Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Todd Berrier Interview

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

On Episode 24 of “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour,” join NASCAR Legend Kevin Harvick as he sits down with his former Crew Chief Todd Berrier for a captivating conversation that offers an exclusive peek into the heart and soul of professional racing. Get ready for an inside look at Todd’s career as Kevin and Todd share memorable moments and reflections.  Kevin and Todd take you on a deep dive into the personal side of racing, exploring their special bond and Todd’s experiences at Richard Childress Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing. They share the story of how Kevin met his wife DeLana through Todd, discuss the differences between cars today and in the past, and much more as they delve into the world of racing. They also talk about Todd’s experience working with Dale Earnhardt.  Don't miss out on this exhilarating episode packed with expert analysis and all the thrilling moments you love from the world of NASCAR! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I leave Delaney at the racetrack. I go back to the hotel. I shut all the curtains and I lay in this bed. And she shows back up. Just mad because I left her at the racetrack. And next week, I didn't really respond to anybody. Didn't really know how to handle anything and what they do. They make two milk crates with my face on it.

Welcome to Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour, presented by NASCAR on Fox. We want to keep encouraging all you closers out there to subscribe on YouTube and anywhere else that you listen to your podcast. And this week we have a fun guest for me, because I've known him for so long. Todd Barrier from now Joe Gibbs Racing. That's still a little bit strange for me to say. But you've been there.

How many years now? This will be my 10th. 10 years. Hard to believe. I was thinking about that earlier today. Yeah, 10 years. It's, you know, it's so interesting to see all the different people that I came into the sport with

and where they've gone. But when you look back at that time at RCR, and you see all the key positions that people were at, whether they were on the first couple years of our cup teams or in the Bush series shop, I mean, think about how many guys and gals have gone all over the sport to make such an impact. We had a lot of really good people.

We were lucky, fortunate to have a lot of good people there and work with a lot of great people, still a lot of great people there. So how many, let's see, you were, you left 10 years ago and then you had, gosh, I've seen so many people in our shop. So we probably, how many crew chiefs you think we've had that came out of that, that era? Oh, I don't know. I hadn't thought about it, but a lot. I bet it's four or five.

Yeah, that went through that time. But it was a fun time. But let's go back, let's go back to the very beginning because Todd is actually the one that helped introduce my wife and I. you and Delana, you introduced me to Delana. We actually were looking for dates to go to the Christmas party. RCR Christmas party. In 1999. Is that when it was?

1999. 1999. Got it. We're both old. Yeah. But Todd's like, ah, I know somebody. So Delana had a friend in town and Delana herself. And we went to the Christmas party that night.

That's right. And that's the first time that I met my wife. So thank you for. Downtown Winston. We went to like a convention center in Winston or something. Yeah. And that was the, That was the night that Richard got in a lot of trouble that night.

Remember the big, had that wig that he put on. I don't remember that. Yeah, it was, that was a fun time. I was just used to him seeing all those people there at every one of those Christmas parties and saying, man, we've got to get rid of 10% of these people. Well, how do we have this many people? That's a constant conversation of every team owner. Yes.

It's still in today's. Even 1999. Yeah. And it has evolved into more people in today's world. What was your relationship? How did you get to know, Delana? What was your relationship? So Delana's mom and dad and my mom and dad were like best friends.

And so, you know, they did everything together. And we would be, you know, as growing up, Delane and I are growing up where, you know, I don't know. I don't know what our parents did together, you know, played rook or something. I'm not sure. But we'd go to their house or they'd come to ours and whatever. And my dad was, you know, race some and I owned some cars that John Paul had driven and stuff like that. So Delaney and I were brother and sister the whole time. So I didn't know that Delana's dad drove your dad's car.

Yeah, like Bowman Gray Stadium, hot stock type things and whatever, stuff like that. So I know that, you know, they had, you know, cars and each other drove each other's and whatever. So you grew up with Delaney's. So did you work on those cars? Is that where you kind of had your passion racing star? Well, so my dad raced like dirt tracks and things like that and I wanted to race. But he pretty much quit when I was very young, maybe 8, 10, 12 years old or something. But John Paul was racing and Dickie was racing.

And so I would just hang out with those guys and work on race cars with those guys. Did you go race with them? Yes, I went to race with them. What did you go racing with him in? Well, Dickie ran like, you know, like late model, offset late models, kind of like the cars that you have or whatever. And then John Paul ran the Bush series, but I don't know what it was, you know. So Dickey ran some of that too.

