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MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES: TOYOTA/SAVE MART 350June 25, 2017Kevin HarvickSonoma, California THE MODERATOR: If I could have your attention here in the media center, we will continue on with today's winner's press conference for the Toyota/SaveMart 350 in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, and we're joined by our winner, Kevin Harvick, driver of the No.4 Mobile1 Ford for Stewart‑Haas Racing. Pulled off the weekend sweep, your fourth win now at Sonoma Raceway and your second this weekend. Walk us through your thoughts in those closing laps. KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, we doubled our total in one weekend. But we definitely checked the most important one off, and that's definitely in the Cup Series. You know, for me, it's been a lot of close calls, and I think today with the car that we had all weekend, I felt like our car was fast enough to try to put ourselves in position towards the end of the race to have a chance to win. We gave up those‑‑ I think we were second and fourth in the stages to come in and pit to try to win the race. I felt like that was definitely the right call, and then there at the end of the race, we were able to get to the end, saving the rear tires and still pulling away. It was a great weekend, and you just got to cherish the weekends when they're like this because they don't always go as smooth as this one did, so it's nice to finally have that. Q. I am curious whether you feel more beat up after today's race or your car is more beat up? KEVIN HARVICK: Definitely my car. I feel good. So it's‑‑ I was actually a little nervous about that running both races. Not the spring chicken anymore. I feel probably better than I did only running one race just because you're moving all day on Saturday and practicing all day on Friday. It's been a lot of fun, and the car has got the nose and both sides and both front fenders beat off of it, and it looks just how it should after a Sonoma race, so it was a fun day. Q. Seems like it's been an eternity since we've seen you up here last. How important was that stretch of green laps going towards the end, considering the race was peppered with cautions before that? KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I'm assuming it's almost been 24 hours since you've seen me. (Laughter.) So yeah. What was your question? Q. How important was that stretch towards the end‑‑ KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah. I think as you look at the end of the race, Rodney is telling me to save gas and save the tires, and I felt like I was already doing that, and they were starting to make me a little bit worried actually as we kept talking about it and they kept telling me to save gas. I thought that maybe we had either not got it all the way full or had pitted maybe a little bit sooner than maybe we needed to, but it was definitely just a situation where we were in control of the race and didn't need to use more rear tire than we needed to to get to the end. We were able to manage the car really after the 78 fell out. I felt like he was the guy that we were going to have to race all the way to the end. He had a great car, and once he fell out, I felt like we were 100 percent in control of the race, no matter what had happened, whether it was old tires or new tires. We definitely‑‑ I felt like we had the best car at that particular point once he was gone. Q. Kevin, were your win totals the last several years enough to keep you from worrying and thinking that a win was going to come, or was time getting short and maybe a little anxiety? KEVIN HARVICK: I can say this now, but I had mixed emotions about how the year was going to go just because of the fact that we had a lot on our plate to switch over, and I think as we started the year, we had good performance, and we went through a little bit of a spell where it wasn't as good as the first three or four weeks, and then the last month and a half has been really good. So it's just a big undertaking, and one day I think when we get done with this year, I think everybody will actually learn all the details of all the things that it took to get to this particular point, but it's a huge undertaking, and I think it says a lot about our people at Stewart‑Haas Racing. But I felt like‑‑ I felt like I knew we were going to win again just for the fact that our cars were running good. Pocono and Michigan, our cars were fast the last couple weeks, and all weekend here this weekend our cars have been good. Our speedway cars have been good. I felt like every race‑‑ not every race, but I felt like three or four races where we had the best cars we wrecked out and had the speeding penalty at Atlanta after leading 300 some laps. It's been a good year, we just hadn't been to Victory Lane, and today it all went our way, and hopefully we've gotten all that bad luck out of the way and we can enjoy days like this where it all goes our way and capitalize on the fastest car. Q. You mentioned you're no spring chicken anymore, but are you at the point where you're reflecting more on your career and how you developed as a kid from Bakersfield? KEVIN HARVICK: I think so, and I think yesterday was a huge example for that. I definitely want to get more involved in making sure that West Coast racing is healthy and where it needs to be, and I think in doing that, it's just like Will Rodgers, who finished second yesterday, he's a great young talent who's trying to find his way in circle track racing, a great road racer, and trying to cut his teeth in doing the things that he's doing in the K&N West series. A lot of times people