Busch Light Apple Racing: Kevin Harvick Nashville Advance

Notes of Interest

●  If Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway were a bingo card, expect Kevin Harvick to yell “Bingo” more than anyone. The driver of the No. 4 Busch Light Apple #BuschBingo Ford Mustang has logged the most laps of any of his counterparts at the 1.333-mile concrete oval, despite the venue having hosted only one NASCAR Cup Series race – last year’s inaugural Ally 400. Harvick finished fifth in that race, but long before then he ran four NASCAR Xfinity Series races and one NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at the track. And when he wasn’t racing at Nashville, he was testing there, logging thousands of miles back when NASCAR permitted unlimited testing. So, it’s appropriate that Busch Light Apple is integrating Bingo into Sunday’s 300-lap race. Fans will have the chance to win a custom Busch Light Apple Pitboss Grill and other Busch Light Apple prizes by playing its version of Bingo on Twitter. All fans have to do is follow @BuschBeer, turn on their notifications, and play along. Whenever anything listed on the Busch Light Apple Bingo board happens, fans have the opportunity to win Busch Light Apple prizes. If three spaces connect during the stage, they have a chance to win the Pitboss Grill. Just tweet #BuschBingo #Sweepstakes when anything on the board happens and you’ll be entered for a chance to win. Bingo blocks include a “Harvick Pass”, “Caution Flag”, a “Harvick Pit Stop”, “announcer saying ‘Busch Light Apple’” and more. FYI: The first stage is 90 laps, the second stage is 95 laps, and the final stage is 115 laps. The Ally 400 starts at 5 p.m. EDT and can be seen live on NBC and, of course, those 21 and older can best enjoy it with a Busch Light Apple, a crisp, refreshing, apple-flavored lager with a touch of sweet on the front end and a clear, beer finish on the back end. It is available for a limited time only NATIONWIDE for its LAST YEAR EVER in 12-, 24- and 30-packs at a store near you.

●  Prior to last year’s inaugural Ally 400, it had been 10 years since NASCAR last competed at Nashville Superspeedway, and it was an Xfinity Series race on July 23, 2011 that was won by Carl Edwards. The NASCAR Cup Series had never competed on the 1.333-mile oval, but Cup teams tested there extensively back in the day when it was fashionable to race on Sunday, test somewhere on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then fly to the next Cup race on Thursday. Harvick, now in his 22nd year of Cup Series competition, has logged more laps in a Cup car at Nashville Superspeedway than any of his Cup Series brethren despite the track never hosting a Cup race until last year.

●  In addition to testing at Nashville Superspeedway, Harvick has also raced extensively at the track, and he has performed incredibly well. In four career Xfinity Series starts, Harvick has two wins – April 15, 2006 and April 3, 2010. He finished third on June 10, 2006 and recorded his worst finish, seventh, in his first Xfinity Series race at Nashville Superspeedway on April 14, 2001. It all gave Harvick an average finish of third. He also had a lap completion rate of 100 percent, running all 900 laps available to him, and he led 123 of those laps.

●  Harvick’s lone Truck Series start at Nashville Superspeedway came on April 2, 2010 when he finished second to Kyle Busch.

●  In all of Havick’s starts at Nashville Superspeedway – a total of six – he has never finished outside the top-10. In fact, all but one of those finishes have been in the top-five. He finished seventh in his first Xfinity Series start at the track on April 14, 2001. To break it down even further, Harvick has three top-twos, four top-threes and five top-fives, the most recent of which came in last year’s inaugural Ally 400 when he finished fifth.

Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4 Busch Light Apple #BuschBingo Ford Mustang 

Prior to last year’s inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at Nashville, you last competed there in 2010 during a NASCAR Xfinity Series race. What were your expectations when you rolled back into the track after an 11-year absence?

“I didn’t ever go to Nashville without the expectation of winning. It was one of our best racetracks throughout the years and we’ve always had good success there and always enjoyed the racetrack itself. I’m glad we’re back there in Cup. That facility was built to have a Cup date. I’m excited to be there because we have just a ton of fans. There’s just a lot of good things that are happening when we go back to Nashville.”

In addition to Xfinity Series racing at Nashville, that venue was the go-to track back when you had unlimited testing. Outside of the Xfinity Series, how many testing miles do you think you have at Nashville?

“Not many in the last little bit, but there was a period of time that we spent a lot of time at Nashville. We developed a lot of the coil binding in the front and rear springs there and at Milwaukee. When Nashville was built, I actually was part of the very first tire test – the first time that anybody was on the racetrack. Obviously, I’ve had a little bit of a layoff there, but from the very first moment I’ve been a part of that racetrack.”

Talk about those days of unlimited testing, where after a three-day race weekend you’d go test for two or three days somewhere, oftentimes at Nashville.

“Really, we can go back to 2000. I did all the testing for Dale Earnhardt as we went through the year. So, we would go race and then we would go to a racetrack, whatever racetrack that would be, and I also did my own testing. We probably did four or five tests – I think at that point they could only do seven tests in the Cup Series – and then I had all my tests that you could do in the Xfinity Series. But you could also go to any racetrack that wasn’t on the schedule, and at that particular point, Kentucky wasn’t on the schedule, so we spent a lot of time at Kentucky developing stuff for Dale and the Cup program. But for the most part, we did, midweek, probably 20-25 tests a year as we went through the season, and most of them would be two-day tests. And that’s what you did. You were never home. You tested all the time. When you had a problem, you just went somewhere and tested. Whether it be Greenville-Pickens or Caraway or VIR, Milwaukee, it didn’t matter, you could go to any racetrack if it wasn’t on the schedule. Through the years they just changed that because we would spend so much time at the racetrack. We would test on different brands of tires and different series of cars, and we would do whatever it took. But, for the most part, you probably spent 20-25 two-day tests away from what you did on those three-day weekends.”

When you returned to Nashville last year, was the track still the same as you remembered it, or had it changed some?

“The track really hadn’t changed. I think a couple of the bumps were a little bit worse than probably what they were before, but nothing drastic. I think the stuff they sprayed on the racetrack added a little bit of grip to the higher lanes in practice, and then for the race it was really back down to the bottom and more traditional like it had been before.”

You were one of the handful of drivers who had prior experience at Nashville. Did that help when you returned there last year, or had the march of time and technology made it an even playing field for everyone?

“I’d spent a fair amount of time there, so just having that general picture in your mind of how it raced and the things that you did and how it went was definitely good to have, and it kind of took away some of the questions you might have at a place you hadn’t been to ever before.”

While Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway is only a 1-mile oval, it’s still concrete and has high banking, like Nashville. Will your experience earlier this year at Dover provide any benefits when you return to Nashville?

“They’re just drastically different. I think Nashville is going to have a lot of the same characteristics that we have at a lot of the racetracks that we go to. We’ve kind of had the same common problems at every track, it seems, and I think we’ll fight a lot of those same things at Nashville.”

TSC PR