THE POSSIBILITY
OF NASCAR OPENING UP TESTING COMPLETELY.
“Free-frall testing, that would be probably
one of the worst things that we did to our sport. Our schedule is already
too long. We already don’t really get to spend much time at home. I think
that asking the crew chiefs how many times they want to test is probably not
the right thing to do because if you ask a crew chief how many times they
want to test, they want to test every week. I really like the old policy. I
do think the testing policy needs to change for the fact that we go to a lot
of different race tracks guessing whether the information is right and it
would be nice just to not do those tests anymore and go to the right race
tracks. Obviously we’re going to go to Daytona and test for NASCAR and then
I think probably seven two-day tests at anywhere you want to test at the race
tracks that you test on would be good. That way as an owner you could budget
around that and you know how many tires you’re going to buy and you know how
many days you’re going to be there. It would be a lot easier to plan around
that. At some point you have to continue to think about how much it’s going
to cost and where you’re going to go and how logistically you can do that
most efficiently. I think from a NASCAR stand point they need to ask the
people who are paying the bills and spending the time putting all that stuff
together.”
AS FAR AS THE CHASE
GOES, DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE RACING FOR THOSE SPOTS RIGHT NOW?
“It doesn’t really matter. I don’t look,
you just go and you race as fast as you can and you try to get your car going
as fast as you can. If you do that part right and you finish races then
you’ll be in the right spot.”
WHAT’S THE LATEST ON
YOU POSSIBLY GETTING INVOVLED IN NHRA DRAG RACING?
“Right now we’ve tabled all that stuff.
There’s so much changing in the whole world right now as far as where
sponsorship dollars are going and we’re just kind of taking a step back and
going to take a couple years here and just really focus on our two trucks and
see where the Nationwide thing goes as far as the rules packages and where
the economy goes instead of jumping in with both feet. Right now we’re just
going to kind of table that idea. It’s something that we’re interested in
and still would consider looking at going forward, but we’re going to take a
couple years here and really just see where everything goes.”
HOW DO YOU LOOK AT
THE HEALTH OF THE TRUCK AND NATIONWIDE SERIES?
“I think that the Nationwide Series
obviously they’re talking about changing the car, not changing the car, it’s
hard to plan on where you need to go with everything. That’s the hardest part
about the Nationwide Series. Our truck programs are strong. I think the
field hasn’t been any worse. It seems like we’ve got fairly good competition
on the truck side there. I think everybody’s concern is just knowing what
car we’re going to race in the Nationwide Series. When we’re going to
transition the new car in and what the rules are going to be.”
HOW WORRIED ARE YOU
ABOUT THE SPORT IN TERMS OF THE ECONOMY? PEOPLE SEEM TO HAVE A LOT MORE
TROUBLE PUTTING SEVERAL HUNDRED DOLLARS OF GAS IN THE CAR TO TRY TO COME TO
THE RACE. “I don’t think it’s
something that is affecting our particular sport any more than it’s affecting
anything in the world. Everybody is kind of in a panic as far gas prices and
everything in general. Groceries are more expensive, gas is more expensive.
It’s more expensive to do everything. In that sense when you watch a
baseball game the baseball stadiums are not full or you look at races some of
the races aren’t full. I think the race was sold out last week so that was
good. We’ve kind of been through this before back in 2002 with the economy.
You just got to wait for it to turn and ride through the rough times here and
it’s nothing that we haven’t been through before. It’s just something that
we’ve got to get creative and make it affordable for people to keep coming to
the races.”
AS FAR AS
RESTRITCTOR PLATE RACING GOES, DOES IT BOTHER DRIVERS THAT FANS ARE KIND OF
WAITING FOR A BIG ONE TO HAPPEN? “That’s
just part of our sport. If you’re going to race you’re going to wreck.
Superspeedway racing is exciting because we race in packs and things happen
and that’s just part of it. It’s exciting to watch. I enjoy watching it
too.”
WHEN YOU’RE TALKING
TO POTENTIAL SPONSORS DO THEY FIND NASCAR STILL AS POPULAR AS AN OPPORTUNITY
AS THEY USED TOO, OR IS IT SIMPLY THEY DON’T HAVE AS MUCH MONEY AS THEY DID
BEFORE? “It’s a competitive
market from all different aspects as far as everybody’s trying to run their
company as efficiently as possible right now. So everybody’s looking to
somebody who wants to get creative with everything that’s happening. I think
you’ve got to get creative and you have to offer the sponsors as much value
as possible whether it’s in Nationwide, truck, cup whatever it is. It’s
pretty common across the board that everybody’s looking at the books and
trying to keep everything as tight as possible until we get a stable as
possible economy. There’s a lot of activity. When things like our economy
is like it is right now, some companies are looking to capitalize on it,
really get some exposure and build their business through the times when
other people can’t afford to. There’s a lot of activity, just people are
asking more questions than in the past and hopefully you can have those
answers and make it worth their while.”
