I’m so happy to finally be able to lead off this week’s diary by saying we won. I couldn’t be more thrilled to finally get the monkey off our backs. I knew going into last weekend’s race at O’Reilly Raceway Park (ORP) that we had a good chance to come away with a victory. I’m just glad that the No. 33 team had awesome pit stops and that my crew chief Ernie Cope, made all the right calls. I knew that we had the equipment and the people at Kevin Harvick Inc. (KHI) to do it, we just needed a little luck and we finally got it.
In racing the highs of winning are short lived. Once the clock strikes midnight, the new week has started and you have to look toward the next track. This weekend the Truck Series travels to an inaugural track: Pocono (Pa.) Raceway. Most of the Truck Series drivers this weekend will be seeing the track for the first time, but I have raced at Pocono twice before, in 2001 when I was driving in the Cup Series for A.J. Foyt. We never really had too much luck there, but I still have quite a few laps around the track.
I’m looking forward to getting in a Truck at Pocono. I think it will be a lot of fun, plus the race is short enough that there will be a lot of action. I think we will be four or five-wide going down into turn one on the first lap and the fans will really enjoy that type of side-by-side racing. I think the biggest challenge for me will be just remembering the track and getting used to some of the new improvements that they have made since I was there in 2001. A few years ago they installed new curbs which are a little taller and smoother than the ones I remember. I think the curbs will be important, because you will have to hit them going down into the corners. I also think in order to have a good handling truck you are going to need a good shock package, because the track is really bumpy.
NASCAR has also made a change in qualifying, so we will have a new format for this weekend’s race. They are going to stagger the trucks going out for qualifying based on practice speeds. So, the slowest trucks from practice will qualify first and the fastest will qualify last. There will be three trucks on the race track at one time. I’m actually excited to do it that way, because it will take less time to qualify and I’m already a little used to that format after running the Nationwide Series road-course race a few weeks back at Road America in Wisconsin. I have to commend NASCAR for coming up with new and improved ways to do things and always trying to make our sport more exciting for the fans. Plus, with the faster trucks going out at the end, we probably won’t know who will be on the pole until the last truck is finished.
A lot of people have asked me who I think will have an advantage in Pocono or if it will be an even playing field. I have to say both. No one really knows how the trucks will react on the 2.5-mile track. Every single team is going to have to guess at a set up. However, this weekend Cup regulars Denny Hamlin, Kasey Kahne and my KHI teammate Elliott Sadler probably have a slight advantage over everyone else. They have raced at Pocono in recent years and Denny and Kasey have had a lot of success at the track. They will probably catch on a little faster than some of the other drivers. I think that me, Todd Bodine, Mike Skinner and other Truck Series regulars who have raced at the track before in other types of vehicles will be right there with that group because we know the trucks, we have seen the track, but we are also way more familiar with the vehicles that we are climbing into than the regulars in other series are.
I think too that everyone might be surprised and a rookie might step up at this track. I say that because when you come to a new track you don’t have any expectations, you don’t have any old habits to break. The drivers who have raced at Pocono before are going to have habits and things that we do that might not work, but rookies like Austin Dillion don’t have those routines.
As some of you may or may not know, each week NASCAR has a rookie meeting in all of the three series before practice gets started. Every week a veteran driver is asked to attend the meeting and advise the rookies on what type of lines to use around the track and what the challenges of the track are. I love sitting in on the rookie meetings. My favorite part is after the meeting is over, I get to jump in the pace vehicle for that weekend and drive the entire rookie group around the track for a few laps. It’s the closest thing to having a passenger seat in my race truck.
I guess some of the rookies think of me as a mentor, and I’m honored that they feel comfortable enough to come to me with their questions. I’m really an open book. I get a lot of questions from young drivers who haven’t been to the track or are having a hard time with the handling of their truck. Last year Ricky Carmichael was my teammate and we still talk pretty much every week about what his truck is doing. A lot of times he will hunt me down and we will take a ride around the track and talk about braking points or where the truck might tend to be loose or tight. I’m really proud of the fact that these young guys feel comfortable enough to come and talk with me. It’s a good feeling knowing you can help a kid be a better race car driver. I looked up to Dale Earnhardt and learned a lot from him. I hope I can have that same influence on one of these young rookie drivers. Even though I maybe looked as a mentor for the rookie drivers at most tracks, I actually might need some mentoring from my teammate, Elliott Sadler, hauler this weekend to get some advise from him since he has a lot more track time at Pocono than I do!I guess we will have to see who is leading when the checkered flag falls. Pocono is going to be one of those tracks that we are all going to label as a “wild card.”
I think the No. 33 team has the momentum and we’re using all of our tools to prepare the race truck to the best of our ability. We are also going to be joined by a new crew chief, Kevin Buskirk. For those of you who have been around racing for some time you will recognize the name. He’s a veteran of the sport with a ton of experience and he’s very knowledgeable when it comes to setting up a truck. I have confidence in his experience and the leadership he brings to the team and I’m looking forward to working with him.
After the win in ORP last weekend, I was asked if I thought we still had a shot at the championship since we’re currently fourth, 212 points behind Todd Bodine. My answer: absolutely. In 2007, we were racing Mike Skinner for the championship. Going into ORP we were 164 points behind. Skinner had trouble; we won the race and gained 87 points. Later that year we went on to win the championship. It takes a little misfortune for those you are racing against, but it is possible and there is nothing I want more than to win back-to-back championships.