	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES: FOLDS OF HONOR QUIKTRIP 500

February 25, 2018

Hampton, Georgia

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by the race‑winning crew chief for today's 59th annual Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500, and that is Rodney Childers of the No.4 Jimmy John's Ford, and we also have Stewart‑Haas Racing vice president of competition Greg Zipadelli. Rodney, you unloaded with a fast hotrod here at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and it certainly dominated today. How comforting was it to have that kind of fast race car at your disposal to take this one to the victory?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Yeah, I mean, this has been somewhere that we've always worked on really hard. I think everybody knows how good Kevin is here. Every winter we seem to work on this racetrack and be prepared as much as possible, just put everything into it we can, and in all honesty, over the winter, you don't really know where you stand with all the stuff that had changed with the new scanning process and all, and we kind of would look at each other every week and just kind of wonder how we were going to be. It was pretty awesome to come down here and all four cars have good speed, and just really everybody did a great job all weekend of adjusting on it, and we made it better every time we got on the racetrack and made it better going into the race. Got off a little bit in the middle of the race and got it going there again at the end.
THE MODERATOR: Zippy, was this a race that Stewart‑Haas Racing circled on the calendar, and did you know coming in that you were going to have such a dominant run today?
GREG ZIPADELLI: You circle them all because they're all important, right? I mean, that's what we do is we race. I'm just proud of everybody at Stewart‑Haas, and honestly, I know everybody says that, but in the last year or so from the switch‑over to this year with the Hawkeye and learning procedures and putting things in place, crew chiefs working together, everybody in our shop working to build good race cars, quality, working on details, the people that we moved around in the shop to help hopefully prepare better race cars to get Rodney and those guys to just continue to work on and tinker with, and that's what they're great at. They like to take them and find those little things, and I was just proud of everybody for our cars to unload and have speed.
This is a place that's all about grip, and drivers got to like it. By no means are we out of the woodwork. We're headed to Vegas, which is a complete opposite type of a racetrack next week, so we'll look at where we're at and judge ourselves again next week. But awesome win. They led so many laps here. I can't speak for Rodney, but I know in my past it's almost like a relief. You've got a driver that runs really good at one of those racetracks, it's like, I've just got to go win that. But to win this early in the season for these guys, so proud of them. Kind of gets the monkey off their back with what they went through last year. Could have won a bunch of them, just circumstances and things. So just proud of everybody.

Q. Rodney, when you have a really fast car like you guys obviously did today and you have other teams trying wacky strategies to get around you and win that way, does that play into what you're doing at all? Do you take much notice of that or do you stay on course?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Yeah, that's part of it. I love that kind of racing. I love these types of racetracks where you have a lot of fall‑off. It gives you options like that. It makes me realize that we need to work on some things and work on our tools to give us a better idea of what we should do and shouldn't do. But we just kind of‑‑ we just kind of winged it a little bit. At first we were just going to go with a once‑stop deal to the end, and then everybody started talking about stopping twice. When you look at the leaderboard and you kind of see where you're at and how much you're leading by and all that stuff, you have to just figure it all out in your head of what would be good. Just thankful that it worked out. Everybody did a really good job with it.

Q. Rodney, can you explain what happened on the pit stop where you had the pit gun issue, and is that an ongoing concern?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Honestly, I haven't talked to those guys. I didn't even get off the box to even investigate. We've got good coaches that handle that stuff. You know, I have to be honest, the people that have took that on really have done an outstanding job. Like there's no way I could sit up here and complain about anything they've done because I can't imagine taking that on over the winter and what they did over a two‑month span or a three‑month span of trying to get all this stuff ready for the teams, number one. But my opinion is we're going to go through ups and downs, and we need to go through them together and learn together. That's part of it.

Q. Zippy, you were kind of alluding to it in your opening comments, but with all four cars running as strong as they did today, and I know this is kind of a different mile‑and‑a‑half, but what kind of a statement is it for Stewart‑Haas Racing coming out like this with last year having the transition to Ford and it taking a little bit? Is this a huge statement for you guys for what we can expect going forward, or do we really have to wait for the West Coast swing to know long‑term kind of where the team sits compared to everybody else?
GREG ZIPADELLI: Well, I mean, it's a feel‑good at this moment. We had great cars at Daytona. These guys did a really good job. Circumstances took all of them out. We came here and unloaded and had speed.
You know, it's a moving target, right? You're going to‑‑ we're going to go to Vegas with some momentum and some decent racetracks for us coming up, but everybody else around us is working just as hard. They're not sitting home and just taking time off from work. That's what makes this sport so interesting is you'll have, like Rodney said, them ups and downs, and as a group, I think it gives us a little confidence working together and what we brought here. But by no means is that a victory for the year.

