Inside the Garage with 29's Berrier

Richard Childress Racing crew chief Todd Berrier has been around the sport long enough to see a bunch of peaks and valleys.

And with the series traveling this weekend to tricky old Darlington Raceway in South Carolina he, his No. 29 Chevrolet's crew and driver Kevin Harvick will more than likely get to experience plenty of both in the course of just three days.

Q: Kevin's racing a little bit less this year than he did last season, when he won the Busch Series and was fourth in Nextel Cup, so what's his mood been like, because he always said he enjoyed it more when he was racing more?

Berrier: I'd rather him be racing all the time. I don't think he needs any time off, because he's better to be around when he's really busy.

I don't know if he'd be in more trouble if he had more time on his hands, but the less time you have to think, sometimes, the more other people can do what they need to do.

The more time he has, the more time he has to dig into his personal business, whether it's KHI [Kevin Harvick Inc. racing operation] or other different things, whereas, if he was racing, the people doing the deal could probably just do it.

I'm not saying his management style is bad, by any means. I'm just saying I know how it works when Richard [Childress] is around. The busier them people are, the owners and all that stuff, the better off we are as workers.

The peasants of the world are better, you know?

Q: Speaking of moods, what was your take on that deal at Talladega with Kevin and Jamie McMurray, for which they were fined $25,000 each and each placed on probation?

Berrier: I did not see it happening. We had that DirecTV HotPass on the pit cart, so I saw the wreck part of it where it looked like, with Stewart that Jamie had maybe run both of them up into the wall -- at least I think Kevin, at that point, thought he did.

Whatever happened after that, we didn't see any of that, and Kevin didn't say anything on the radio -- or might have said something like "the 26 [McMurray] just wrecked us both" or something to that effect. I'm not sure.

Do I ever come over the radio and tell him not to do something [like that]? No. Maybe I should, but at the end of the day I make my choices and try to make them to the best of my ability.

And sometimes I say things and do things that I have to take back -- and you don't want to do that, but that's just part of life. And I think it's just to each his own. (Continued)