Kevin Harvick is looking for his first Daytona win in the Cup Series. Credit: Autostock

Q&A: K. Harvick

Kevin Harvick's best finish at Daytona has been fourth twice in the '03 and '04 Daytona 500. His best Pepsi 400 finish was ninth in 2003.

Harvick spent some time with members of the NASCAR media earlier this week to discuss Daytona, his role as a team owner and NASCAR's new age requirement for its East and West Series.

Harvick: Going into this weekend, we have had -- we really had a great year performance-wise. We have had a lot of things go wrong on the Cup car just circumstances and just situations, but the performance of our cars has been good week in and week out and the Busch car obviously has been really good all year. Looking forward to Daytona this weekend and should be a lot of fun heading into The Chase and going on through the end of the year.

	Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Kevin Harvick at Daytona Starts 10 Wins 0 Top-5s 2 Top-10s 3 Poles 1 Laps Led 80 Avg. Start 13.2 Avg. Finish 16.9

Q. Kevin, given that you were a big winner here in Chicago if you could just move a week ahead for us. Talk about what this track in Chicago means to you and it looks like as you look at where the winners have started from, it's kind of a wide open kind of a race as opposed to needing to start near the top. Can you address those two topics?

Harvick: Obviously Chicago has been really good to us. We have won a couple races there. Had a lot of success there. A lot of it goes back to the very first test that RCR had before the first test a great test and applied a lot of that stuff over the next couple of years and had been able to handle a lot of success there.

So starting position is, you know, probably not as important at a lot of places as a lot of people make it out to be. Helps for pit selection and things like that. It never hurts to qualify good but I think you can -- the races are long enough to where you can win from anywhere.

Q. Is that a track, too, that's wearing thin? I remember one of your races you went through the grass much to Jeff Gordon's consternation to get around him. Are those days over in terms of being able to pass?

Harvick: I didn't go through the grass on purpose. I spun out and the grass is way away from the racetrack there, so it's not something that you can drive through, but yeah, I did spin out and actually probably won the race for us we were able to pit and the caution came out a few laps later, everybody else had to pit. We were able to stay out. So probably won us the race that year.

Q. Your Truck Series. It seems that after the team made the crew chief change they have been winning races, starting up front, winning poles for you. Looking back now, was it a little too soon to put Chris Rice as crew chief and would you have made that switch a little sooner knowing what you know now?

Harvick: Well, I don't think you ever know how the chemistry of things are going to work. It's something to where I think there was a lot of different scenarios that were involved in everything that was going on with the team and basically we just stopped and just decided to evaluate everything and pretty much start over.

So we were fortunate enough to have a boss in Richard, was able to help us and let us use his 7 post and help get us pointed in the right direction. They have done a great job, but I don't think we probably be where we are without RCR.

Q. What is your future plans for that team as far as keeping the driver and team together?

Harvick: We have another year with Ron under his contract right now. We're just kind of evaluating whether we're going to run Busch cars or we don't have a sponsor on the trucks, so we won't run a truck next year if it doesn't have a full-time sponsor.

Q. You certainly made the end of the Busch race at Milwaukee exciting. But do you like it when people, drivers like Paul said it was unsettling to see you in the rearview mirror.

Harvick: Well, it was -- I mean, first of all, it was awesome to see Paul win. He did exactly what he had to do to win the race. I just kind of got punted from behind there in the end, but I don't know, I mean it was lot of fun. Sometimes you come out on the good side of that stuff and sometimes you come out on the bad side of it, and this week we happen to come out on the wrong end.

But I think it's great for the Busch Series and for the sport to have Paul win the race and have two Busch regular guys win the race two weeks in a row. It was exciting and you know, just didn't work out our way.

Q. What happened at the end? I know you had discussion with NASCAR and I know that -- when you are there it's always exciting, certainly you helped make the end of the race exciting but what happened at the end?

Harvick: The end of the race or after the race?

Q. After?

Harvick: Oh, I got -- they called me up in the trailer just wanting to know -- it probably didn't come off very good - but I was happy for Paul. I wasn't really mad at Paul at all. Heck, he didn't spin me at all. The 18 spun me out. That's what caused the big wreck at the end. They just wanted to know what was going on, nothing major.

