KEVIN HARVICK, No. 4 Ford Mustang — DO YOU EXPECT TO BE ONE OF THE DOMINANT DRIVERS AGAIN THIS YEAR? WILL THE BIG THREE CONTINUE? “Well, the big three is irrelevant at this point. I think new year, new themes, a lot of new to everything that is going on. You have to be able to reset your mind and address the new challenges as they come forward because right now we have no clue what the races are going to look like next week going to Atlanta. You don’t know if you need a low downforce car or high downforce car. As teams we have a ton to learn and really no clue what direction it is going to go in at this point.”
HOW ABOUT AT BRISTOL? “I don’t think people realize how fast Bristol, Dover and even the short tracks are going to be with the added downforce. It is an extreme amount of downforce compared to what we have had in the past. Really, the first half of the season is going to be 100-percent a learning curve of trying to figure out what you need and where you need to go with it.”
QUESTION INAUDIBLE: “I think when you look at the Clash, as we go forward, that is really something that I think the Clash and the All-Star race can be combined. That is not the first time I have said that. You look at the race the other night and it isn’t all about the pole winners anymore. You have people in the field that didn’t win a pole and made the playoffs, so we are kind of making things up to make the field big enough anyway. Why not just take a couple of the pole winners who are pole winners and not eligible for the All-Star race and make a couple slots in the All-Star race. The Clash can be a huge distraction for the teams. Look at a guy like Joe Gibbs from the owners side of it and they wiped out five cars. That is a million to two-million dollars worth of equipment that got torn up. My big thing as we go forward is looking at how we change things, shorten the season up, do these different things. I would be in favor of eliminating the Clash as one of those weekends that you could put a points race in there.”
QUESTION INAUDIBLE: “I think that Florida or the west coast would be places you could go. I think no matter if you had races in front of the Daytona 500 or not, I think that the Daytona 500 is still going to be your biggest race. I think as you look at different opportunities. I am still of the opinion that we should rotate the last race around to different race tracks by moving the season back up into October. If we end it there you open up a lot of markets that could host the championship race. The All-Star race, it is the same way. It needs a breath of fresh air too. You could rotate that around and make some cool events out of it. I am of the opinion that none of the playoff races should ever be the same year to year and the championship race shouldn’t be the same year to year. It should rotate around and I think that the second Daytona race would be a great race 26 race, last race of the playoffs race, because everyone can win and you build in a story before the season even starts about how everybody still has a chance and you don’t have that dull moment of your last points paying race. I think there are a number of things. These are things I am sure everybody else is thinking about but the Clash is one of those things that I would put on my agenda if I was in charge of things to look at. Just because of the fact that, in my opinion, the All-Star race and the Clash are kind of the same thing and both don’t always have enough cars in the field to make the race what everybody wants it, so why not combine them.”
QUESTION INAUDIBLE: “I still think that we have to have a weekend where we can show off as a sport, you know what I mean. That is really, when you look at the All-Star events, it needs to be something to where we can go to a city and have them embrace the All-Star event so you have pit stop competitions and unique parties. You go to a place like Nashville and have an All-Star race, you don’t have to make up formats because you are going to have a heck of a race with a great atmosphere and a market that you can have all kinds of events and excitement and enthusiasm. I went to the Super Bowl this year. You look at the Super Bowl and it doesn’t look like our Daytona 500. There is not as much going on here as there was there. When you look at the All-Star race and the All-Star event that will be in Charlotte this weekend, their All-Star events move around, the Super Bowl moves around. You get enthusiasm from not doing the same thing over and over and over.”
QUESTION INAUDIBLE: “I am of the opinion that if you are going to have the All-Star race and you already have two races that you should give up one of your races. If you have two, you should give up one. If you are going to host the championship race then you should not host a race the rest of the year in that market. You should still keep your race date still get your money and all the things that come with that race but you should have to go lease your date out to a different site which allows you to test different markets. If you are going to renovate your race track, close your racetrack down for one race or two races and go lease your date to a race track in Canada or something. You go cut your deal but you still get to keep your TV money but you are also testing new markets along the way. There are a lot of creative things you can do to test new markets, move your All-Star race around, move your championship race around, change the schedule up and make things mixed up before it even gets started and build in those stories before you even get the year started.”
THIS YEAR, WE WILL KNOW WHO WON THE RACE ON SUNDAY. TEAMS DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT MID-WEEK PENALTIES. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT NEW RULE? “I feel good about the DQ rule and the reason I say that is that I don’t think that is the biggest story in the process. I think the biggest story will be pre-race and having those officials in the garage on a minute-by-minute basis to be able to communicate with the teams, address gray to make it black and white and stick by their procedures throughout the year. That is really the key to the whole thing. I believe that pre-race between NASCAR and the teams is done correctly that post race will never be a problem because of pre-race doing what it needs to be. If something happens in post race it is going to be a pretty blatant situation.”
“Here is the bottom line. I think when you took these cars back to the R&D Center and take them all apart, you can find something on every single car in the field. Whether that was good or bad or advantage or not an advantage or however you viewed it. Those cars at the R&D Center were being held to a different scrutiny than the cars in the trailers. Having it at the track and everything right there and a quick turnaround – we do not need to be coming to the Daytona 500 next year talking about DQ rules and tech procedures and penalties because we have so many other great things that are happening in our sport right now and unfortunately we are still stuck here. Obviously the initiative is to end all of that narrative and I think that if we all do a good job in the pre-race and stick to black and white and eliminate gray, I think it will work well.”
