WATCH: Harvick jokes, moves on from Chicago incident
LOUDON, N.H. — A calm and measured Jimmie Johnson spoke to reporters late Friday afternoon at New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the first time since he was involved in a post-race confrontation with reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champ Kevin Harvick last week in the Chase opener at Chicagoland Speedway.
Harvick, on the contrary, was less eager to discuss the situation.
The defending champion, clearly not wanting to talk about the not-too-distant past in which he put shoved, punched — whatever you want to call it — Johnson following a wreck that relegated him to a 42nd-place finish in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup opener, didn’t say much else.
“I don’t have a lot to say about any of it. I’m here to race and to do what I need to do the next two weeks,” Harvick said Friday after qualifying second for Sunday’s Sylvania 300 (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN/Live Extra) at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “I don’t look back. I just do what we have to do to focus on what we need to do looking forward. I’m not going to use (the media) to make threats, I can do that myself.”
Meanwhile, in the New Hampshire garage, the six-time champ Johnson acknowledged it was in an unpredictable situation for him to try and discuss the accident with Harvick last week, but he felt like it was the right thing to do.
“Obviously I wanted to go to his motorhome and try to talk to him about the situation at that point in time,” Johnson said. “I’ve been on the flipside of that before and although I wasn’t happy to see whoever it was, it meant something to me and I appreciated the fact they came to my bus to see me. That’s all I was trying to do.”
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Johnson, who video shows walking away rather calmly from the agitated Harvick, said he fully expected a volatile situation.
“I wasn’t surprised he was that upset,” Johnson said. “Believe me, I knew good and well going over there that he wasn’t going to be in the best mood. It was just important to me to try and make contact with him, to talk to him based on experiences I’ve had.”
Johnson, who qualified fifth for the Sunday’s Sylvania 300 said he and Harvick have not spoken since the confrontation — “nothing yet” — but reiterated his stance that the whole incident between them was unintentional and a result of hard racing on a restart in the playoffs.
“It really was a racing incident,” Johnson said. “I was just trying to get back on the racetrack. Unfortunately that contact took place and it just sucks for those guys. I feel for Kevin, I feel for (crew chief) Rodney (Childers), for the Stewart-Haas folks, for Tony (Stewart) and for Gene (Haas).
“That’s not the situation any of us wanted to have happen. Unfortunately, that was racing and there was a lot of crazy stuff happening on that restart.
“I knew he wasn’t going to be in the best mood. I was expecting anything and everything. I didn’t go over there to fight. I went over to handle the situation the way I thought it was handled well with me in the past and hoping it would have the same impact.”
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Harvick now stands 15th in the standings with two races before the first elimination occurs, narrowing the field of Chase drivers to 12. The Stewart-Haas Racing driver showed he can win a race when his back is against the wall – which might be the case here – as we saw when he needed a win at Phoenix in 2014’s penultimate race to advance to the championship at Homestead.
“I still think there’s a few different ways I can make it into the next round,” Harvick said. “In this situation last year when we were in Phoenix and a second-place finish still wouldn’t have gotten us to where we needed to be to get into the (Championship 4) without a win.
“I think you still have to go out with the mentality of trying to win a race. I think everybody around us knows that. We’re very aware of the aggressive nature that we need to go after that win.”
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