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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: ALL STAR RACEMay 16, 2015Kyle BuschKevin HarvickCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA THE MODERATOR: We'll get started with our race runner‑up, Kevin Harvick. Kevin, you drove a heck of a race out there tonight, had a strong car. Talk about your performance. KEVIN HARVICK: I kind of put us in a hole in qualifying. Our Hunt Brothers Pizza Chevy was really fast. We were able to get through traffic. They made some really good changes throughout the night to get the car where it really needed to be. I was able to move around the racetrack and find a groove that worked for me. Made my way through traffic. Thought we were in a good spot. I had committed to the center of the corner and just really lost the front of the car up the racetrack, had to get out of the throttle, lost five or six spots. Really excited for next week, be able to pass cars, maneuver through the field like that, pass cars like we were able to tonight. Real excited about coming back next week. THE MODERATOR: Also joining us tonight is Kyle Busch, who finished sixth in tonight's race. Kyle, welcome back. Great to see you in the racecar. Talk about being back here at Charlotte. KYLE BUSCH: Thanks. It was really good. I learned some things. I think we also learned some stuff, myself and Adam Stevens, about this racecar, for me, and getting around here in Charlotte. So we can take some of that next week and look forward to the Coke 600. All in all it was a good evening. We were clicking off some spots, moving ourselves forward. Felt really good about things. I got busted for speeding on pit road. In that same segment, we ended up having a loose wheel. At least it was two things biting us in one segment, not two things biting us in different segments. That was a real positive. Real fortunate just to get back in the race car. Get out there and feel things out. Otherwise everything felt good and getting to pit road, all that, everything was fine. Like I said, I felt like we had a fast racecar. Bummed out we got busted for speeding and had a loose wheel. Felt like we definitely could have raced our way in, maybe even the top five, and give it a shot to win, governing our final pit stop, which was good where we were at. THE MODERATOR: We'll open it up to questions. Q. Kevin, you have to be frustrated finishing second. Over the radio, Rodney said you guys were looking forward to coming back and running 600 miles. What are some of the things you learned tonight that you can apply next week? KEVIN HARVICK: It's like I told you guys last week, I'm not frustrated. I've been on the other side of this deal. On our days where we have something go wrong, the recovery from starting last and having a chance to win the race today, that was a recovery day, a day that goes smooth hopefully you can win the race. It's been a great start. I feel like we're competitive every week. As you saw tonight, we were able to make it up into the top 10. Then they made some great adjustments on the car and we were able to drive through the top five cars and pass them. That's an accomplishment, you know, where we're at with the cars, how you have to race them, the things that are happening. If you can pass, that's a huge advantage, something I feel like they did a really good job with our car tonight in making it drivable. Q. Kevin, conventional wisdom going in was you had to be first or second to have a good shot at winning. Brad sped only because he felt like he had to have the lead or else it wasn't really going to matter. What was your outlook restarting third? KEVIN HARVICK: It just depended on how everything shook out when they took off. Who spun the tires, who didn't spin the tires. Denny sped them up quite a bit, then slowed them down, then took off way early. Once the cars start going back and forth, it's really easy to get the tires spinning. On the outside lane, spun the tires a little bit. I was in a pretty good spot. He just made a pretty good move down there. I committed to the center of the corner. He made a good move to slide up in the middle of the corner and got my car really tight. My strategy was to keep moving up the racetrack. But as it all worked out, I just got too far behind with a mistake right there. Q. Kyle, in other sports we talk about guys being in shape versus being in game shape. How do you feel right now having your first experience back in the racecar? KYLE BUSCH: I'll be sore for a couple days, just muscles that haven't been woken up like this in a little while. It's nothing new. Typically I get that in the beginning of the year anyway. It takes a few weeks to kind of get warmed up to things, your body to kind of settle in. Being out of the racecar the longest I've ever been in my career, it's a wake‑up call for myself to get back rolling. Other than that, just feel fine. I never was out of breath at all during the race or through the runs or anything like that. That was a good thing. I was