So during this whole process, how did you, because I still to this day consider you probably, the best fabricator in the sport. That's a stretch, but I can... One of... You can make anything. Right. Is that fair? That's fair.

If I said, hey, you know, make this, this, and this... There's nothing we can't make. Right. But there's probably a lot of people can do it better. You're going to make it differently now. When I was there, we'd just get a torch and saw... That's right. You cut things off and you just make it work.

But that fabrication is not something that you just learn overnight. So how did you develop this process of learning, how to use the English will and learning how to make things. Did you just do it? I just did it. You just did it. I just did it. I'm still to this day.

There's no such thing as can't. And so, you know, if you see something needs to be done, you figure out how to do it. And then I just, that's something I picked up and did. I mean,

my dad was mechanically inclined. And, you know, he had a garage. And I mean, there's all kinds of, we had a farm and you're always welding something or making something or doing something.

So I guess it's just, I don't know, it's something I was born with. That's right. Got to keep the farm running. Yeah. So we, John Paul, for those that don't know John Paul, Delana's dad, he passed in 2005. But when you go back and you look at that time with John Paul, he was very, what's the word I'm looking for here?

He was very conservative. He was a penny pincher. Is that a, is that a? Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. And I think that racing with John Paul had to be, it was always going to be fun. But I would think that if I remember back to Delana's first car, her race car that he built, it was a total piece of crap. Right.

Or all of his cars, that ratty? They were, yeah, I don't want to, you know, be too hard on him. But, you know, I remember one time we were working on a car in the shop and he's out building a house somewhere, and I strip everything off of it from the firewall forward and sand it all and paint it that day and start putting it back together. And he's hot as a struck match because I spent the time and effort to, I'm like, you know, we're going to raise the hood. It's going to look good. You know, so yeah, he was always, you know, just very frugal. And, you know, they didn't have cubic dollars to race with. So you were just pinching pennies to try to try to do what he loved to do.

Was Delano always a smart aleck? Yeah, we both were. Yeah. So she got some of her smart elk ability from you? I don't know. I think I got it from her. I got it from her. Okay.

We had a lot of good times being smart alecks. I would definitely categorize my daughter's smart elicability, getting that from her mom. Yeah, for sure. She would always push John Paul's buttons. But Delana's first race. So at that time, I guess that would have been probably 2000 when we, he had that late model car. So Delana. We went Kenley, didn't we?

We went to Kenley. Yeah. And so we got involved in this late model that her dad had promised her that she was going to drive if she graduated from college. So she did all the things that she was supposed to do. And she's like, I want to race. and so we start going to the shop and this thing is it was rough

I can imagine I don't remember but I can imagine it was as rough of a race car as I ever remember seen so we take Delana to the racetrack and she's going to race

and she goes out there it's a hundred lap race at Kenley and she spins out three times well every time she's the last time she spins out she can't reach the switches in the car so we have to go

on the racetrack start the car back up, and then she would fire off. Well, the racetrack finally had had enough of Delana spinning out. And the third time, they said, well, three spin roll. And I said, no, that is not how this is going to work. She's going to finish the race. All we have to do today is finish the race. But every time she would spin out, we had to go out and start the car on the racetrack.

If that gives you any indication of all we needed to buy with some little plastic tube and right for the switches. We just, we needed switches that were longer. but we had more than the switches to worry about. Starting the car at that point was probably the thing we're worried about the least. But so we go through those years. I meet my wife in at that time before that, you started at RCR when? August 93. 93.

Yeah, Andy Peachter was there. Working in a fab shop. So they built a new fab shop that wasn't in the main shop. And so they kind of moved it down the hill, which was, you know, behind the main. Cain Cup shop on the right-hand side and Gene D. Hart was running a fab shop in there or whatever and they were expanding the fab shop a little bit. So I started that and they and then they knew that like, you know, that they were going to expand at some point or whatever. And then I think 94, the truck series thing happened and all that stuff. So you went from Fab Shop to Skinner's truck?

Skinner's truck. Yep, Skinner's truck. And, you know, but there was only like five of us and we built every part and piece, right? So, you know, me and Johnny Siler would hang the bodies and, and I would do all the wiring and build all the trailing arms and build all the suspension parts, and do all the finish fab. So, you know, it was only five or six people doing it. So it was still a fab shop thing because I think, you know, I think we even built the very first one in the fab shop

because at that point the building that we were going to use was like the building that RCR show cars are in, but they were building a new building for it and moving it, and you know how many buildings we had there. So, yeah, we just added another building all the time. So what was Skinner like to work with? because he had come from, I don't even know where he came from. I guess he came from late models.