HAVING BUILT KEVIN
HARVICK, INCORPORATED FROM THE GROUND UP AND BUILDING IT INTO A CHAMPIONSHIP
WINNING TRUCK TEAM, WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU COULD GIVE TO A NEW OWNER
LIKE RANDY MOSS AS FAR AS BEING SUCCESSFUL AND HAVING LONGEVITIY IN THE
SPORT? “Hire somebody who knows
what the hell is going on. The hardest part is when you’re building a race
team and we went through this is you have to hire people and you have to sell
people on the fact that you’re a new race team and you’re going to be here
for a long time and be competitive. The hardest part is building the team
competitively but financially making it make sense on all sides of it. You
have to make that initial investment to get it to the point where it’s built
up and then you have to convince the people that you’re going to be here for
a long time. That’s the biggest thing that we had to build was the trust in
the sport as far as we’re not going anywhere and we’re here to race and here
to do things right from a business stand point. In the beginning it takes
some of your own money to get it all going.”
GOING BACK TO THE
STATEMENT THAT YOU MADE EARLIER ABOUT YOU DIDN’T KNOW IF NIGHT RACING WAS
GOOD FOR THE SPORT, WHY DO YOU SAY THAT BECAUSE THEY’VE ALWAYS TALKED ABOUT
THE PRIME TIME TV AT NIGHT? “I
guess it’s all a matter whether you want people in the grandstands or you
want people to watch it on TV. I like to watch my TV shows that come on at
the same time because that’s the only way that I can remember that they’re
on. NASCAR racing for a long time was on Sunday at 12:00 or 1:00 after
everybody got out of church and you go home and you watch the race and then
you still had an evening. I think that you can argue it both ways. If the
grandstands aren’t full and you want a prime time .V race, you can’t have it
both ways I guess is the best thing to say. Usually Chicago is sold out so
this will be a really good test to see if it is right or wrong. Consistency
to me is more important than having a race, one on Saturday, the next week
it’s on Sunday, the next week it’s on Friday. I would rather have the races
come on at the same time so everybody knows what they’re watching but the TV
people would rather have it in prime time and that’s good for our sponsors
too. I guess you have to have a fine mix of things. It’s new so you have
these debates of whether its right or wrong and next week we’re going to find
out whether its right or wrong.”
DO YOU FEEL THAT
HAVING THESE RACES ON FRIDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHTS IS HURTING THE LOCAL SHORT
TRACKS? “I don’t think it does
them any good. I know talking to some of the short track owner’s, they have
a hard time drawing crowds when the races are on. Obviously you get your
competitors but the crowds are definitely down when we race on Friday and
Saturday nights. Like I say, we go to have prime time TV stuff but we also
have to have consistency so the fans know when to follow it.”
IT SEEMS LIKE THE
LAST FIVE OR SIX RACES HAVE EITHER COME DOWN TO FUEL MILEAGE OR PIT STRATEGY,
IS THAT AT ALL FRUSTRATING FOR YOU AS A DRIVER THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE LESS
CONTROL OVER THE OUTCOME AND HAS THE SMALLER FUEL CELL REALLY HAD AN EFFECT
IN THAT REGARD? “I think any
time you have to make more pit stops, I think it mixes things up and to me it
makes it exciting because you wind up with all different strategies. This
week Kurt Busch didn’t have a chance to win the race at all and they gambled
and it started raining. For me, we ran in the top five, led some laps and
felt like we had a fourth to sixth-place car and finished 14th
with it. That’s frustrating but we had the same opportunity to stay out on
the race track and do the same thing that they did. In one sense it all
evens out in the end. Sears Point is the same type of race that it’s been as
long as I’ve ever raced there. Loudon is the same type of raced that it has
been since I’ve ever raced there, it’s always been that type of race.
Michigan was one of those deals where it seems to come down to fuel mileage a
lot as well. If you go back and look at the history of a lot of these races,
they aren’t any different than they really have been in the past. The
smaller fuel cell makes you pit more but I think that makes it exciting.”
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