not worried about it. But, you know, when you're working out and doing things, doing therapy and whatnot, the therapist tells you, Your cardio is really bad, it's definitely gotten better over the last month, but wasn't sure how great it was going to be yet. It felt really good. From here on out, there's only going to be an upward swing, so I'm looking forward to that. Q. Kevin, you talked about moving up through traffic, making passes. With this rules package, did it surprise you at all or was that kind of expected? KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I didn't move much until we got our car handling right. So, you know, the car I felt was really good starting the third run, all the way through the third run, fourth, all the way through the end. Even at the beginning, the first two runs, the car wasn't exactly where it needed to be. Couldn't make a lot of ground other than the restarts. You got to have your car right. The restarts are really tough because everybody's got so much throttle, you're so close to sliding the nose. If you move up too far, the back will come out from underneath you because everybody's got so much throttle on the car, so it makes it tough to pass until you get to 10, 12 laps into the run. Q. Kyle, in that first segment at the start when you got running, how much of it would you say was your car and how much of it was just trying to get your feet under you and race conditions? Any concerns or questions regarding your endurance after today's race going into the 600 next week? KYLE BUSCH: The first run, I was warming up, taking my time. Like Harvick said, he said his car wasn't right yet. He was maybe three, four spots ahead of me by the time that segment was over. It wasn't like he was setting the world on fire going forward. Trying to figure out traffic was my biggest thing, trying to see if my car was maneuverable, and it really wasn't. It wasn't all night. Even when we did make the car better, made it faster, it definitely just liked to be around the bottom of the racetrack. Any time I tried to move up and get high, I'd go really loose. We got to work on that for next week. Something we definitely got to focus on in order to try to get better. As far as endurance goes for next week, I felt like I got out of the car after a hundred laps and I'm fine. Am I going to die out after 200 or 300? I don't know. The plan is to go the full distance. We'll just hope that the rest of these guys run about 50% for the first 200, I can keep up. Maybe at the end we'll all go after it. But I doubt that will happen. Q. Kevin, your record at Charlotte didn't start off well during your time with RCR for a while. The last five years you've done better. What is it about Charlotte the last couple of years that you figured out that has made you so good? Can you put your finger on something? KEVIN HARVICK: I think there was just a lot of things that I had to do differently. Just sat down and really, as we had a test here, I don't even remember what year it was, I guess it would have been 2009, 2010, just figured some things out driving‑wise, what I was looking for in the car. Coming over to Stewart‑Haas Racing, the cars have been really fast. This has been a place we've run really well at. It just all clicked, I guess. Took me 10 or 11 years to figure it out. It's all gone okay over the last four or five. Q. Kyle, got a lap down at one point, had the trouble with the loose wheel. You fight back to finish sixth. What did it take for you to get more comfortable in the car and fight to get that lap back? Was it frustrating for you after you had that unscheduled pit stop about middle of the race? KYLE BUSCH: The biggest frustration was me speeding on pit road. Getting busted in segment one when you're in pit stall 41, that's hard to do, but I accomplished that. So check that one off. That was the most frustrating part. In that same run, I did get that loose wheel that we had to come back down pit road and pit for. Fortunately in this race you know there's short runs, the leader is not going to catch the last place guy and get him a lap down. When that happened, I was hoping we would be the first car one lap down, get that back, have a chance to pass some cars in the fourth segment, which we did. Get ourselves a better finishing average to get that readjustment, that lineup set for us to come down pit road. Then my guys wheeled off a flawless stop on that last one. I think we went from 13th to 10th. Then there was two guys that got busted for speeding. So we started eighth on that last run and passed a couple guys more to finished sixth. Real proud of the efforts. It was good. Real proud of my guys. Real proud of myself. Just looking forward to the days leading up to next week because our first son is coming. So real excited about that on Monday. THE MODERATOR: Kevin, Kyle, thank you very much for your time tonight. We look forward to seeing you next week. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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