So around home there, you know, he was running late models, like, you know, Light Moss Stocks or whatever. So Skinner had done that. And he'd ran a few cup races and things like that. But, I mean, he was being very successful at that time and the late mall stocks around. And so that's where I think Richard saw Skinner or whatever. Skinner was wide open, man. He was crazy.

So that's how you would categorize Skinner, it's just wide open? Just crazy. Absolutely crazy. So he can get it done, though. I mean, he matched on the gas and didn't care about anything. But we were fortunate to have him then, you know, it was like it was really, really fun. Those truck series days, when you go back and you look at the halftime breaks and you got Hornaday and Skinner, who else was in there? You had, who was driving a 43 truck at that time?

Was it maybe, I don't know, was it Jimmy Hensley at that point? I think it was Jimmy Hensley. Yeah. And then you had Joe Rutman. Yep. You had such a classic bunch of. Oh, it was. It was pretty cool.

You know, Terry Lamoney. ran those races, you know, and all that too. So, yeah. So Hendrick had a truck. You guys had a truck. Roush had a truck. There were a bunch of... I don't, yeah, I don't remember if DEI had a truck at that point or it was a year later or something, but they had a truck too, right, for a hornaday and stuff. So I don't know what year that was. It was the first year. I think they all started... It seems like it was the first year. But when you go back and you look at that, that style of racing, like you guys created a vehicle.

Right. And at that time, you had to take, like the fenders had to come. come off of a stock pickup truck. It was a cat. It was bed tops, fenders, B post, A post. The front fascia and the rear tail was fiberglass or something at that point, but the rest of the stuff was stock body panels. So Skinner goes up in, I guess, 97. 95, 96. He ran Cup in 97. And so you stayed on the truck team? No, I went to, I went with Skinner in 97. To the Cup car. To the Cup car. I didn't know that. So yeah, I was a, I was a, I was a, with Skinner in the cup car in 97 and yeah so I did that until

maybe the middle of the year in 98 when I think Jay Sauter had started a year out or something or was driving the truck and then I went back to the truck team and maybe in the middle it was in the middle of the year I believe yeah because I think that the truck was struggling a little bit at that point so they were moving some stuff around

if I remember correctly yeah going there to crew chief to truck or something what was the what was the What was the coolest truck that you ever built? Did you ever build one that was just? Oh, they were all pretty cool. But no, we built stuff that was like, you know, we built stuff that, you know, at that point, everything was light, low and left, and you didn't know enough about arrow and you, you know, and things like that. Especially in a truck. No, yeah, for sure.

And there was a lot of low-hanging fruit. We were just too stupid to do anything about it. But I think, you know, we built trucks that had, like, I mean, all the trucks had all aluminum bumpers and all aluminum stuff in them. and like the A post for aluminum, B post, we'd just hand-making all that stuff and make it all out of aluminum. Instead of using the stock steel panel that you were supposed to use, we would just replicate that in aluminum because they didn't check for anything like that. Yeah.

The rules are pretty lax. That's right. They were lax. And we'd have, you know, I mean, our goal was to see how much lead you can put in something at that point in life. You know, you thought that's what made your run. That's still the goal, right? Yes, I guess.

What do you have, like, 45 pounds from now? Today's car? You don't even have to have lead. You know, we had a lot of it to sell. when today's car came out. So you go through the Jay Sotter Days, and that's really, I guess, you went through 98-99,

and Richard comes to you and says, what? We're going to start a, we're going to start a Bush team or something. Okay. We want to start two Bush teams because at that point, I think Mike Dillon was driving for Detroit Gasket. That Detroit Gaskett?

Had a Baxter car? No, no, not yet. No, I don't think yet. Or maybe that was before, man, I don't know. Maybe it was Tad's car then, and maybe he drove to 72 prior to that. And so he was wanting to bring him in-house. So he was like, hey, we're going to start a two-car, Bush team, and whatever. And so we had our five or six or seven people, and we decided to do that.

So he told us that what we were going to do. I remember talking about people who were going to drive it and all that. And that's where you showed up on the scene. Yeah. So he didn't come to you and say, hey, I need to, these are our candidates? I don't remember exactly. wheel was handling most of those hunt and most of those kind of things little land. Yeah.

