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MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES: CONSUMERS ENERGY 400

August 12, 2018

Brooklyn, Michigan

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by our race winning driver, Kevin Harvick, driver of the No.4 Busch Light Mobile1 Ford, and our race‑winning passenger, Keelan Harvick, who's taking advantage of Kids Drive NASCAR this weekend. We will open it up to questions.

Q. This question is for both of you guys. Kevin, you're just on a terrific roll this year. I think it's a historical season pace that you're going at. Are there times that you just want to pinch yourself and say, this is just a dream, I'm having a video game type season?
KEVIN HARVICK: Heck yeah.

Q. Keelan, how awesome is it to share this experience with your father and see what it's like to have him have his best year yet?
KEELAN HARVICK: It was fun to enjoy that moment.
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, I think as you look at the year, you've got to remember, I spent a lot of years not having the most fun and not having the most success. Over the past five years, we've been able to win a lot of races and do a lot of things on the racetrack and winning races and a championship. It's been an incredible amount of stuff and wins packed into almost five years now. For me, I'm just enjoying every moment because you never know when it's going to go the other way, and right now our guys are just doing a great job, and I'm enjoying everything.
It was pretty cool today. We got to go celebrate together. He's been with me for the last three weeks, so we've had a big time. It's pretty cool to look over there on your victory lap and see your six year old in the passenger seat and being able to enjoy it with you. That was definitely way up there on the bucket list of things that you didn't expect. That was pretty neat.

Q. This has been kind of dad‑son weekend, right, from what we can gather?
KEVIN HARVICK: Oh, yeah.

Q. Was that the best moment, or have there been better moments that we haven't seen?
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, he did crash a golf cart into a pine tree, and all's we could see were the golf bags sticking out of the back of the tree. I had to go in and dig him out. They got a little racy down the fairway. That was entertaining after we figured out his eyes weren't poked out.
But yeah, we've had some unapproved mom moments this weekend with the golf cart crash and the Quarter Midget. I'm sure that she'd probably be okay with him riding in the right side of the car since we didn't do any burnouts. But as you look at it over the summer, like I say, he's been with me for the last three weeks, and what other sport can you take your kids to work and be able to enjoy things like that with them, and for me as a dad, I mean, there's not much better ‑ and all you dads know this ‑ than looking over and sharing one of your cool moments and looking over and the only person with you is your son. That's pretty special.

Q. Kevin, with your win this month and then when Clint won in June, it must be a happy clubhouse at Stewart‑Haas. What is it like right now with the teamwork and things that are going on? You guys must truly be excited going to work and moving forward.
KEVIN HARVICK: Absolutely. Well, they're motivated, and I think as you look at it, we're three weeks away from the playoffs, and you don't want it to shut off, you want it to keep going. The motivation is to not let things slip through the crack, and they're covering all the details, and especially my group of guys that we're going on our fifth year together. That experience and those attention to details of things that they do is second to none, and you see it week after week. You look in the win column, and we're capitalizing on those fast cars that hasn't always happened over the last four years, and I think this year we're making those moments count and getting wins out of them.

Q. Do you have any sense at all of the trend running out here at any point, or is this just going to go on? Can it turn on a dime do you think, or what's your confidence going forward? It must be huge.
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, the confidence is high, and right now you just don't want to screw it up. I think the biggest thing that it does is it actually makes you work harder because of the fact that you want to cover all the details because you're fairly certain that when the car rolls out of the hauler that it's going to be fast, and if it's not, you have the tools and the people to be able to figure it out and fix it.
When you look at June and you look at this weekend, the setups and the things that are in the car are totally different, and that's just the evolution of this sport. When you have guys like the 18 and the 78 and all the cars that are in the garage that want to win races, they're going to continuously push, so you can't sit on your hands, and you have to continue to progress, and I think you look at Ford announcing the Mustang, I think that's an example of that. You look at the success on the racetrack, but that's not always going to be good enough. Everybody is going to have‑‑ if you give everybody a whole winter to work on their stuff from a Toyota and Chevrolet standpoint, they're going to work hard to make more downforce, and with whatever the rules are and try to move forward. We have to have something that we feel like we can push forward, and I think everybody feels like that's where we're headed with the Mustang.

