Kevin Harvick didn't mince words on the radio last week and he didn't again Thursday in the media center at Kentucky Speedway.
If he and his No. 29 Richard Childress Racing team are going to remain contenders for this year's Sprint Cup Series championship, the team needs to stop making mistakes.
“It’s mistakes. It’s mistakes from top to bottom. There is nothing to hide on the cars run fast enough to win races. The cars run fast enough to be in the top 10 and until the mistakes stop … stuff can’t fall off the car, you can’t run out of gas for the fifth time this year," Harvick said.
"It’s just flat out mistakes and those guys know that. I know that. It’s not something that we have set out and planned it’s just … and we talked about it very openly this week. This isn’t something that I’m getting defensive about or anything. It’s very obvious as to why this team hasn’t won a race. We are fortunate to be in the position that we are in points, but we can’t scramble. You can’t win a championship and you can’t win races on a week to week basis making the mistakes that we’ve made."
During the road course race at Sonoma, Calif., last week, Harvick at one point over his team radio said the mistakes had to stop or "We're all going to lose our jobs."
"You just cannot do the things that we’ve been doing and expect
to win races in this garage. Everybody has to step up, myself included. On the
way home and Monday you’ve got to figure out how you can lead and try to help
fix the situation," he said.
"That was the attitude that I went in Tuesday with was to try
to help Richard (Childress) analyze and help Shane (Wilson, crew chief) analyze
as to what he needed to do better to help his guys and my guys be better people
on a week to week basis. They all can do the job it’s just a matter of crossing
the ‘T’s’ and dotting the ‘I’s’ that is what it takes to win races in this
garage. It’s tough enough to win, but when you are making the mistakes that we
make it’s impossible."