look east, and I've been in that position where everybody looked east and all of a sudden they looked west and for a long time all the new talent was coming out of the West Coast, and I'd love to see some of these kids get plucked. I know Gil is on his way, but there's a lot of good racers, and if we can draw some attention to the West series and some of these racetracks to kind of rekindle that fire from a short track standpoint, from a series standpoint, that's really going to be one of my focuses as I go through the next few years. Q. I asked you yesterday about the K&N race, and you said you did it for the main reason just to have fun but also turning laps in the car all weekend, it couldn't have hurt your performance today. Did you take anything from being in another car even though it's a different body, less horsepower, etcetera, that you took away from this weekend racing in the K&N Series that you applied today? KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, it kept me from sitting around and trying to find something to do on Saturday. I think that was the biggest thing. I'm sitting around and there's guys out here making laps and learning things, and I think that's the most important thing is to never take for granted that you have to try to expand your knowledge and keep an open mind to making things better. Rodney and I sat down in the winter and said, all right, how are we going to make our road race program better, and one of the things that came up is I needed to make myself better, and I felt like in order to win some of these races, we needed to do some things different, and the K&N race was one of those races in order to get some more seat time on Saturday. We're going to run the XFINITY race at Watkins Glen. That seat time and that time in the car is definitely something that we're trying to focus on, and whether I learned anything‑‑ it can't hurt to make laps. It's not going to be the same shifting pattern, it's not going to be the same horsepower, it's not going to be the same handling, but the thought processes are definitely different when you're that busy on a weekend, and for me those thought processes are a good thing because I constantly think about what's going on because you're so busy on Friday and then you wind up so busy on Saturday and then Sunday obviously is what it is, and I think that thought process of having a car that drives different on bias ply tires, that shifts different really makes me think about not only that car but it makes me think about the next car because they're so 180 degrees different on how you shift and the things that you do that you have to sit down and mentally think about what the hell you're doing. That part has been good for me, and it seems like the busier I am, it seems like the better we do. The folks from Stewart‑Haas were very good, and they built the transmission and put my seat in the car, and the rest of it was done by a West Coast team with Jerry Pitts and Jefferson boys putting the car on the track. It definitely didn't hurt anything. Q. Tony was talking about how good it is to have a team of four that actually all could have ended up top 10, and of course toward the end, Clint was coming in pretty strong. Did you have any worries, and you did have that nice about eight‑second plus stretch; were you able to relax, or did you worry about him coming up? KEVIN HARVICK: Well, that's a normal day for Clint. He walks that way, too. He'll walk and then he'll spin around in circles and then he'll walk in a different direction and he'll spin around in circles, so today was just a normal day for Clint. So he's definitely a little scatterbrained, but he's really good here, but I knew when we came here that I had somebody, and along with Kurt, as well, and even Danica, she definitely ran well this weekend, but Kurt and Clint are very good road racers, and obviously have won here, and I knew coming here that I had a lot of information that I could lean on and really all through practice the throttle traces and brake traces and all the things that were going on, Kurt was a big help last year, and bringing Clint on board‑‑ that's really what having multiple car teams is all about, and when you have two guys that are good at what they do, that pushes you, and you're good at what you do, that pushes them, and that's really the point of the whole thing is to fast track advancing trying to make things better, and when you look at our situation going to Ford and having some ups and downs and having a lot of things that you don't know about and having to learn, sure, we have great people, but those weekends where one guy does one thing and one guy hits on another thing, all of a sudden it goes into a different direction, so it's good to have that progression with guys that are that good. Q. This track has always been a very aggressive track. Now with the new stage rules, was it even more crazy out there? KEVIN HARVICK: You know, I don't think it was any more crazy than it has been. I think the part that makes it really crazy is when you get a bunch of late cautions because once that first caution falls inside the 20‑lap window, it seems like it just turns into a demolition derby, and we didn't have that today. But the stage races were very aggressive at the beginning of the race, and Rodney and I had talked before the race to try to put ourselves in position to win. I think some stage points here and there are great, but we felt like today we had a car that was capable of winning the race and we needed to put ourselves in position to try to win. So we gave up‑‑ I think we were running second and fourth or fifth in those first two stages and gave up those points to try