But I remember talking about you and paying attention to you and you were like that port a cable truck or something at that time. So I remember Brad Dardy and I remember all that. So yeah, I remember watching you as your name was coming up through all those things. So we get to the so we get to the end of 99 and I go to RCR. I go with my dad. And so to kind of backtrack on all this stuff, I had gone from Wayne. Spears at the end of 98. I had taken Brad Doherty's ride with a 98 truck for the 99 season. And we get about halfway through the season. And the whole sport goes crazy over trying to find

the next young driver. Every cup team had more sponsorship that they could than they could possibly spend. You had choices of who you wanted your sponsor to be. So everybody's looking for the young driver. So I get a call from, well, I got a call from Richard, Cowell's and Joe Gibbs. So I said, what am I going to do? Well, I wanted to go and drive with Earnhardt. That was, that was the deciding factor why I went to RCR because I wanted to, I wanted to race with, with, on the same team as Del Earnhardt because I was a fan. My dad was fan. So we walk in to Richard's office. I have my dad go with me. And we walk into Richard's office. He said, hey, we want you to drive this car. And I'm thinking, okay, well, that's what I'm going to do. So I go home and I had to go get a lawyer because I had just

signed a three-year contract to drive the truck. I just bought my first house and I had to take a second loan out on my house to buy myself out of my RCR, or my Liberty Racing contract to go to work for for Richard. And we lived off of Delana's credit cards from the end of the season until we started after Daytona when I started getting my paycheck first of the year. So we had to live off of Delana's credit cards because I didn't have any more money. I remember everything I had. Yeah, I remember Richard, like, you know, yeah, you're going to buy yourself out. Yeah. If you're going to do it. That's what you have to do, right? Yeah, because he didn't want to get involved in making somebody mad or you know, breaching a contract or anything like that.

So I had to go buy myself out of the contract, and then we started down the path that we went down. So it was, that was an odd time because of, you know, we were starting a new team, watch yourself out of the contract. But for me, I thought that was what I needed to do. So we start off on this journey in 2000, having, I mean, we were. You remember the first Bush race we ran?

Well, we missed the first race. No, well. Remember? We went to Darlington. Okay, but I was thinking it was Darlington. Well, we went to Darlington the first time. James Finch's show car that we borrowed. That's right.

That's right. Richard borrowed a car. We borrowed a show car from Finch. That's right. He had out on the show, and that's what we went and did our first race with. That's right. Yeah, we went to Darlington the first time. Second race was at Rockingham, and the motor blew up on like lap two.

Okay. And then we go to Daytona. I think we finished fifth. And then we go to Rockingham, missed the race. And that's what happened. Or the milk carton came off. That's right. The milk carton.

carton. The milk carton, yeah. You still have that in your trophy case. I do. I still have that in my trophy case. Yeah, so we missed the race at Rockingham, which was the second race of the season. And I had a pretty fun group of guys that had a sense of humor and been around at all. I had not.

My whole life was basically on the line because I had just bet everything that I had that this was going to work out. And we missed the second race of the season at Rockingham. while I leave Delana at the racetrack. I go back to the hotel. I shut all the curtains and I lay in this bed. And she shows back up just mad because I left her at the racetrack. And next week, I didn't really respond to anybody. Didn't really know how to handle anything and what they do.

They make two milk crates with my face on it. Well, yeah, that was the missing one. The missing one. That's right. The first one was missing. And it was we had it while you were gone. and then we found, we had one where you found on it. That's right. Will did all that.

He did a really good job with that. Yeah. Yeah. So to this day, I still have those milk crates. But I think for me, the most interesting part of that first season was really like the first 12 or 13 races because Richard, I view Richard is getting a little bit frustrated because of the fact that we hadn't won a race. I think he was under a lot of pressure because we had taken the AC doco sponsorship from Dale, senior. and his team was, they were going cup racing, so the AC Delco sponsorship had actually moved over into RCR.

And I think he felt a lot of pressure to go out and win. Well, I was tearing some cars up and we hadn't won a race. Did you feel that pressure to start that? I don't remember the pressure to start the season. I don't remember the pressure to start the season. I don't. I remember, you know, I remember how hard it was. And I remember, you know, just getting everything built and putting all that together.

I remember we put our very first car together, had it completely done, went to the chassis dino. Oh, burned up. burnt the car in the building halfway to the ground. And, you know, I just remember it was just one thing after another at the beginning. But we finally found our way. Yeah, well, we found our way at St. Louis. That was the first place that we had finally broke through into Victory Lane.

