 Kevin
Harvick | Weekly Top 12 Press Conference |
SAVE MART 350
INFINEON RACEWAY
WEEKLY TOP 12 PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
June 20, 2008
Kevin Harvick, No. 29
Shell-Pennzoil Impala SS met with members of the media at Infineon Raceway
and discussed road course racing; thoughts on possible changes to the
Nationwide Series cars next year; his KHI teams in Nationwide and Truck
Series and racing at New Hampshire. Full transcript:
DO YOU LIKE ROAD COURSE
RACING? “I enjoy the road races. I was fortunate to grow up racing sprint
go-karts on all the road course stuff. I enjoy coming out here and doing
something different than what we do every other week.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON
HOW THE FUEL MILEAGE PLAYS IN TO THE FINISHES HERE? “I think the cautions
have to fall your way and you have to get the right amount of fuel mileage.
You definitely have to play the strategy but your car has to be fast enough
to maintain what you have. You can turn a 30th place car in to a 10th place
car if you wind up getting lucky and are on the right strategy. But, if you
are going to win, you still have to have a car fast enough to be good.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON
WHERE YOU ARE IN THE POINTS RIGHT NOW? “It doesn’t really matter; you
just race as hard as you can every week. We have had a bad six weeks, we have
crashed constantly, ran out of gas at Phoenix, we just have had a lot of
things go wrong. Nothing you can do about it, you just go out and go as fast
as you can.”
DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH SPEED
TO TURN IT AROUND? YOUR TEAMMATE SAID HE FELT LIKE THE RCR CARS MIGHT NEED A
LITTLE MORE SPEED, IS SPEED AN ISSUE? “I think speed would help
everybody. Obviously the speed isn’t hurting him (Jeff Burton) too bad. They
have been consistent and finished every week. That is why we are where we
are, we haven’t finished as many races where we have been running, but I
think we have top-10 cars, we just don’t have the dominating speed to win
races right now.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON
THE ROAD COURSE RINGERS SOME TEAMS BRING IN TO SONOMA? “They are really
fast, but the usually end up running in to something for the day is all said
and done.”
HAS THE ATTITUDE ABOUT
RACING ON ROAD COURSES CHANGED AMONG THE TEAMS AND DRIVERS? “I think the
biggest thing is that you can lose so much ground here if something goes
wrong. It can be a bad weekend, just like it can anywhere else. You need to
work at it and try to make things as good as you can. Whether you are good or
bad at it, you got to try to keep getting better at it to try to improve as
everybody else is improving. We have always focused on the road races to try
to be as good as we could, some people don’t. We always go test, go practice
and try and get in to a rhythm.”
WHERE ARE SOME OF THE KEY
SPOTS TO PASS HERE? “There are really only two spots to pass on the whole
track. One is going in to the back esses, what most of us call seven, which
is probably turn four if you are just counting. The other coming in to
eleven, the last corner here. Those are really the only two spots to pass,
unless somebody has a pretty big mistake.”
WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF
NASCAR’S DISCUSSION WITH THE DRIVERS ABOUT THEIR “WHINING”? “Last week is
over.”
DO THEY WANT YOU TO
EXPRESS YOUR OPINION OR NOT WANT YOU TO EXPRESS YOUR OPINION? “If they
wanted you to know that, they would have invited you to the meeting. It is
none of your business, how about that, is that better? (CHUCKLED)
WHAT DOES IT SAY TO YOU
THAT NASCAR IS PUTTING C02 AND HEAT TESTING DEVICES IN THE CARS? “There
are a lot of things that we can do. Since we switched to the unleaded fuel,
the heat in the cars has gone up. There have been a lot more fumes than what
we had before. This car kind of builds a lot more smoke than what we had
before, so that is good to know that they are monitoring it. We have always
taken as many precautions as we can with the WIX filters and things inside.
They are a lot heavier than a lot of the filters other people run, but they
do a lot better job than the smaller filters. We’ve run those for several
years. There are definitely things you can do to make the inside of the car
better. We will see where it goes.”
WHY DO YOU THINK THE
INSIDE OF THIS CAR IS HOTTER? “I really don’t know, to be honest with
you. It just seems like there is less air getting in to the cab for whatever
reason. I don’t know exactly why.”
HOW MUCH DOES CLINT
(BOWYER) COME TO YOU ABOUT ROAD RACING? “We have been talking about it
quite a bit as far as where you shift and what you do. They took kind of the
opposite approach to it and didn’t go test at all anywhere and kind of left
it up to us to tell them where to start. We will find out if we did a good
job here later.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS
ABOUT NEW HAMPSHIRE NEXT WEEK? “The flat track stuff has always been
really good for us. Clint obviously ran really well there at the last race.
We look forward to going to those types of race tracks. We ran well at
Phoenix, so good part of the season race track wise for us coming up.
“The new style race track
has made more side-by-side, much more so than you could when it was
completely flat. They have done a good job in keeping up the race track, but
still you have to have a really good car to make some ground.”
AS A TEAM OWNER IN THE
NATIONWIDE SERIES, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT NASCAR CHANGING CARS FOR NEXT
YEAR? “We are evaluating all of that right now, trying to decide what we
are going to do going forward.”
HOW IS THE KHI DRUG
TESTING PROGRAM GOING? “We are done setting it up. We go through our
whole month of drug testing, the randoms that come out every week. We are all
set there; we are just waiting on NASCAR’s final investigation and see where
they go with it. We will give them the six weeks that they asked for, then we
will put the heat back on.”
HOW ARE YOUR KHI TEAMS
DOING? “I think they are good. The Nationwide team hasn’t run the last
few weeks as good as they did at the beginning of the season so they need to
get their act together. But the trucks have been great week in and week out.
In the Truck Series you get some stuff tore up, but as a fan and an owner, it
is fun to watch.
“I am a Ron Hornaday and
Jack Sprague fan so I sit there and get my snacks and my water and maybe a
Coke or whatever it is and sit and watch the races. I enjoy it, it is fun to
watch.”
ARE YOU GLAD YOUR VETERAN
DRIVERS HAVEN’T MELLOWED OUT WITH AGE? THEY WERE BOTH TICKED OFF AFTER LAST
WEEK’S RACE, IS THAT NICE TO SEE AS THEIR OWNER? “They are both driven,
they like what they do, they like racing in the Truck Series, they like the
schedule and the things that come with it. They definitely have the drive to
make it happen.” |
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