Harvick hopes to stay cool at Martinsville

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- When Dale Earnhardt coined the phrase "frammin' and bammin," he was talking about Martinsville Speedway. Forty-three cars will be packed on a flat half-mile oval, which means there will be plenty of hot-tempered drivers by the end of Sunday's Advance Auto Parts 500.

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One of those hot-tempered guys is Kevin Harvick, who admits to having emotion overload behind the wheel. And to him, that's not a bad thing. When asked about how drivers guard their emotions at a tight track like Martinsville, Harvick said he didn't try.

"I don't really know how to answer that because I'm one of those types of people who gets wound up and cares a lot about what I do and puts a lot of emotion into it," Harvick said.

"Over the last few years I've kind of learned that you have to carry some things back to your house and vent away from everything that's outside. Martinsville and Bristol are two places that bring out a little extra emotion, and I kind of like that."

Of course, Martinsville and Bristol are sites of some of Harvick's inauspicious moments, like when he went after Greg Biffle following a Busch Series race at Bristol or when he was suspended from a race at Martinsville.

Harvick's emotions got the best of him at Martinsville two years ago following a Craftsman Truck Series race. He and Coy Gibbs went after each other on the track, and NASCAR penalized him. Harvick disliked it, said so over his radio and parked his truck outside the sanctioning body's hauler after the race.

That was the last straw to NASCAR, who had seen Harvick explode one too may times. So NASCAR decided to sit Harvick for Sunday's Cup race.

That turned out to be a defining moment in Harvick's life. Is he still emotional? Yes. Does he speak his mind? Yes.

Has he changed? Yes.

"It's been almost scary to think about it sometimes," Harvick said. "I still have my moments where you blow up or get mad. But everybody has those moments in everyday life. That moment was a pretty big moment in my whole life, to be honest with you. To sit home and watch that race and not be in the race was pretty disappointing. It was a big reality check."

Harvick's emotions flare up from time to time, like after last year's race at Richmond when he was punted by Ricky Rudd. An angry confrontation with Rudd led to another fine, but Harvick was unapologetic.

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"I can still be myself and still be aggressive and say what's on my mind, but the fact of the matter is that it's (NASCAR's) ball and their court," Harvick said. "You've got to play by their rules. NASCAR wants me to be who I am and to be aggressive and be outspoken, but there are moments when you can't do the things you think you should be able to do.

"If you look back at a lot of things and realize where people were coming from, it helps to understand a lot of the situations I was in."

This weekend, Harvick hopes to avoid some of the pitfalls of Martinsville, including the non-emotional ones. Getting around the .526-mile track is a difficult task, especially for a 3,400-pound stock car.

Harvick had struggled at Martinsville the first five times he raced there, finishing off the lead lap and 16th or worse each time. But last fall, he started seventh and finished fifth.

"You have to make your car turn through the center of the corner and be able to get up off the corner with the gas pedal as close to the floor as you can get it to get forward bite," Harvick said. "So it's kind of a fine line in making the car turn and getting the grip that you need up off the corner.

"The second thing is that you have to survive and do what you have to do to keep the fenders on and the radiator in the thing and make sure you make all 500 laps. If you're not around 400 laps into the race, you're not going to have any chance of winning the race.

"I'd say the center of the corner is probably the first key. You've got to get through there and you've got to get up off the corner with good bite. You've got to finagle your way into a position to do what you need to do. It makes it a little hard to pass. You've got to back the corner up and try to get up underneath somebody.

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"There is a second groove that's come into play now where you can race on the outside of somebody too. It's just a hard place to pass on. Your car has to handle good in the middle of the corner so you can turn up underneath somebody getting off the corner."

Harvick has had moments this season where he wasn't doing much passing, like his 32nd-place finish at Atlanta or 21st-place finish at Las Vegas. But then, he's had some solid runs, like his fourth at Daytona and third at Bristol.

Which Harvick will show up this weekend?

"It's been an up-and-down season to say the least," Harvick said. "We've struggled a little bit in the beginning part of the races, and then have seemed to get our cars where they needed to be toward the end of the races. We had a chance to win at Las Vegas and ran out of gas. That was a little disappointing that we didn't get to finish where we had run all day.

"Atlanta was our biggest struggle of the year. We missed it there for some reason. We had a really good car in Happy Hour and came back the next morning and couldn't get anything.

"We haven't won a race yet. But the team has shown a lot of promise just because of the fact that we can take our cars at the beginning of the race when we think they're terrible and then turned them around a couple of times and make top-10, top-five runs out of them. That's a good sign for a race team."

And maybe it'll be a good sign this weekend for the No. 29 team if Harvick can keep those emotions in check, at least a little bit.