to put ourselves in position, and then when the 78 fell out, I felt like we were in control of the race at that particular point, so we just had to see where it went, and it went green, and we were able to manage our car and not have to do anything but take care of it towards the end. So it was definitely fun to finally have it all work your way and not have something that you had happen at the end of the race and just shake your head and walk out of here. It was nice to have it all go right, have a fast car, have the right strategy, and pull into Victory Lane, and I feel like obviously the team has proven over and over that we can do that. About the time you think we have it down we come back and do something good. It's a good bunch of guys and everybody gets along well, and everybody at the shop has just been busting their tails to get better every week, and Victory Lane definitely makes everybody happy. Q. Did the organization need a win? You guys started the year with the Daytona 500 and hadn't won yet since then. KEVIN HARVICK: Well, I think winning makes everything better. You know, I think it definitely puts a lot of‑‑ takes a lot of pressure off of us to not have to answer those questions anymore. I don't even know how many weeks we've raced. How many weeks have we raced? 16 weeks, all right. Well, we've definitely been in contention to win a few of them. I felt like obviously Atlanta, Daytona, Talladega, some of those racetracks we crashed out and had the penalty and just didn't all work out. But we've been through good stretches and bad stretches, and I think that's the great part about our team. We know we're capable of winning races at any type of racetrack and confident in each other in what we do. And there's just‑‑ there's still a lot of room for growth. There's still a lot of things we don't know about our cars that we learn on a weekly basis, and that's the fun part is to know the upside potential to this whole deal, and once we get it all ironed out and how great everybody has been from not only Stewart‑Haas Racing but Ford in putting all this together, you know, I feel like we have way more room to grow than most any team in the garage because there's so many new things for us and new people and still trying to work all the details out. We have all the big pieces and that's the great thing about Tony and Gene is we have all the big pieces, it's up to us to squeeze the details out of everything from every department. Q. You talked about trying to improve the road course program; why was that important, or where did it rank? You're transitioning to Ford, you have all these changes‑‑ KEVIN HARVICK: Well, it all started when they talked about putting a road race in the Chase. When you put that Roval in, that all of a sudden becomes‑‑ I'm not saying that this race is not important and Watkins Glen is not important because now with the stages and the playoff points and all those things, but when you talk about it being in the Chase, you've got to have it right. I think for me, that was kind of like, all right, you've got to do something yourself to get better. I know the team is going to do everything that they have to do, and for Rodney and myself, we just sat down and tried to come up with a plan and felt like the on‑track stuff was going to be better than the simulator, and we put a plan together and everybody was able to put the sponsorship together with the Fields folks to come and run the K&N race and run the XFINITY race in Watkins Glen, and not only does it help us, it brings a new sponsor into the sport who's happy to be here, and everybody from Stewart‑Haas was very supportive, and we put it on the track and are seeing the benefits from it. Q. Now that you and Kurt are both in, is there anything the team can or will do differently to ensure that Clint gets in because he's right on the bubble? KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I mean, we'll do everything we can. We need as many cars as we can in that Chase, and Clint has run well, he's had a little bit of bad luck, and obviously today sounds like he spun out twice? Once, whatever. At least once. I sought him do a 360 in my mirror one time and keep doing. But those guys have run good enough to deserve to be in the Chase. We'll do everything we can to get them in there, and I think that's important to the company, and I think they'll make that happen. Q. You said after winning the K&N race, you said you weren't able to enjoy being in wine country because you had work and whatnot, but now that all your work is‑‑ KEVIN HARVICK: I don't drink wine anyway. I like beer. Q. That was my question. Are you going to be able to enjoy a little bit of this wine country now that you've had a stellar work weekend? KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I'm going to load the ice chest full of Busch beer, and I'm going to go back to the airport and fly to Wyoming. But I love being in California. It's been a great weekend here at the racetrack, and I think as you look at‑‑ I have a lot of friends who have come to the race that live in California, and every year they come up here, and so we've been able to enjoy a lot of time at the Carneros Inn, who obviously is a big supporter of the race yesterday, so it's a great place to kind of lay our heads down and catch up with some great friends, and it's been a great weekend. I enjoy coming here, but I also am ready to get back to home and see my little buddy. THE MODERATOR: Kevin, congratulations. We'll let you get out of here so you can enjoy a nice ice cold one. Good luck next week in Daytona. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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