Kevin Harvick and the No. 29 Budweiser Folds of Honor Chevrolet Team Michigan Advance
• Kevin Harvick and the No. 29 Budweiser Folds of Honor team travel to the newly paved Michigan International Speedway (MIS) for this weekend’s Quicken Loans 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) race. The team will spend Thursday participating in the open test session at the two-mile facility prior to getting on track for the normal weekend schedule on Friday.
• Visiting MacDill Air Force Base… On Tuesday Harvick will travel to Florida to help promote Daytona International Speedway’s July race. The first stop of the day will be MacDill Air Force Base, where the driver of the No. 29 Budweiser Folds of Honor Chevrolet will tour a KC-135, a long-range tanker aircraft, take part in a Q&A session with base personnel and participate in a media availability session with local TV and print media.
• Throwing Out the First Pitch… After leaving MacDill Air Force Base, Harvick will visit the Tampa Bay Rays stadium where he’ll meet several of the team’s players and participate in media availability with team manager Joe Maddon. Harvick will cap the night by throwing out the first pitch as the Rays take on the New York Mets.
• Red, White and Blue Summer Returns to the Track… The patriotic red, white and blue Budweiser Folds of Honor paint scheme returns to the No. 29 Chevrolet this weekend at MIS. The special paint scheme reflects the “Red, White and Blue Summer” packaging featured on the iconic Budweiser bottles and cans as part of a summer initiative in which the brand will contribute a portion of all sales from May 20 – July 7 to help raise as much as $2.5 million for the Folds of Honor Foundation*, which provides post-secondary educational scholarships for families of U.S. military personnel killed or disabled while serving their country. The Folds of Honor logo will also be featured on the TV panel of the No. 29 Chevrolet. In addition to Sunday’s race, Harvick’s Budweiser ride will feature the “Red, White and Blue Summer” paint scheme for NSCS races at Kentucky Speedway (June 30), Daytona International Speedway (July 7), Pocono Raceway (Aug. 5) and Watkins Glen International (Aug. 12). (*Maximum donation of $2.5 million includes $5,000 for every walk-off in select 2012 professional baseball games and a portion of sales for every case of Budweiser sold, 5/20-7/7.)
• Grow One. Save a Million… The No. 29 Budweiser Racing Team, additional Richard Childress Racing (RCR) employees, several media members and a number of NSCS crew members helped conserve more than 17,500 gallons of water as part of Budweiser’s “Grow One. Save a Million.” efforts. In support of World Environment Day (June 5), Budweiser encouraged individuals to pledge not to shave for a set number of weeks to help save a million gallons of water. Additional information on the program is available on the “Grow One” tab on Budweiser’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/Budweiser.
• Transform Reality with Blippar… Emerging technology from Blippar delivers an exclusive mobile experience to fans of Harvick and the No. 29 Budweiser Racing Team. Blippar is the first image-recognition phone app aimed at bringing to life products with exciting augmented reality interactions and instantaneous content. With theBlippar app, fans can use their smart phones to convert the Bud 29 logo into an interactive, wow experience where they can view footage of Harvick and the team, get behind-the-scenes access and take their photo with the driver of the No. 29Budweiser Chevrolet. The free app is available for download on iOS and Android devices. Once downloaded, fans can utilize the app to blipp (scan) the Bud 29 logo, accessible in retail locations and on team merchandise, to access thespecial content.
• Happy Father’s Day… While most members of the NASCAR community will celebrate Father’s Day at the track and away from their dads or children, Austin Craven, front tire carrier on the No. 29 Budweiser team, will spend the day near the man who was his hero as a kid. That man is his dad, Jeff “Rooster” Craven, hauler driver for the No. 31 RCR team and a well-respected, longtime member of the NASCAR community. Austin followed in his dad’s footsteps and started working in the industry as a teen before going fulltime after he graduated from high school in 2003. The two worked for different organizations for years, but have worked for the same team since Austin joined RCR four years ago.
• MIS Media Availability… Harvick will be available to members of the media at 11:50 a.m. ET on Friday in the MIS infield media center.
• Chassis Info… The No. 29 team will utilize Chassis No. 378 from the RCR stable this weekend. Harvick drove this car to a sixth-place finish at Kansas Speedway in April. He also raced it twice lastseason, scoring a second-place finish at Chicagoland Speedway and sixth at Kansas Speedway (October).
• Michigan Stats… In 22 NSCS starts at MIS, Harvick has earned one win (August 2010), three top fives and seven top-10 finishes. Harvick has completed 99.0 percent of the laps run at the track in that time (4,259 of 4,300 laps) and holds an average starting position of 18.8 and an average finish of 15.0.
• Last year… Harvick started 22nd, led one lap and finished 14th in last June’s race at MIS.
• In the Rearview Mirror… In last weekend’s race at Pocono, Harvick started 21st, ran inside the top 10 and finished 14th after late-race fuel strategy did not play out in the team’s favor.
• For the online version of the Budweiser Racing media guide, please visit http://www.budracingmedia.com.
• Follow along each weekend with Harvick and the team on Twitter. Check out @KevinHarvick for behind-the-scenes information straight from the driver of the No. 29 Budweiser Chevrolet. Get live updates from the track each weekend from @Black29Car, the PR team for Harvick. Also, follow @RCRracing and @RCR29KHarvick for additional information about the Richard Childress Racing organization. Fans can also interact with Harvick on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/OfficialKevinHarvick.
Harvick discusses racing at Michigan International Speedway:
What do you anticipate at Michigan International Speedway this weekend now that the track has been repaved? Will it be as wide open as usual? “I think it will be more wide open. With the test at Pocono the week before, I think a lot of what we learned there will apply as we go to Michigan, but I think the speeds will be a little bit higher at Michigan.”
Do you think the cars will move up and down in the corners? Or do you think everybody will be locked to the bottom? “I think you’re going to have to move around. The bottom is probably going to be the fastest as you go through the race, but it’ll be a little bit easier for the cars to move around at Michigan just because it’s more wide open with different degrees of banking than Pocono. I still think the bottom will probably be the fastest though.”
Speeds at the Michigan tire test were over 200 mph. Are there any concerns about that? “Not really. I think everybody knew with the race tracks being repaved that you were going to have some pretty high speeds and everybody was prepared. You just go do the same things that you would do at any other race track and try to acquire as much information as you can on Thursday and apply it as fast as possible for the rest of the weekend.”
You broke through with a win at Michigan International Speedway in 2010. What are your thoughts about getting that done? “I think everything we’ve done at Michigan kind of goes out the window. Obviously it was a tricky race track when we went there before because the tires fell off so bad. A lot of times you had to run the high groove and you had a lot of options for your car to move around. As you go back this time you’re going to have some new challenges that you didn’t face in the past, but it was good to finally get that breakthrough win at Michigan. We’d struggled there for several years before that and it hadn’t been one of our better tracks, but we were able to get all of that behind us.”