Harvick Pole Position Press Conference Transcript
CHEVROLET/TEAM MONTE CARLO NOTES AND QUOTES PEPSI 400 DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. NASCAR WINSTON CUP SERIES RACE 17 OF 36 FRIDAY, JULY 5, 2002 POST-QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE WITH POLESITTER KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 GM GOODWRENCH CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO WERE YOU SURPRISED WITH THE LAP YOU TURNED? "The biggest thing is we¹ve been a little bit behind, not really because of our race cars or anything like that. We¹ve had a lot of bad luck. That¹s just the way it goes. Richard has really been on everybody in the motor department, the fab shop, and they¹ve all stepped it up. Now, everything came together and they ripped off a lap. I didn¹t do anything but ride around in it. That¹s just a tribute to not only the GM Goodwrench team, but every department and person at RCR because at some point every team and every member of RCR has had their hands on every car that they race. It¹s a tribute to everybody." "We got behind. Those guys aren¹t used to being behind at RCR. And they¹re used to being somewhere at least close to the front, and we¹re sitting back 30th in points. They take that pretty personally. They¹ve all stepped up. They worked seven days a week, from seven in the morning until whatever time they need to stay until. It¹s a tight knit bunch of people, we all live up close to each other in Winston-Salem or somewhere in that vicinity. Unfortunately, some of them commute back and forth. It¹s a really close bunch of guys and all these guys that I work with now are from the Busch car or most of them come from the Busch car and I enjoy working with them. It¹s a sign of good things to come and we¹re looking forward to it." HOW¹S THE TRANSITION BEEN AND HOW MUCH HAS IT HURT YOU TO BE NOT RUNNING THE BUSCH SERIES? "I think last year the Busch car carried the Winston Cup car. I could be wrong. You¹ll never know, because you never can tell. Every time we had a really good Busch car we had a really good Winston Cup car, and for some reason last year everything that I did in the Busch car translated pretty close to the Winston Cup car. This year Jeff Green from his Busch car, to ours, to his Winston Cup car, not really anything translated, so something is a little bit different there. The transition from the crew has been really easy. I¹m good friends with Gil Martin and his wife and son and have known them ever since he¹s been there for the last two and a half years. I worked with him on the Busch car and the Busch car is a lot like we had the Winston Cup teams arranged now. Everybody works with everybody¹s stuff and here at the race track it¹s back and forth. I¹m comfortable with Gil and Flash and all the guys that came from 31, because they were all from the Busch car." WIPE THE SLATE CLEAN, LOOKING AHEAD AND CHICAGO BEING A NEW START? "Last couple of months I¹ve had to JUST sit back and not say anything about anything and just avoided everything that was going on and just to concentrate on our race teams and our people and really making sure everybody understood where everybody was coming from. Richard and myself and all the guys have just been kind of sitting back and laughing about everything that¹s been written and going on and (we¹re) just really taking it and putting it in our back pocket and just going forward. We¹re getting ready to extend our deal with Richard. Never once have Richard and I been angry at each other and -- I don¹t even know what else I heard. Everything is really stable and really solid and we¹re all in this together. The 29 team, the 30 and 31 are, we¹re all in this battle together. We¹re going to climb the mountain and get back to the top of it." "There¹ve been a lot of personal jabs I think that I¹ve taken, myself, Richard and the company and I think there¹s a lot of different reasons why it happened. Last year a lot people gave us reason to sit and tell us we couldn¹t do something, and at the end of the year we all thought we had won the argument. We overcame everything that everybody said we couldn¹t do and we did it. And this hurdle, I don¹t believe, is near as big as the hurdle we had to cross last year. Because the hole that the organization left Daytona in last year was a lot deeper, a lot more personal than this one. This is all about race cars and a number that you finish, that everybody reads in the newspapers. When we left here last year everybody that lost a friend a buddy and a mentor -- you all know how that wentŠso this is a minor hole compared to last year¹s." ON THE FRIENDS YOU¹VE MADE OR NOT MADE: "There¹s a lot of fair-weather people that were around us, around our group and all of a sudden things go bad and it¹s just amazing how people don¹t come around anymore. I mean even today. Media, fans, all people. It¹s not just here or in the garage. It¹s people in general. There¹s not one group of people that you can point a finger at, but there¹s a vast group of people. I think myself, and even Richard, have learned a lot from this situation. It hasn¹t been a career year in the stat books on the race track but it¹s been a career year for us personally. To know who we need around us and who we don¹t need around us. And that¹s important in this sport." NASCAR PILGRIMAGE TO A GOAT UP NORTH WITH NO. 3 ON THE SIDE. WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT THE NASCAR FANS? "I think the goat¹s pretty cool. Our fans are a different breed than most fans, I think, They¹re very dedicated, and loyal fans and I think Dale Earnhardt means more to people than anyone since pretty much Elvis Presley, so it means a lot and anything that reminds anyone of Dale Earnhardt has obviously become a shrine and the goat has become a shrine." DO YOU FEEL THE FANS WILL STAY LOYAL TO YOU OR HAVE GONE OVER TO DALE JR.? "We have really a lot of loyal fans. I don¹t think Dale Jr. has run a whole lot better than we have of late. We¹ve all been up and down and I think our legion of fans are really, really loyal. I don¹t feel that we¹ve lost a whole lot of fans through anything. Everyone has stuck behind us, on our website and in the garage. They¹ve all seen it with RCR before. They come down and they go back up. They overcome some of the biggest obstacles I think anyone has ever overcome in this garage. You talk to Richard and he¹s just like well, we did this back in 1975 or Œ80. This happened and we overcame this. He¹s just overcome so many obstacles, so many hurdles that at some point or another he¹s been there and done that, been down, he¹s been up. He¹s been all the way at the bottom and he¹s been all the way at the top. Everything in between he¹s got a situation he can relate it to. I¹m pretty luck to have an owner like that that can relate to all the different situations." ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT 09 (GEOFFREY BODINE) IS STARTING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU, A PART-TIME TEAM? "In the Busch Series they¹re usually one of the cars to beat every time they go to a superspeedway, and I think Geoffrey (Bodine) finished second in the 500, or third. I know there are all kinds of circumstances. Every time those guys unload their car it¹s fast and now they¹re starting in the front of the pack. I look forward to the 09 to be there all night." HOW DOES RCR GET IN A HOLE? "Took out at Daytona by a wreck. That¹s where it starts. Then, start a third team. This is the thing. We didn¹t do anything different from the off-season. There are a lot of different scenarios that you can point at. Whether it¹s right or wrong, nobody knows. You start a third team, so how many motors do we need? How many cars do we need? The wreck at Daytona, we finished 14th at Rockingham, blew up in Las Vegas, and we wrecked and we wrecked. It¹s just been one thing after another. We went into the season with high hopes and we had all these different circumstances that were going onŠ.We¹re just now getting to the point where we can come in, it¹s not to say that everybody wasn¹t working hard, everybody has worked their guts out since the season ended last year. Still at this point they work seven days a week. Guys in the motor shop have probably worked just as hard as the guys in the fab shop. They¹ve both made huge strides just to keep up and put the motors in the car. We just haven¹t had the time to go do the things that we needed to do and whether that¹s the reason or notŠWe¹ve got this good stuff that we raced last year and we thought we made it better. It¹s just all these things add up, piles just keep getting bigger and we¹ve just now started to knock the piles back down and get to the point where we can say, OK, we need to just tweak on this car a little bit, instead of, OK, this car is ruined so we got to go build a whole new car." ###