Q. Are you in a better place this year compared to last year?
GREG ZIPADELLI: Oh, I think absolutely we're in a little bit better place. These guys have had a year to work with the car and understand it and make some little adjustments. Understanding what you have and what you're working with every week, but like how you said, we unloaded, and I don't know if anybody really knew where they'd stand amongst the competition. There was some aero balance changes with just the way they're doing the process of inspection and how far you can push things and what you can get away with and all those little details. These guys did a great job. They unloaded with really good race cars, and they executed well all weekend, and that's the biggest part is being able to execute when you have that good car, good speed. All our teams did it. Rodney did it phenomenally today.

Q. Speaking of the inspection changes, what impact, if any, do you think that had on this weekend? Did that help anybody, hurt anybody? Do you see that having more of an impact as the season goes forward?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Yeah, I think it's still too early to tell. Zippy will tell you, I was pretty against all that stuff over the winter when it first got brought up, and I was one of the ones that thought there's just no way that's going to work and there's going to be a lot of problems, and I've got to say it's been crazy how good it has been. We went through, I don't know, six times this weekend, and you lay all that stuff out on top of each other, and it's almost identical every time you go through there.
The thing that I like the most is the LIS portion of it and the rear housing toe. We struggled with that in the laser platform, and this deal has been crazy consistent when we were at Daytona and really consistent here this weekend. We never changed a truck arm slug the whole weekend, we never changed a track bar the whole weekend, and last year there were some weekends, God, we'd be changing the track bar two rounds an eighth of an inch on a slug just because the temperature was different one day on the other. Man, I've got to‑‑ they've done a heck of a job with that thing. I was wrong two months ago but thankful that they've got it under control now, and it seems to be doing really good.

Q. At the outset of the final segment, Brad Keselowski and Kevin got past the 41 car, but then Kevin had trouble doing anything with Brad or getting back into the lead. You made kind of an old‑school call, bringing Kevin to the pit stop, you got back in the lead. How important was that for you to get back in the lead at that point also in terms of being able to build a lead against the 11 car?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Well, I felt like that was one of our worst runs of the night. You know, I felt like we had lost the balance of the race car. I also felt like he was running the car hard and had burned the right rear tire off of it, and I felt like the thing to do was to get back in the lead no matter how we had to do it. We needed to control the race. I've learned my lesson here too many times of‑‑ a few years ago we got beat by the 48 losing control of the race and having to restart on the outside. That's just how this place is. You've got to control what you can control and make sure that you put yourself in the best position, and that's all we were trying to do there.

Q. Rodney, you guys have led 116 laps every year since you and Kevin have been together at Stewart‑Haas; because you guys have had so much success but haven't been able to get the win, how does it feel to finally get that win, and was there ever a point in the race where you were kind of worried is something going to happen again to take it away?
RODNEY CHILDERS: Honestly, I worried the whole race. I don't know, like I said, it's a lot of fun to come here with him. He knows what he needs in the race car. He knows what it should feel like, I guess. You know, to lead all those laps over all the years and kind of always give them away, we would sit and joke about it, about there's a curse, you know, and it seems like it had been forever since he won a race here. But even before I started working with him, I hated racing against him at this place. I can remember racing with Reutimann here and we had a great car the whole weekend and qualified up front and ran top three or four the whole race, and we'd just drive away from him the first 20 laps of a run, and by the end of about 50 laps, he'd have about three‑quarters of a track on us. There's something that he has figured out that he can keep the tires on it and does a good job for us.

