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closeQ&A | Kevin Harvick on Fike claims, NASCAR policy
JIM UTTER
The Charlotte Observer
Thursday, Apr. 10, 2008
A question-and-answer session with Kevin Harvick on former NASCAR driver Aaron Fike and NASCAR's anti-drug policy:
Q. DID YOU GET ANGRY THAT YOU HAD BEEN IN A RACE WITH (AARON) FIKE?
A. “I have been in a race with him and I know for a fact that he’s not the only one. There’s another driver that is suspended that I can almost guarantee you was in a race car while he was under the influence and that pisses me off. That is not fair to the 95 percent of this garage and that’s the bad part about it is 95 percent of this garage I can guarantee you is clean, but there’s a five percent chance - it’s just like the safety thing back in 2001 the reason that we reacted to it, we weren’t proactive until that situation happened.
"There’s no reason not to be proactive in the state of the world of sports, there’s no reason not to be proactive in the drug situation and that to me is irresponsible more than it is anything. I’m sure I’ll be blasted from somebody for saying what I feel but I don’t want to be on the race track with people like that."
Q. WHAT IS YOUR TEAM’S DRUG TESTING POLICY.
A. “That would be a question you would have to ask Richard (Childress) as far as the RCR policy on it. I’m sure they have the same type of policy. It’s like I told NASCAR before, this isn’t about the teams, this isn’t about the crew members, this is about the drivers and being very, very forward thinking as to how the drivers are perceived from a public standpoint. If I’m a fan of another sport, I don’t want to watch and think that I don’t know if those drivers, are they really clean. What difference does it make if they do random drug testing every week on every driver in the garage and you have to do it 15 times a year?
"I’m sure I’ll have to for speaking my mind, but if I have to pee in a cup 15 times a year I’m happy to do that. Just make sure that everybody in the world knows that our sport is clean. I want the perception of the fan and the sponsors to know that this garage is clean and there’s no reason to have to go back and clean up all this mess because we have two or three people. Let’s just get it over with and do it and be done with it. As you can tell I’m a little bit frustrated about the situation.” Q. WERE YOU SUSPICIOUS THAT AARON FIKE HAD BEEN ON ANYTHING WHILE DRIVING FOR HIM?
A. “Aaron drove a couple of races for me and there was no reason to think that they were suspicious, but there’s certain people that maybe they experiment with a lot of things. I don’t know about drugs to tell you the truth, but I know that I want to be next to the guy and I want to know he’s clean. I don’t want to have to get in a truck or get in a Nationwide car or get in a cup car and think that somebody had been out the night before and not been clean. It really frustrates me that we have to even as a driver that is responsible and understands how the sports work and respect the sport and respect my sponsors, I’m frustrated with the fact that I have to answer questions about Aaron Fike.
"Everybody that has to do a media bullpen today will have to answer a question about Aaron Fike and it really, really ticks me off that we have to answer that because everyone should know that we are taking random drug tests, and every driver in this garage should take them, in any garage in NASCAR. This is always been perceived as a clean sport, let’s not let it be perceived as something that is not clean now because it is for the most part. But let’s prove it.”
Q. WILL YOU DRUG TEST YOUR DRIVERS BECAUSE OF THIS TYPE OF THING?
A. “I can. I don’t right now. In order to race in this series we have to sign a substance abuse policy and we have to sign a lot of things to race in this series. In the end, it’s the responsibility of the sport to make sure that all the drivers in the seats are clean.” Q. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT RANDOM DRUG TESTING ON A REGULAR BASIS?
A. “There definitely needs to be random testing on the drivers. I care about my crew guys and I care about the other people in the sport, but nobody wants to turn a newspaper in of Joe Blow tire carrier on the 33 car, that’s not a big story. A big story is Aaron Fike not being clean while he was in a race car. That’s a big story and that’s going to be a story that’s consistently run through this week, next week and the weeks to come until we fix it. It’s definitely something, we all have to figure out how to evaluate it. They don’t listen to me so, I don’t know how we need to evaluate it, but we need to change something.”
Q.HOW ABOUT YOUR DRIVERS AT KHI?
A. “I don’t know exactly how we go through that policy right now. We definitely need to change the way we look at it too. I do know that to get any kind of insurance for our company and employees as well as my personal insurance, drug testing is a part of that procedure. Based on the responsibility of what we got going on here, we all need to fix it.”
Q. YOU SAID NASCAR LAUGHED AT YOU OR JUST IGNORED YOU?
A.“They were more mad that I spoke my opinion about it, then they were about trying to listen to what I had to say. I’ve had several situations like that lately where they just kind of listen to what you want to say and that’s the end of it. There’s not a whole lot that they want to listen to for some reason. We’re not all against them, we all have the same goal in mind here to take this forward. I’m just really frustrated about the whole deal just for the fact that I know that 95 percent of the garage is clean and there’s a lot of people I don’t know. Those are the ones - you just need to know what you’re racing against.”