Q. This question is more directed towards Hunter. Jim, this year with NASCAR, I mean, the NASCAR Nextel drivers they have won in the Busch Series from the beginning of the series, there's more and more of them involved in the series nowadays. Has there been any proposal or discussion by NASCAR of changing the rules or limiting the number of Cup teams in the Busch event?

Hunter: We have always taken the position that if somebody brings a race car to the track, passes inspection, qualifies, that we like the fact that it's open to anyone. Also, if you get -- every time we have ever discussed trying to limit the number of Cup cars or Cup drivers in the Busch Series, or any other series, it's a pretty slippery slope because fans buy tickets to see the best drivers compete and many of our Busch teams even though some of them might be pressed financially, they want to beat the best and I think having the Nextel Cup drivers and the Busch races overall, is good for the division and number one it sells tickets and it also gives up-and-coming young drivers an opportunity to compete against the very best.

Q. Kevin, question about points right now. You are involved in a pretty tight points battle right now. Do you see yourself as being in a good position with the tracks coming up because as we saw Jeff Gordon bounced up three places, you could easily go up three or down three in the next month or so?

Harvick: Yeah, I think obviously we have kind of put ourselves in that position. I think if the performance, you know, should stay where it's at and things should keep going good. It's just a matter of not making any mistakes, so you know, it's really I feel like we should be fourth or fifth in the points and -- but that's not the way it is. So I mean it's just going to boil down to who doesn't make any mistakes. I don't think there's, you know, anybody around us that can beat us week in and week out. I think it's just all -- like I said it all going to boil down to mistakes.

Q. Other question about today's announcement in part with the car of tomorrow now spec engine composite body. Are the cars, the series maybe starting to lose more and more of their -- their individualality, more of its identity?

Harvick: Well, I don't think so. I think -- I think when everybody really gets done with the car tomorrow I think the manufacturers are going to be happy. I think NASCAR is going to be happy. I think everybody is probably going to be a little bit surprised, you know, the look that the car takes. So I think it's going to be -- I think with the wing and stuff on the back I think a lot of the aero push stuff it's never going to go away but I think it's going to be a lot better.

The safety aspect of the car tomorrow is the best thing about the whole car, so there's just a lot more room inside the car. But I think that you know, the composite bodies would be a bad idea for a Cup and for Busch, but I think for the Grand National east and west cars, I don't think there's anything that you can do any better. I think as -- I think it was Schrader he said, you can knock the hell out of this thing and just wipe a few smudges off of it, go back the next week and race it next week, so you don't have to come home and put sides on it and spend five or six thousand repairing your car. You can just wipe it off and keep going.

Q. Kevin, as an owner, as you look maybe for younger talent, how does this going to affect what you do and would it be a case of looking at putting somebody in the series as opposed to somebody like the Hooters Pro Cup or something like that?

Harvick: I think from an owner's standpoint, you know, if I am an owner and I want to develop a guy, I'd much rather have him at the racetrack you know, if he's 18, I'd rather have him at the racetrack where I am at so I can watch. If you lower the age to 16, he can't race in the Truck, can't race in the Busch, can't race in the Cup, that gives you a place that you can go develop somebody that's younger than 18, so that you can, you know, you can bring him up in an environment where there's not so much pressure. You don't have to bring him to the Busch races or the truck races where there's so much competition there. You take a chance of missing a race. So I think it's definitely something that now that the age is lower we'll definitely probably participate in.

Q. Kevin, as a Busch owner and Cup driver, having raced against the Cup guys in Busch, is this helping him or hurting him?

Harvick: Well, I don't think it can ever hurt. I think it's something to where, you know, where you need to be and everybody's goal is to race Cup cars and I think in order to get to that point, I mean you can ruin your career in a heart beat going to Cup not being ready to come to Cup and you know, never be seen again. I always tell people if you can't win races in the division that you are racing in, then you probably don't need to go to the next one.

Q. You're comfortable with him racing against that level of competition as an owner?

Harvick: Yeah, I think if he can't race against those guys I need to find somebody else because I mean, those are the guys you are going to have to race in week in and week out.