Q. Kevin, how are you applying the success that you've had this season like this win at Michigan, and where does this win rank for you? I know you said it's right at the top, but considering all you've accomplished, being Cup champion, winning Daytona, now you got to be with your son. How does this rank?
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, any win in this division of racing is hard to come by, and like I say, I've been on both sides of that and couldn't win a race to‑‑ as hard as you were trying, you couldn't win. I think right now, we're just enjoying it and understand‑‑ and all the guys on the team understand because they've been on both sides of that fence, as well, with the struggles and things that don't always go your way. We're going to enjoy it. We're going to enjoy each other, and we've eliminated a lot of extracurricular things to make sure that all we focus on is this race team. Don't care about anything else. Right now it's all about winning races and making sure that myself and Rodney and everybody is covering the details and being in the right state of mind as we go into Vegas.

Q. Kevin, we're going to Bristol next week. Obviously Kyle is very, very good there, and you two have been trading blows week in and week out. Is there any pressure going in there knowing he could respond? And for Keelan, how much fun was the ride?
KEVIN HARVICK: Yeah, right now I'm just focused on us, and hopefully we go to Bristol and run well. How was the ride?
KEELAN HARVICK: Good.
KEVIN HARVICK: Was it rough?
KEELAN HARVICK: Yeah.
KEVIN HARVICK: Do you think the shocks needed some adjusting, or how was it?
KEELAN HARVICK: Fun.

Q. Whose idea was that to put him shotgun, and was that a first?
KEVIN HARVICK: That was our idea, wasn't it. We talked about that last night. I told him‑‑ we had it all planned out. This isn't the first race that we've had it planned out. It just hasn't worked out in the previous ones that we've been to Victory Lane, and they haven't been there. He said he wanted the flag, so the only way to get the flag‑‑ he was mad that I gave the flag away in Loudon, so I told him if he wanted the flag, he had to come get it himself. Did they have to carry you out there? You weren't going to come out there I heard. Is that true? Yeah? You almost missed out on it again. It's definitely something that he and I have been talking about and was pretty neat to actually do.

Q. Does Delana need to approve‑‑ you said‑‑
KEVIN HARVICK: We've learned to ask for forgiveness later, haven't we. It works a lot better that way.

Q. From a racing standpoint, am I putting too much into this saying, gosh, you win by three seconds, Michigan, intermediate track, it's your championship to lose?
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, you've seen these playoffs and how these three weeks at a times work. That's why in my opinion it's so important to have the bonus points and everything that goes with it. Homestead is such a unique racetrack. But you've got to get there first. As much as everybody thought Kyle Larson was a lock, he had two bad races with all those bonus points that they had last year, and next thing you know, he's out.
You never know what's going to happen, and we go in one week at a time trying to focus on the things we need to focus on, and right now we're going to enjoy this one and drink some cold Busch beer once we get home ‑‑ or I am. I'll let you have a Jimmy John's sandwich and a water. What do you think? The next three I'm looking forward to. The thing I'm looking forward to the most is the off week. It's been just‑‑ the whole summer has just been‑‑ it's been stressful. There's just so many politics and so many things happening in the sport right now. You want to focus‑‑ for me, this was really important because I felt like this was the first week back of being 100 percent focused on the racing and my team and being selfish on focusing on those things and not worrying about all the other stuff that's going on with the sport. That's the way we're going to approach it, and it's going good right now from a mental state of mind.
What were we doing last night? We were probably watching football. Was it Friday night? Yeah, we watched football Friday. We were probably playing baseball or something on the PlayStation. I smoked him. (Laughter.)

