KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 BUDWEISER DESIGNATE A DRIVER CHEVROLET SS – FINISHED THIRD
POST RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT:
KERRY THARP
Joining us now, we have Kevin Harvick. Let's hear about the race tonight. Currently in fourth place in our Chase standings is Kevin Harvick. Kevin, talk about your run out there tonight and maybe how the track obviously changed from the beginning first segment, then after that and finishing it out.
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, the first half of the race for us, we were really tight, struggled with the handling of our car to be able to get the car to turn through the center of the corner. We sat down, the engineers and Gil sat down in between the rain delay there and came up with some good adjustments and we were able to make some good ground.
Our car was really good on the restarts, so you could pick a bunch of them off pretty easy there going into turn one and two. All in all, it was a good night, just too loose at the end to run with those guys up off the corner, but still a good night.
Q. Did you notice anything different in terms of the radio communications with the digital access for spotters being gone, generally the restarts, all the changes?
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I mean, we didn't really have anything different that affected what we did in the car. I didn't notice anything different.
Q. Restarts pretty much the same?
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah. I think everybody can be a little bit more aggressive as you saw at the end, not worrying about shoving the other guy in front. I think when the green flag goes, you just start going and make a decision as to whether you want to go low or push the guy in front of you.
Q. Kevin, what happened on pit road? Can you talk about virtually everybody in the top six had something possibly happen to them tonight. You were able to get through it.
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, we went from top five three times to 16th or 18th. Once was just everybody took two tires. Another time was the 7 coming into his pit stall, stopped and going. We all stacked up and had to stop to not crash. The rest of it was just bad performance on pit road.
Q. Kevin, you gave Matt the push. Did you feel you were going to be able to follow him through and challenge him later on?
KEVIN HARVICK: I didn't know. Looked like the run before, Kyle was a little bit better than the 20. They were evenly matched. I was hoping they would get side by side, you have one of them slide up, able to get three wide or something happen. I figured that was better than going to the bottom and getting three wide and being pinned on the bottom and getting passed by two or three cars on the top. I figured that was my best option.
Q. Kevin, five hours of rain delay. How do you keep yourself in focus, ready to get back behind the wheel?
KEVIN HARVICK: Honestly, I just went back and hung out with DeLana and my son, ate some dinner, relaxed and watched football. That's what I did; really not think about racing. When it was time to go, you get back into the right frame of mind.
Q. Did the track conditions change after the rain delay? Track temperature went down 17 degrees.
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I mean, the pace definitely picked up. My car was way better in the night than it was in the day. I mean, there was a couple times three quarters down the straightaway, sit on the rev limiter, I hadn't touched it all weekend.
KERRY THARP: Kevin, thanks for putting on a great performance for us today.