Q. What's the difference between winning race two versus waiting until race 16?
RODNEY CHILDERS: It's definitely a huge relief. I think as a race team, the 4 team's mentality has always been to try to win a race in the first five races. We've been able to accomplish that some years, and last year we couldn't. You know, I think overall it just gives us a little bit of time to work on our stuff and get it better. Like I said, I had no idea if we were going to run good or bad when we showed up. You don't know where everybody else is with their stuff, and you don't know if you got more downforce, less downforce and more grip or less grip. You don't know any of that stuff. You've just got to get through a few races. And even now, like Zippy said, this isn't a good indication of what we have as a company. We need to get through a few weeks and keep working hard and then reevaluate where we're at.
THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 4 Jimmy John's Ford for Stewart‑Haas Racing. Your 38th win here in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, and you dominated early and you closed it strong. Walk us through how satisfying today was for you.
KEVIN HARVICK: Today was very satisfying just for the fact that we were able to overcome so much. That in my mind is very rewarding for everybody on the team, to make a comeback of some mistakes and make the car better and then make a great pit call to get our track position back. Just a number of things happened with the last pit stop. Those guys nailed it, and the last restart. So those are the things that kind of put all those question marks out of your head, and you say, all right, that worked out pretty well. But really, we've had‑‑ since I've been at Stewart‑Haas Racing, we've had five cars that could have done this, the same exact thing that we did tonight and pretty much did, just different situations didn't allow us to drive it to Victory Lane. Just really happy to come back to Victory Lane. It's been a long time since I've been able to drive into Victory Lane here on Sunday, and honestly, I had no‑‑ I didn't have any idea that we would even have a chance of running this race today. So to get the race in, it'll make it a lot better on the guys getting out west and take some pressure off of that because it's a pretty hectic time of travel and different things like that. I worry about that more than myself, just because it's so tough from a crew guy standpoint to get them through these next few weeks.

Q. Rodney and Zippy, with the new engine regulations this year, does winning a race early do anything to change how you guys conserve when you're going to reuse an engine, or do you guys pretty much have that mapped out for the rest of the year?
RODNEY CHILDERS: He probably knows better than I do.
GREG ZIPADELLI: Doug Yates and his guys have kind of mapped that out for the year. There's six different versions, and obviously a lot of it goes by if you get in a wreck and you hurt a motor or if you blow up early in the season, it changes it. In all honesty, it's kind of going to be a work in progress. Right now things are okay for us. They'll all work out. Everybody will have a motor. It'll just be‑‑ obviously you're working towards using up your motors and have your freshest and newest stuff as you enter the Chase or towards those races.

Q. Kevin, I want to go back to yesterday's Xfinity race. I didn't get a chance to ask you about this, but your first drive in the 98 car with Biagi‑DenBeste, having the history that they have, folding that into Stewart‑Haas, and for you to be a part of that history, you kind of were one of the building blocks for SHR and now for that 98 team, what's it mean to be a part of that and to score a win for them on a downforce track?
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, you know, I met Bill and Fred for the first time this weekend and realized that they just like to race. You know, fortunately I have two other owners that just like to race in Gene Haas and Tony Stewart, and that's the unique part about what we do. It's like when we put the whole 98 thing together with Stewart‑Haas Racing and Biagi‑DenBeste and it was really just about trying to get the most resources to put the fastest car on the racetrack, and that's all they care about. You know, from a driver and a team guy standpoint, that is rare. For me, owning teams and sitting in the walls of Stewart‑Haas Racing and seeing just kind of the demeanor of how everything operates is very blue collar, but it's very racer mentality from inside out, and that comes from the ownership group. Fred and Bill just add to that.
I think as you look at the start of the Xfinity program, and I said this yesterday, I get to come in and do this on occasion and give some input. The real guys that are doing this are on the 00 car with Cole and his crew chief that are the building blocks week in and week out, and we come in and we try some different things and do some different things, but they've done a great job, and it's fun to go out and have a chance to win on Saturday.

