Budweiser Racing Team Notes of Interest
• Kevin Harvick and the No. 29 Budweiser Chevrolet team will compete in Sunday’s Food City 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) race at Bristol Motor Speedway (BMS).
• Media availability… Harvick will be available to members of the media at 10 a.m. ET in the BMS infield media center.
• Save Water Drink Beer… Harvick will walk out to RCA country music recording artist Chris Young’s song “Save Water Drink Beer” for driver introductions during Sunday’s pre-race festivities. Harvick selected the song after seeing Young perform in Greensboro, N.C., last month.
• Baby 101… BMS will help celebrate the impending birth of Harvick and wife DeLana’s baby boy at its fan event Friday night at the BMS hospitality village. NASCAR on FOX pit reporter Matt Yocum will serve as host of the event and the pair will play a variety of games to see which of them knows the most about babies. Baby 101 starts at approximately 7 p.m. and is free to fans.
• Chassis Info… The No. 29 Budweiser team will utilize chassis No. 340 from the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) stable for Sunday’s race. The car was raced four times in 2011 by the No. 33 team. They scored a ninth-place finish in the car at Martinsville Speedway in April and finished sixth in it at Richmond International Raceway that same month.
• Statistically Speaking… Harvick has made 22 NSCS starts at BMS. During that time the Bakersfield, Calif., native has earned one win, nine top-fives and 12 top-10 finishes at the short track. He’s completed 98 percent of the laps run in those races (10,790 of 11,013) and led 427 laps. Harvick holds an average starting position of 18.2 with an average finish of 12.5 at BMS.
• Loop Data… Harvick has earned impressive Loop Data statistics at BMS, including: first in closers; fourth in green-flag passes (662); sixth in fastest drivers early in a run; sixth in fastest drivers late in a run; sixth in green-flag speed; seventh in speed in traffic; eighth in average running position (13.872); eighth in driver rating (90.2); ninth in laps in the top-15 (4,094); and 10th in fastest laps run (232).
• Last Year… In last spring’s race at BMS, Harvick and the No. 29 Budweiser Chevrolet team rebounded from a late-race accident to score a sixth-place finish.
• In the Rearview Mirror… Last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Harvick earned an 11th-place finish and moved up to second in the NSCS driver point standings. He’s currently 10 points behind point leader Denny Hamlin.
• Double Duty… In addition to driving the No. 29 Budweiser Chevrolet in Sunday’s NSCS race, Harvick will also race the No. 33 Armour Foods Chevrolet for RCR in NASCAR Nationwide Series competition on Saturday. ESPN2 will provide live television coverage of the event starting with the pre-race show at 1 p.m. ET. PRN affiliates and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio will carry the radio broadcast.
• For the online version of the Budweiser Racing media guide, please visit http://www.budracingmedia.com.
• Follow along each weekend with Harvick and the team on Twitter. Check out @KevinHarvick for behind-the-scenes information straight from the driver of the No. 29 Budweiser Chevrolet. Get live updates from the track each weekend from @Black29Car, the PR team for Harvick. Also, follow @RCRracing and @RCR29KHarvick for additional information about the Richard Childress Racing organization. Fans can also interact with Harvick on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/OfficialKevinHarvick.
Kevin Harvick discusses racing at Bristol Motor Speedway:
Talk about heading to Bristol this week “Bristol is probably the place that we’ve had circled on the calendar as the place that we ran the worst at last year. As a company, the last race was just bad. For us, we’ve talked about Bristol a lot. I’m looking forward to getting on the race track and running through some different theories and things that we think we needed to do different. Bristol is always a fun place. You never know what can happen there. It seems like it’s just a place where anything can happen at any time. It’s a fun race track and obviously short track racing is something we all grew up doing.”
What do you think of Bristol being the first short track race of the year? “Well technically, we consider it the second because we consider Phoenix a short track. I think Bristol is the first full-contact, short track race that we’re going to go to. It’s obviously a lot different complexion than it used to be. You can race all over the race track, and you have to really work on your car to get it to turn sooner into the corner. You never know whether you’re going to end up at the top or the bottom. It’s become an interesting track.”
At Bristol, we never know what kind of weather we’re going to get. Does that track change with the weather? “I think with the concrete surface it’s a lot more consistent than a lot of the other race tracks. It allows you to not have to worry about the inconsistency with the weather. I think it’s a lot more consistent than a lot of places that we go to.”
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