But the crazy part about this time period, and I think it goes a little bit probably into the 2006 season, the crazy part to me, and I know we built a team, and those are probably not the things that you remember either. But the thing that I remember was the development in the race car from the beginning of that 2000 season until the 2006 season. Because I don't think a lot of people realize that I think that we developed coil binding. Right. Is that fair? That's fair. Yeah.

So the process to get to the development of all the coil binding stuff was pretty fun because we tested every day, every week, sometimes twice a week. Every week. And we tested it any racetrack that was open. That one year, I was paid 232 days per diem. Wow. Yep. That one year there that we did all that testing, I was paid 232 days per day of.

Yeah. And so one of the questions that I have is when that we had this truck arm that had a slot in it and it would move up and down when you get on the throttle. Did we... That's a trail norm. It was actually the housing. You know, it floated on the housing or whatever. So one of the saddles was a bearing.

Yeah. And it spun on the housing that we ran it like at Memphis. But the front had a slot in it. Oh, that was, we had that too. Yes. Yes. That was. So I think there was our evolution.

It had nothing to do with it. It had nothing. That was when we really realized that the skew was working, right? Right, right. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But we were to, you know, it just, you learned all that stuff by, you know, backing into it half the time, right? Yeah. And I think, I think through that process of coil binding the front springs and the sway bar, but we would go to Milwaukee and cut the front. and cut the front clip off. Yeah, cut bars out, whatever, pull the springs out, do whatever, you know,

just do all kinds of crazy things. What do you mean, pull the springs out? Oh, that's right. We ran with those springs. I'm like, hey, we're just going to pull all the springs out of this thing and run around on bump stops and figure out, you know, how we can make this work or something. Yeah, so that was probably, that was probably 2001-ish. Oh, I don't.

It was every few weeks we were there. But, I mean, that was, I mean, if you think about that, we're in 2024 now, and we've got a whole different car. but the whole sport was changed over those three years in how you and how you do things. And race and aerodynamics way more than you were in the beginning, right? I mean, they were, you know, we were all, we learned how important the platform of the thing was. You just sought after the arrow side of it versus a trick spindle or a trick this or a trick that all the time. Yeah, and I think that the part about the springs, but it really changed, it changed the arrow.

side of it. It changed the suspension side of it. It changed the whole thought process of everything that we did. So we go through all those years. We developed all kinds of fun, crazy stuff and lived on the road. Do you remember the bet that you lost at Greenville Pickens? I remember riding in the car with you or something because I said if you'd run whatever. I don't remember the lap time, but I'm like, if you can run a whatever, I'll ride with you or something. Yeah, so Todd. You did that in the half a lap or something. Yeah. So Todd was, they were good at motivate me in different ways. And so we would make bets all the time. And we were at Greenville Pickens, testing one year.

And during that time, and Todd said, if you run this lap time, I'll ride in the right side of the car. So I ran that lap time pretty quick. First lap. First lap. And so I stopped at the start, finish line. He climbed in the right side of the car, held onto the roll bars, and ran four or five laps.

Yeah, just as fast as you were running. You know, that's how stupid we were. Yeah. We didn't have kids. I didn't have kids in, right? We had no worry in the world. You didn't care. You weren't thinking about that. So let's fast forward. You go from all this time with me. What was your point where you said, I'm going to leave RCR and go to work for Joe Gibbs?

Actually, we were out, you know, Richard had moved things around or whatever. And it was the, it was, we were getting ready. We had maybe a week off or something. And then we were getting ready to go to Andy that. week and then like um you know richard called me in the office or richard didn't call me he was richard was flying back from somewhere and his plane broke down and i guess they had made decided that they were going to make um a change on the 31 car which i was there with jeff burton and you know in about 35 seconds they sent me down the highway and that was it so i found

my own way yeah so you find your own way and you wind up at at joe gibbs racing yeah talk to me about the difference in the you know when you started you were hiring to do what? Joe Gibbs. At JGR. I was, you know, Todd Meredith was a guy running the company at the time, and he was like the, he was the everything.

You know, he was the CEO. He was the CFO. He was a competition director. He was the engineering director. He kind of did everything. And he had been on me and on me when I was at Furniture Row for those three years about coming back and doing something for them and helping them,

like just in the, you know, on the arrow side of things, in the fab shop and stuff like that. Well, I was still crudgeon even at the time. I wasn't that ready to do it. But then I finally decided, you know what, I'm going to go and do that. So I came there and was virtually worked with him hand in hand, just looking at all the different things. And another guy that we had at R.C.R.

