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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: CAMPINGWORLD.COM 500March 15, 2015Rodney ChildersGene HaasKevin HarvickTOLLESON, ARIZONA THE MODERATOR: Continuing with our post‑race media availability, we've been joined by Gene Haas and Rodney Childers. Rodney, another incredible run by the team and Kevin today. You become the first team as repeat winners again in 2015. Talk a little bit about the dominating performance today. RODNEY CHILDERS: Yeah, I mean, it was a good weekend for us, for sure. Everybody did a great job all weekend. I know it didn't seem this way, but we actually struggled a little bit. Fault some of our tools and different things that weren't matching up with the car this weekend. Finally we had to kind of wing it late model style. Finally got it going really good in Happy Hour. The guys at the shop have built great cars. You know, everything just went our way all weekend. You come to these deals, and some weekends it goes your way and sometimes it doesn't whether you got a fast car or not. Just proud of all the guys back at the shop that have worked so hard, and of course Kevin. I think his record speaks for itself at this place. I said a minute ago, somebody asked me what was wrong with me this morning. I said that I felt more pressure to win this one race at Phoenix than I did to win the race at Homestead. When you bring him here, I think everybody expects him to win. I didn't want it to be my fault if we didn't. Just proud of everybody, like I said. Just a great effort. THE MODERATOR: And, Gene, another dominating performance by the 4 team. Talk a little bit about that team, their momentum. GENE HAAS: Well, I think they make it look easy, but at the same time there's lots of preparation. You have to get the right people in the right places. We have an awful lot of support from Hendrick and Chevrolet, all of our sponsors. I think when you see Kevin and Rodney out there making it look easy, it really isn't easy. Lots of competition. They're all very, very good. When it works well, I think it's just an indication of a tremendous amount of preparation on the part of the team and the support we get from all of our members and associates. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for Gene or Rodney. Q. Rodney, was there any decision at all to make on that last caution as to whether to get tires or not? RODNEY CHILDERS: That was the one I thought about all night last night. I knew it was going to happen. Here in the fall, the same type deal happened. We stayed out. It seemed like the car would fire off pretty good there and run some good lap times. It seemed to do that again. Even when we were leading, when he could clear some traffic, it would come back to him pretty good. You always worry. Actually, when Kurt wound up 10th on the restart, I thought to myself that if there's enough cautions, he'll be the one to beat. But we were fortunate that we were able to get some good restarts, get out front, kind of put some distance on some guys. We were just fortunate that it worked out. Q. Rodney, you talk about feeling the pressure because Kevin runs so well here; you want to make sure you do everything. Are there tracks where you expect to do well as a crew chief because it fits your style? RODNEY CHILDERS: Yeah, probably if you look through all my years, probably the two best places for me were always Bristol and Charlotte. Didn't win a lot of races at either one of them, but with Reutimann, I think we finished in the top five every time we went to Bristol. When Brian got in the car, we finished in the top five four races straight. Those were my two favorite places. Raced at Bristol growing up, enjoyed it, understood the racetrack, understood what it took to be good there. Racing behind Charlotte once a month, whatever, racing on the front straightaway in Legend cars, when you do that, it means a lot to you. Just like coming out here for Kevin, when it's your background and something that helped you get to this point, you know, you want to win at those places. I put enough pressure on myself I think every weekend, but it definitely seemed to get me more this week. Q. Beginning of the race, something I hadn't seen at Phoenix in a while: Kevin Harvick being challenged. Was Kevin saying anything on the radio, like what to do, anything he needed to adjust? RODNEY CHILDERS: I think that was my fault. I decided a month ago we weren't going to bring a transmission here that we could shift with. There wasn't going to be an option. We hauled off into one the first lap of the race, and all them guys downshifted and we didn't, there we go. We had to figure it out from there. Just a poor decision on my part. But, you know, hopefully we can fix that before we come back and do a little better job. Q. You talked about the pressure of coming into this event because of his history here and everything. Next week you go to his home. Does the pressure stay up there or does it increase or does it go down because you won here? RODNEY CHILDERS: I think at this point everybody just expects you to keep winning. That's what makes it hard on all of us. Yeah, I feel like we've got a team that can do that. We have a driver that can do that. We have the resources to do that. The more you win, the more you expect out of yourself and the more pressure you put on yourself. When we left Vegas last week, he made a point to say, I want to win all three of these West Coast races. I think anybody that knows Kevin Harvick, if he puts his head to something, he's going to try to make it happen. Just like we talked about a minute ago, these races mean a lot to him. He grew up around here, has a lot of family around here. That's our goal, for sure. Q. Gene, you had Kyle [sic] back today. What did that mean to you and the team personally? Do you have any doubts that he'll win soon as well? GENE HAAS: It's Kurt, not Kyle. Yeah, I think it was great having Kurt back. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, because now we know what to expect. In previous months it was just nothing but question marks. What are you going to do? How is this going to unfold? The only answer, you could say, We have no idea, we can't control any of this. We were as much in suspense as anybody. But that fueled I think all the speculation and the media frenzy which piled on and made it quite a bit worse for us because we were just at the timing of NASCAR, the police department out of Delaware. I think those things just put a tremendous amount of pressure. So here we are a week later after we've been reinstated by NASCAR. We appreciate what NASCAR did. I think they did the right thing. I was a little bit stunned I think by the fact that Kurt was pulled out several days before Daytona, which just seemed so incredulous to me. Two days before the Daytona 500, to do that to a driver, just didn't seem right. But the way things unfolded, you know, it worked out. We didn't really lose too much time. Kurt now is back in the car. I think he's razor focused. He appreciates that driving at this level is a privilege. It certainly isn't anything he has a right to or any of us have a right to. It can go away. It can go away just as fast as a car can go away in a race. He has a great appreciation for that. I think as a team, we appreciate that it's a very tenuous relationship when you have these superstars in front of the media, if there's any kind of negativity, how bad it can go. I have to admit in the last week or so, it seems like things have reversed. I think Kurt has a much more focused attitude. Now he can get back to business. I think he's really dedicated himself to winning a championship. So hopefully in the long run, when we look back on this we'll look at it as a bump in the road on the way to winning another championship. Q. Gene, you promised Kurt that his ride would be waiting for him. What did that mean to him? Secondly, since we really didn't get a good explanation, can you tell us what happened to Tony out there. GENE HAAS: With Kurt, there were no guarantees. We were like you. We didn't know what was going to happen. NASCAR made statements about what they were going to do. NASCAR I think has a higher respect as a media company to do what they felt was best. So we didn't exactly know what they were going to do. It was going to be based on what the other parties did. In that respect, there was nothing that we really planned as far as, Was Kurt going to come back or not? That was just something we didn't have any control over. If things would have gone the other way, it would have been a completely different scenario. But fortunately we're happy we're back at racing. Next week there will be other stories to focus on than this. Tony is a champion. He's used to driving 800 horsepowered alcoholed Sprint cars in mud, snail snot and whatever else is out there. He has a tremendous amount of talent to adapting to things quickly. I think it's just a little bit of time it will take him to adapt to this reduction of horsepower, which is probably something he doesn't like. That's kind of speculation. I think great drivers want as much horsepower as you can get. That's part of the thrill, is to be able to take these machines with 900 horsepower and get them to slide around these turns at speed. When you take that away, I guess the hope is that we have better racing. I think the drivers at the top end of this sport, you know, probably think that that makes it a different kind of car to drive, it doesn't take nearly as much pedal skills. I think Tony will be back. He's a very adaptable driver. He didn't get to this level by chance. Tremendous amount of skills. I think it just takes a little bit of time. THE MODERATOR: We've been joined by our race winner, Kevin Harvick. This is Kevin's second victory of 2015, his seventh victory and 14th top‑10 finish in 25 races at Phoenix International Raceway. Harvick is the first driver to win four straight races at a single racetrack since Jimmie Johnson did four straight at Charlotte in 2004 and 2005. Harvick is the first driver to finish in the top two seven consecutive times since NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Petty did in 1975. So, Kevin, another impressive win by your team. Talk a little bit about the momentum and coming to Phoenix and winning not only two in a row but then also four here at this track. KEVIN HARVICK: When you said the Richard Petty part, that gives me chills. I'm just really proud of everybody at Stewart‑Haas for everything they do. Really proud of Rodney and these guys on this team. I feel like we get better as we go through different situations. You see these guys hang out together, how mellow everybody is, how everybody gets along. It's really, really special to be a part of. Really happy to be a small piece of what's going on. Really proud of everybody at Stewart‑Haas and everybody on our No.4 team. THE MODERATOR: We'll open it back up for questions. Q. Obviously this was an amazing win today. You didn't look like anybody could come even close to you. Was there any moment in time when you thought anybody could come close to you? KEVIN HARVICK: Those restarts were a little bit nerve‑wracking because yesterday I learned as the racetrack got rubbered up, the restarts were going to be sketchy to say the least because the fact for the cars were going to slide around, they weren't going to do anything correctly. Didn't matter where you were on the racetrack, when you got to the exit of the center of the corner, you needed to have your car pointed in the right direction so you could get as much throttle down. Saturday helped me understand some things that were going on with the racetrack, things you needed to concentrate on. We went to the hockey game last night as a team. Rodney and I talked about everything we went through yesterday. These guys made some good decisions based upon that information and the stuff that we fought in