TALLADEGA, ALA. (AP) - It’s just a game to Kevin Harvick.
That’s the attitude he brings into Talladega Superspeedway, and that mindset about restrictor-plate racing has worked just fine for him. He’s got three combined wins at Daytona and Talladega, 20 combined top-10 finishes.
“You try to put yourself in position. Sometimes you miss the wrecks, and sometimes you don’t,” Harvick shrugged.
Maybe he’s oversimplifying the nuances of pack racing or tandem racing or blocking _ whatever the style du jour is created by the current rules package. Harvick said the trick is just getting in the car and driving the race and letting the chips fall where they may.
“I’ve always just tried to approach it with (an) `I don’t care attitude,’ and just do whatever you have to do to try to put yourself in position. And, when you leave here, if you wreck, you can’t be mad,” Harvick said. “You see a lot of guys drive themselves crazy about having to come to Talladega, and complaining about what they think is right, or what they think is wrong.
“It is just a race. It really is. You know what is going to happen coming into the race. Sometimes you have absolutely nothing to do with what happens, and you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The other side of that is you can drive through the biggest wreck in the world, and not have a scratch on your car. This is a part of NASCAR racing, and it has been for a long time. You might as well just enjoy it.”
Harvick was dominant in the preliminary races during Daytona 500 Speedweeks, where he won the exhibition Sprint Unlimited and his qualifying race. It sent him into the 500 as the favorite, but he was caught in a multicar accident 34 laps into the race that ended his afternoon.
“Sometimes you push too hard, sometimes somebody else pushes too hard and you are in their mess, and you get out and go home,” Harvick said.
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