Q. The start of this season, last week at Daytona, we watch a black No.3 go to Victory Lane in the biggest race of the sport. This weekend you, the guy who replaced Dale Earnhardt after his passing, go to Victory Lane at the track where you got your first Cup win. To see history repeat itself like that, what does it mean to you? What does it mean to you to finally be back in Victory Lane here?
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, it means a lot to me, and it's funny and ironic how all these things line up, and it's kind of ironic how we wound up in Victory Lane that day, and Dale's teams won the first two races and we were able to win the next race in 2001. You see that 3 back in Victory Lane and us back in Victory Lane tonight, it's just almost‑‑ it's just how it's meant to be. I think for me, to be able to kind of do that celebration again, very similar to what we did in 2001, I've been waiting a long time, because 2001 was very confusing. It was my first win and don't feel like I remember really anything about it because it was just such a really confusing time in my life, and just on the racetrack and with Dale gone and getting in his car, not with my team that I had built over the last couple years at RCR, and I raced so much in 2001 that you didn't really see the repercussions of everything that had happened until 2002, and we were terrible in 2002.
It was fun to be able to go to‑‑ to actually pay tribute and smile about what was going on in the night and not just‑‑ not know if you should actually stick your hand out the window, if somebody was going to be offended or somebody was going to be mad and whether it was the right thing to do or wrong thing to do and it was your first win. So there was just a lot of confusing things. So it felt good to pay tribute to that and park it in Victory Lane with a smile on my face and watch everybody smile with me.

Q. (Indiscernible).
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, all the way around, just like we did it in 2001.

Q. I wanted to ask you about, you appeared to have some emotions at that time when you did the reprise of the three fingers. Were you thinking about the frustrations of the last five years or were you thinking about 17 years ago and what that meant?
KEVIN HARVICK: You know, for me there was just a lot of happiness, just to be able to go back and look at that moment, and I was happy for my team and happy for my guys. I love to see them smile, and I love to see them excited. You know, there's so much work that goes into what we do and the things that happen on the racetrack are hard to make happen, and when you have a night like this and you have a group of guys that you spend so much time with, there's nothing better than seeing all those guys smile. I love winning races, and I love running up front, but there's nothing better than the guys you go in there and battle with every week having a smile on their face.

Q. You weren't the only driver to have issues with pit guns and pit equipment; are you concerned about that at all?
KEVIN HARVICK: I honestly don't know 100 percent what happened, so that's way out of my category of things that I need to be commenting on.

Q. Kevin, none of the drivers in the top eight have less than eight years of experience, so it was a very veteran‑heavy lineup or finishing order. Is that a coincidence? Does that have anything to do with this track?
KEVIN HARVICK: Talladega is in April. There's no coincidence. You know, this is a racetrack that takes a lot of experience, and there's a lot of things that you have to know about your car and know about the racetrack to get the car around the racetrack. This is where experience pays off at these types of racetracks for sure.

Q. Kevin, I ran the numbers, and the average age of the SHR drivers is 10 years more than the other multi‑car teams. What message does your win send to the young guns who have gotten a lot of attention to begin this season?
KEVIN HARVICK: Look, we need to introduce new people and new stars in our sport. I don't have a message other than our sport is great. I love racing cars, and we have to have great competitors to make the diverse fan base have people to root for, and some people like calm, shy Ryan Blaney that knows a lot about the sport, or Chase Elliott, who's been around racing and has those deep ties to NASCAR and the southern roots of our sport. Those guys are all important.
And when everybody realizes how important the young guys are to the old guys, and the tweeners have to do the same. There's not one person. There's no two young guys that are going to make it, there's no two old guys that are going to make it. This is all about everybody. You have to have somebody to race. I can remember Jim Hunter sitting in his motor home, and he'd blow cigarette smoke on me and ask me if I wanted another hot dog, and he'd say, Son, you've got to have somebody to pass. Every week it's somebody different. You have to have somebody to pass, and if you don't have anybody to pass, you can't call it a race.
We're in a great spot in our sport, and I think tonight there was a lot of experience. Next week there will be a lot of young guys in the mix with a racetrack that's a little calmer with things that you don't have to have in your memory bank. But we're in a great spot in our sport because we have these young guys that are fired up and can drive the car fast and have great stories and have ties to great family heritage of our sport, and you have guys that you've never heard of. And that's what you have to have.
The diversity from young to old is something that we haven't had in a long time, and we're going to corral everybody to make sure that they realize that we all need each other in order to make this sport what we all want it to be.