Kyle McClentathan, he was one of our arrow guys there. He came along as well. So him and I just kind of, you know, we had kind of free range to just, you know, interject our thoughts into everything. And so we just worked really hard on the arrow side of things, just developing new cars and things like that. And so I came there just to really help them, you know,

look at a developmental side of things from, you know, a different perspective just because I'd been somewhere else. So you go through this whole time. And I think the part that a lot of people are interested in nowadays that have seen this car go for on its third year, what are the differences between, what you had to what you have today,

as far as the processes and things that you have to work on in the shop and how you build the cars and all the things that go with that. Well, you know, prior to this car, it was a lot more fun, right? You know, I think for people that like to fabricate and all those kind of people, you know, we built every part of that car.

Like, we built the drive shaft. We built, you know, I mean, you didn't buy anything, you didn't buy anything from anyone that you weren't required to buy. you would just build it. So you got to really polish and, you know, make lighter and make nicer every part and piece of the car. And so you had a lot of pride in that, right? So then that car goes away and you're doing really well with it.

You know, I mean, we're winning races, doing really well with it and always innovating. And, you know, building new car after new car after new car, new design after new design, which is really cool. And then you go to this where we get everything handed to us. And so now, you know, all the things that you used to take. pride in, you have to buy from someone else that's taking pride in it or not. Right. Right. And you get all these parts that are, you know, you get all the same parts that every other team has. And so now it's just a matter of the puzzles it takes to put it all together. And how much harder has that made that puzzle? Because the increments are... It's ridiculous. The work that goes into it is ridiculous.

And, you know, now in fairness, I mean, it teaches you so many things because the box is so tight. You realize, okay, well, now I can't develop that. I have to develop how I race the car. and what I do with the car and all that. So, God, if we could just go back in time to 2000 or 2006, it would be ugly. Stalls all the things off. It would be ugly. You would just learn so much more because, you know, you're forced to just overturn every rock. You're forced to just, you know, just we're picking the smallest of details out of everything all of the time.

And it's just a QC process, right? I mean, it's just, that's what it is. Your job is choosing the parts that you get and deciding where you're going to race them and what they're good for and what track they're not good for and things like that. So it's ridiculously hard because, you know, in the past... Is there a big variance in them? Yeah, there's a like we're, you know, we're allowed, let's say body conformance. We're allowed 150,000ths of an inch, right?

A little more than the eighth of an inch. You'll have things that vary half of that. So your half of your tolerances are used up in some parts, variations and things like that. So you've got to decide, okay, well, which part's the best to use where? Because, you know, I think I told you before they're all identically different. So, you know, they're identical parts, but they're all different. So that's where it becomes as a QC thing. So when you say QC quality control, is the quality, would the quality control in today's parts world,

would that have even met the quality, would it have ever made it to a car that you used to build before next gen? Or the tolerance is too far out? Yeah. So I think in an old car, the only thing that, I mean, we're like, we're resolving down to things that you would resolve down on the engine side of things back then. You know, piston clearances and barrens and things like that, not anything like that we do on components and parts and pieces. So, you know, it's like way, you know, it's way more finite. So when you talk about the quality control of the cars and the processes that you guys have had to

change, what do you think that the biggest differences in, that you've had to explain to the drivers in what they need to do difference? And I mean, these people that listen to our show, they know I'm a Denny Hamlin fan because of his work ethic and the things that he does in the car and Chris Gavehart. I think that when you talk about the training process, for me, it was like starting over. Right. Is that how you would view it for your drivers? Absolutely. I think the more that you knew and the better off you were at your racecraft and things like that, probably the more.

detriment you had because now, you know, you're looking at, you know, you're looking at simulators and simulation tools and there's a, you know, theoretical, perfect way of getting the car around the tracks. And now Denny or Kevin Harvick or whoever, they have to concede to the fact that they have to do it the way the car needs it done instead of the way they want to do it, I think. And so, and that's all based on your setup and whatever. Like, you can still drive it a different way, but there's really only one way that that setup is going to be able to be driven. And so, you know,

Daniel spent his whole life or tie or Christopher or whatever in a simulator. Like, you know, running laps and laps and laps and hours and hours. It's a crazy amount of work that it takes. I think you could have probably gotten, I mean, I know, you know, when we started and you first started cup raising, I mean, you could, you know, it was probably time to squeeze a golf game in or something during the week. Now it's not, you know, any free time to spend, you know,

developing what you're going to do with your engineers and your team on this upcoming weekend or closing out the weekend prior. Yeah. What makes those two Chris and Denny, like what makes them better? I'm not saying they're better than your guys, but what makes them better than most? You know, I think, you know,

Denny's commitment to it and Chris's commitment to it and then it's firstly a trust that Denny has it, you know, as trust that changed his career. Yeah, for sure. that it's just like, okay, if that's what he tells me to do, I'm going to do it. And I think, you know, there's some, you know, he had to. And I think when Chris came into this, he wasn't, you know, he was exfinity crew chief. And he came into it as a cup crew chief.