practice. That's what it comes down to, the communication between the group, taking in all the information that you have. These guys just make good decisions based on the information we have on a week‑to‑week basis going into the race. I'm just lucky to be the guy riding it. Q. How much pressure is your crew chief under to make sure that you complete three in a row? KEVIN HARVICK: Well, I don't know. Do you ever feel like you're under pressure? RODNEY CHILDERS: Yeah. KEVIN HARVICK: Okay. I guess when he's under pressure, his pulse might be 55. He's on the verge of being dead when he's happy and riding along. That's just one of the great things about everything that we have going on. He's on that end of the spectrum with calm and collective. When he gets wound up, he gets even quieter. For me, I get wound up and tend to just get more wound up. It's a great balance between the two of us because of the fact you can find that middle road and balance. Balance is the thing you hear me talk about. I know y'all are probably getting tired of hearing me talk about it. There's a balance with your personal life. There's a balance with the job, what you do. But there's also a balance within your team, the things that you do, how everybody works together. Just finding that balance has worked out. They've done a great job of putting those people in the right places, and it's just working. Q. When did you plan to do the backwards lap? KEVIN HARVICK: You know, that's always something that I tell myself that I want to do because I know what this place was to Alan and everything that they accomplished here. I know there's a lot of these race fans that were here and saw the Polish Victory Lap and the way he celebrated. I thought it would be cool to finally do a complete one, to go around to all the fans and into that victory lap. That was just a moment I probably should have done a long time ago. My memory gets really short when things start happening. Finally today I was able to remember to do that. Really the thing that triggered it was Mark Martin complaining about everybody doing burnouts on Twitter. Today I figured I'd give him something else to watch. Hopefully he liked that. Q. Kevin, if you run bad, it tends to stick with you a little while. If you win, how quickly do you forget about, I won last week, the week before, and get focused on what's next? KEVIN HARVICK: I think for confidence, winning is something that ultimately makes the confidence level in myself and Rodney and everybody on this team know that you can make things happen in many different types of situations. I think as you go to the next race, you go to California, it's nothing like what we've done here, nothing really like what we did at California. You just have to forget about what you did. These guys are really good at just, you know, being happy about what we did last week, not talking about anything other than what we're going to do at California next week, how we prepare for that, not taking your eye off the prize, staying focused on what we need to do for California, the past history, the things that have happened there over time. They'll finish the notes and things tomorrow morning, and the next thing you know they won't open them again until it's six weeks, five weeks before we come back to race here at the end of the year. The California notebook will open, and all of a sudden that will be all we talk about. Q. (No microphone.) KEVIN HARVICK: You can ask him. I'll probably critique today more than the days we run bad. There's a lot of things that we could do better, little areas that we can work on. We'll have notes upon notes. But I won't to approach the post race report any different than I will a race we run 20th. Will probably have more information today on things we could or couldn't do than on a day we win. Is that fair to say? RODNEY CHILDERS: Yeah. Q. In a sport where so many things can go wrong at any given time, do you think it's difficult for people on the outside to appreciate how much goes into days like today, in particular when you do it two weeks in a row? KEVIN HARVICK: I guess the casual fan would somewhat understand. I think the fan that doesn't really understand our sport really still thinks we work in a three‑car garage, race one car every week, doesn't understand that's your $200 million, $300 million business that functions with 300 people, whatever that given number is at any given company. It's a massive, massive machine. When you have the undertaking of that many people, being responsible for that much money, there's a lot of things that go on, a lot of moving pieces. This time the year, the travel coordinator and the truck drivers are the most abused people in the sport just because of the fact that they're all over the country, trying to get these guys from PointA to PointB. Financially you want to leave them out here and try to save on travel, still get your cars transferred. It's a huge machine that just takes massive amounts of people and money to operate and organize and do the things that it takes to do it good. RODNEY CHILDERS: I think every single competitor in that garage appreciates what we do. Watching us do what we've done the past two weeks, those guys, they appreciate that. They know how much work goes into it. Yeah, they want to beat us. But all the years of seeing people win races, whether it was me racing against Kevin, seeing Jimmie Johnson win, maybe that's the type of person I am, but you have to appreciate that. Everybody works too hard not to. You always have to worry about every single person. I had someone ask me last night, Who are you worried about? Well, I'm worried about everybody. That's the way you got to be. You got to keep working on your stuff and keep making it better. If you don't, you're going to get beat. THE MODERATOR: Congratulations on another victory. We wish you the best of luck next week. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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