Q. What would the Kevin Harvick today tell the 25‑year‑old Kevin Harvick that won here back in 2001?
KEVIN HARVICK: Oh, sometimes you just need to keep your mouth shut. And everything is not a show. Running fast is enough merit and enough show. Man, I didn't‑‑ I said and did a lot of dumb things. I guess you could call them building blocks and now we can laugh about them, but it was entertaining at the time. Got me a couple of vacations. Richard chewed me out a lot. Mike Helton‑‑ we need more of Mike Helton in today's NASCAR, just because he was the guy that could just look at you and you knew you were like‑‑ you were in big trouble when he would just give you that look and you'd sit there in awkward silence. You guys have probably sat there with Tony, right? Yeah, you probably sat in that trailer with Tony, and he'd look at you and just not even say anything and just stare at you, and next thing just go, well, this isn't good. And it would just be the most thought‑out, well‑said thing that you've ever imagined, and you'd leave there like, oh, my God, I may never race again. So yeah.

Q. You've said in the past that you're a driver who likes challenges, you need something to kind of challenge yourself. Obviously in the last few years you've had those with the switch to Ford and the switch to Stewart‑Haas Racing. I'm curious, now you've been doing this for so long, this is your 18th year at the Cup level; are challenges just something you look for on a weekly basis or a yearly basis? What is it that you like to have dangling out there?
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, well, I think you have to find something on a weekly basis in order to keep yourself enthused. For me right now the sport is what enthuses me and kind of is very intriguing to me because there's a lot of things that need some help and guidance with so many of the young guys coming up through the ranks, and there's so much to learn. But we have to teach them about it. Jimmie Johnson and myself have talked about it. Somebody has to explain to them how things work and show them the ropes. And that to me is fun. You want to go beat them on the racetrack still. It's not anything about that. But we need to get back to where everybody can go drink a beer together and have a good time, and I walk in the garage and we try to do as many things as we can for the officials and people and NASCAR just because‑‑ it just feels like everybody has kind of forgotten exactly how much fun this is and how lucky we are to walk into this garage on a weekly basis or to sit in that car on a weekly basis and drive race cars around in circles.
For me, I've just got a much better appreciation of how cool it is to sit in that race car and really enjoy the things that I do. I want to spread that to the rest of them because it's not all sponsors and politics and business and all the things that you think it all is right now. It's fun.
Everything we did to get to this point is fun, and I want to make sure that everybody hears me talk about how fun this is and realize, and maybe you spark some interest in somebody in the garage or working on the car or driving a car that we're lucky to do what we do, so you'd better enjoy it, because it might not be here tomorrow.

Q. How big or how different is it to win on race two compared to race 16 last year, to get your first win?
KEVIN HARVICK: It's huge, because the stress level goes way down. You know, even last year when we were in a good position from a point standpoint, people just kept winning, and you're like, well, is this the year that 16 different guys win and you don't get in on points? You just never know.
To knock that win out early and put yourself in a better playoff position and already gathered six points, it'll allow us to really go to work on the things that we need to work on when we get to Vegas next week and see where we fall and know where we sit from a downforce standpoint is important. The different racetracks we go to, you have this worn‑out racetrack and you have a superspeedway and then you go to Martinsville. So you have Vegas and Texas that are kind of the key racetracks to really see what you need to work on and go from there.

Q. (Indiscernible).
KEVIN HARVICK: I would not put this in the good indicator category.

Q. It's got to feel good to be in the Chase this early.
KEVIN HARVICK: It's the Playoffs. We've got to get that messaging right. It's the optical scanning station that we go through to put these cars through inspection.
And I learn all this stuff from my good friend Daniel Norwood because I get multiple emails on a weekly basis, now that I'm a Sirius Radio show host. I'm very in tune with these phrases.
But it just takes a ton of pressure off. If you can go out and win more races, that's what makes winning early more fun, if you can go out and gather some points and pull into Victory Lane some more. And we're going to have fun either way.

Q. Knowing this track eats up your tires really quickly, what do you do strategy‑wise to minimize that blowout?
KEVIN HARVICK: We've been working on our traction control really well. We've really got our traction control dialed in, and that comes in your foot, and that's the biggest key to‑‑ I think the biggest thing is just trying to take care of your car in the first seven or eight laps to really try to not abuse the tires, and I did that a couple times tonight, and it definitely affected the car. But when we had the track position and the clear track and could manage the aero side of things not being behind another car, it really allowed us to save the tires, and that just really piled us for us over the long run because we could really dictate the pace and have managed what we did from a tire saving standpoint.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297