And then he kind of hand him to rain zone on it. And like I've said, a lot of times you, like we fell on our own terms. He's been able to fell on his own terms. And then he's bought into everything that he tells him. And he just goes and does that. How does Joe fit into this equation? because it's, there's such a balance, in my opinion, between what the competition side believes. You got to get your drivers to buy into it.

And, but there's a work ethic that comes with the driver side of it, the team side of it, the crew chief side of it. How does Joe manage all that? It's obviously a lot, it's different for Joe because of Thai. It adds another dynamic in there, but it never seems like it phases Joe. It always seems like he has an answer to the question and how to get the most out of his people. Well, Joe's, you know, I think, you know, football has taught him that, you know, how to deal with people and egos and things like that, right? And so to be good at this, you know, I think you, you know, it takes some sort of, it takes a little bit of an ego. It takes a little bit of confidence and things like that.

Joe, that doesn't face Joe at all. And then Joe will work harder than any person you've ever met in your life. I mean, he will, he puts the work in. and he's really not involved in competition at all. You know, he's just, you know, he wants to, when you come off of a weekend that's not good in a competition meeting, he'll want to know, okay, what was the problem? And do we have, you know, do we have something in mind that we're going to fix it? What are we working towards?

How are we going to fix it? As long as we have a plan, Joe's perfectly fine. And so he's out beating doors trying to get cubic dollars because it takes a lot to make that monster run. So he's never yelled at you. Oh, no. He'll yell a little bit. Does he? Oh, yeah, he'll get wound up a little bit.

I've heard Ty told us some great stories. He'll get wound up a little bit. Yeah, Joe, he's, you know, he's passionate about it. So he'll, he'll yell at. Not like Richard yelling. You know, it's different. It's a different yell. Not like that time that you figured out that the washers would actually work in the Coke machine.

No, not that time. No. Well, it's always interesting to hear the different cultures because there's problems everywhere at every race team. They're just different because of, how they're managed or the things that they do. So if you were going to go into this car and let's just say, you got to use the same car, how would you go about making this car race better on the short tracks?

Is it raise the car? Is it, I mean, you've got to use the same basic platform of the chassis, but there's got to be something that makes it better. Yeah, I don't know. Is it power? I think that we have to, you know, do more time doing nothing in the corner, right? I mean, you know, we change Phoenix and things around now and got it. That package around somewhere you're not completely wide open all the time and you're more off throttle time.

But we've got to have disparity. I'm sorry when we're, we got to have time in the corner that you're coasting and not doing anything with a gas and with a break. And there needs to be a speed difference. And I think that, you know, I think that that comes from, you know, it comes from the horsepower side. of things, I think, you know, I mean, we want to put it, we want to say we have to put it in Goodyear's hands because there are the people that were the tires and the only thing touching the ground. And I think that when you have things like Bristol happen, I mean, to me, that was a very compelling, very, very entertaining race for me. You know, I like that,

you know, the drivers had to manage things to get to get, or this past weekend. Yeah. You know, past weekend. I mean, you do have to, you know, either you're managing fuel mileage or managing tire where tires were wearing. So, you know, it pays dividends to what you as a driver can do. And then there's disparity amongst the field because there's one guy doing it better than another. I think, you know, I don't know. Just for me, I don't know. It's way too paired up. It's way too. I mean, how do we expect anybody to pass if you all run the same speed? And there's no falloff. So there's not even a mechanism in place to be able to get your car faster than another guy because you're just wicked up all the time. So I think that we got to get a speed, you know, speed delta somehow.

So I think that easy answer is the motor, but I know we don't want to hear that. Yeah. Well, I would agree with you on the motor. So before we get wrapped up here, what's your, what's the favorite moment that you go back to and say, man, I wish I could go back and be a part of that moment again that you had with anything that you've done in racing? I don't know. You know, I mean, we had a lot of good times, you know, you know, running, I think, you know, running the, when we're running the Bush car and you're running the thing, running Dale's car that same year and doing both series together and just testing every week and just being super busy, those are like, I work really well in a chaotic state.