Q. Austin Dillon drove all the way up to second today and probably had a shot to win, and he had a new chassis today. Rodney was in here earlier today saying he heard some other teams probably had some new stuff. Do you feel like other teams are maybe showing their hand for the playoffs know this could be an indicator for the mile‑and‑a‑half tracks, and is it satisfying to do so well knowing that might be the case?
KEVIN HARVICK: Well, you never know exactly where everybody stands. I know that everybody knows how important this race is to their manufacturer, and the things that you see on the race track are pretty close to probably what they're going to have. So yeah, I think as an indicator for us and the way that we ran today, but the only weird thing about that is we don't race on any other tracks that look like this, but the mile‑and‑a‑halfs have been good for us, as well, and hopefully we can go and have the same speed and be able to win races. You're still going to have to win races in the playoffs in order to put yourself in the right position to have a chance at Homestead.

Q. Just a personal question. You said earlier that your little son has gone with you to the last races. In the long‑term when you one day will step out of the race car, is there any plan? Do you plan a race career for your son to continue the family tradition in motorsports?
KEVIN HARVICK: I think right now our main focus is just having fun and experiencing all different types of things, whether it's baseball or basketball. It's really just about whatever works out and whatever direction it goes, and that's kind of the way the Delana and I have done things in life in general. It just seems like the answer always presents itself, and you kind of have the gut instinct to say this is what we need to do, whether it was with KHI and starting a family or having a second child or whatever the decision was. There's always that moment that you look at each other and say, that's right, or that's wrong, and we need to do something different.
That's way down the road. Right now we're having fun, aren't we. That's the main thing. We figure out whatever we can do to have fun, and we've figured out‑‑ especially during these summer months when you go to Pocono and Loudon and a lot of these different places, we've figured out our spots that we like to go to, and Michigan has always been one of those places that we can find a lot to do between the golf courses and Jackson Speedway and all the different ice cream shops. I usually gain about five pounds when Keelan is around, but we have a good time.

Q. Is this a chassis that you'd like to run on multiple occasions during the playoffs, and if so, where do you think it would suit best, or do you think that Rodney has several‑‑
KEVIN HARVICK: I'll be honest. I have no idea what chassis or car this is or where it has raced. Those guys do such a great job, and they get chopped up and cut up and rebuilt and new bodies on them and junked and moved all around, and next thing you know we've got cars that have Hendrick numbers and then we've got all our new style Stewart‑Haas chassis that we started at 0. So I am confused on the car count. We've got cars in the 700s, we've got cars in the thousands, and then we've got 001. So who knows. I just‑‑ I just can't tell you how impressive it is for me to be able to sit in those cars. I used to worry about which car it was and I had my favorite car, and now they just‑‑ they've got it down to such a science that it really doesn't matter. He's probably got his favorite cars, but if it's his favorite, I'm happy to drive it.

Q. I asked Brad when he was in here earlier if he thought possibly that somebody in the No.4 garage was channeling Smokey Yunick. Can you shed a little light on that in terms of where this winning is coming from?
KEVIN HARVICK: You'll have to go to Kannapolis and look in the shop.

Q. Keelan, what's more fun, playing golf or driving cars?
KEELAN HARVICK: Driving cars.
KEVIN HARVICK: Of course.

Q. Kevin, even though Michigan is a unique track, it's a two‑mile track and there's no two milers in the playoffs. Why can you take from Michigan into the playoffs, if anything?
KEVIN HARVICK: The trophy and momentum. Honestly, that's really the things that we're focusing on is trying to get as many points as we can and capitalize on the cars that we have and get them to Victory Lane. There's three more weeks.
Winning at Bristol is a lot of fun, as well. So is Darlington and Indy. So those are all three races that we'd love to have a chance. Just got to keep riding the wave. You never know when it's going to end, and you hope that you can take it all the way to Homestead and win a championship with it. That's the goal. The next goal is to win Bristol.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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