Yeah. So that's the most fun when you got so much going on that you can barely keep up, you know, and I think, you know, I remember you tell me that. And if you could go back and, if we could go back and do that again, it'd be fun to do. Yeah. I remember this conversation like it was yesterday. In 2002, I had decided that I wasn't going to run as many bush races. And we struggled at the beginning of the year. And I went and asked Todd, I said, what do you think we need to do?

He said, you need to race more. And I said, well, how many times you think I need to race? And he said, whatever you can do to make it as much chaos as possible and race as many times as you can, that's what you need to do. Because I think the first year, we raced 71 races. Okay, yeah. You know, between the Bush car and the Cup car. And that was the year that started KHA. Right.

Yeah, yeah, we did it. We built the very first truck that we ran at Richmond. We built in Ed Barrier's garage. And these guys built it in three weeks. We took it to the racetrack into fifth-wheel trailers behind Dooley's. The truck still wasn't done. We still race the Bush car and kind of halfway put together the effort of the truck. but that's really what started the truck team was getting that truck on the racetrack.

But that's just what we did. We just raced and built. And still to this day, I'm just so much better when there's a lot going on. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, people need something. Things, you know, going sideways, you know, that's when I'm the most calm and not really uptight. What was your favorite?

What was your favorite Earnhardt moment that you had while you spent the time with him? I know that that group of people that Dale worked with, and you talk about going to RCR in 1993. That's just a, that was a special group of people in a special situation. And what sticks out to you the most during that time that you're like?

I don't know, it was, it was pretty, you know, it was pretty amazing that, you know, what, what he could do

and what we were able to do. And I felt like that, you know, the car still had a lot of, you know, a lot of improvements that could be done. But, you know, I think just winning,

you know, winning championships, on him. Bill France coming on the radio at Rockingham and telling you, declaring you a champion and things like that, those are pretty cool things. And you know, you don't get to, didn't ever get to do that again, right? And so I think that those were all fun times.

You know, there's a lot of things with him that were just, you know, that I lived through that were, you know, ups and downs and different crew chiefs and different things. But, you know, that was a, those are fun times when we were able to do that and, you know, win a championship

and see how happy he was. And Bill France coming on the radio, I think, and telling you that during the race or at the end of the race, things like that. Yeah. Is there one moment that sticks out of a conversation that remember? Because I've told this story on here before, but he was the one that gave me my first shotgun and just how he could look over those glasses and say things to you that he didn't have to say much. It didn't take much for him to motivate you and say, okay, well, I need to go figure this out. Or try to make you cry either one, you know. So, like, the first race I ever went to, I think Andy was like, hey, we'd go to, because I was at the shop.

And he was like, why don't you come to Rockingham and just handle the pit stop car? So we would unload the backup car and we would roll it through some little semi-tech thing. And then you would take the car down to turns three and four and stage it. And then the drivers would come down, drive the car off the corner down pit road and do a pit stop and leave. And that was your pit crew competition. It's the first time I'd ever went to the track. So they said, hey, take the car down there, stand with the generator and whatever. When he drives off, bring the generator back.

And I'm standing at the back of the car. And I've never really met him. And he comes down there. And he's like, what the F you doing here? What? Trying to make me cry. You know, I'm a 22-year-old kid. And I'm like, I'm just going to take this generator back.

I got the generator. Just go on. You don't need to be here. Get on. You know what I mean. And so I got through that. And like, I didn't cry. But, you know, you're thinking about doing this.

This is the baddest man in the universe. Like, trying to run you off. And then my next race was like the All-Star race at Charlotte or something. And we're pushing the car out for a qualifying or something. He comes up behind me and grabs the hold of me. So I thought I told you that we didn't need you around here anymore and kind of smiled. And then from then on out, I was fine. But in the beginning, it was pretty tough.

You had survived that. It was hard to do. The moment that he was testing you. That's right. That's awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking the time today. Appreciate you having me. It's fun to talk about old times.

I love talking about the old stories and you were. We'll dig a few of them out now that you got me thinking. about them, right? Yeah, you'll remember them when we're done. But thanks for watching, Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour, presented by NASCAR on Fox. You can follow us anywhere on social media at Harvick Happy Pod or anywhere you catch your podcast. So thanks for watching. Have a great day.