Kevin Harvick talks prime time

By JILL ERWIN
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
Published: July 3, 2008

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—NASCAR takes its Sprint Cup Series under the lights Saturday at Daytona International Speedway for the Coke Zero 400.
Next week, they go at it again on Saturday night at Chicagoland Speedway, the first time that race has been run in prime time.
Kevin Harvick isn’t sure that’s the best thing for the sport.
“I guess it’s all a matter of whether you want people in the grandstands or you want people to watch it on TV,“ Harvick said. “NASCAR racing for a long time was on Sunday at 12 or 1 after everybody got out of church and you go home and you watch the race and then you still had an evening.
“I would rather have the races come on at the same time so everybody knows what they’re watching, but the TV people would rather have it in prime time, and that’s good for our sponsors, too. I guess you have to have a fine mix of things. It’s new, so you have these debates of whether it’s right or wrong, and next week we’re going to find out whether it’s right or wrong.“
Harvick has had a vested interest in another developing story: Chip Ganassi’s decision to fold the No. 40 Cup team because of a lack of sponsorship.
Harvick is the owner of Kevin Harvick Inc., which fields teams in the Nationwide and Craftsman Truck series. He knows the challenges teams face in finding sponsorship deals and said he’s seen teams end up fighting NASCAR for the sponsor and eventually lose out.
“I don’t know that it makes you nervous, but obviously, the clamps have to be tightened on everybody’s race teams right now, as far as a budget standpoint, to just make sure that you’re running your business correctly and doing things tight,“ Harvick said. “ . . . I think in one sense NASCAR has to kind of look at itself and say, ‘Why are we fighting the teams for the same sponsors?‘ There’s a lot of things that you have to look at from a team-owner standpoint, and in that particular situation the sponsor that went from the team to the series, and that’s not good for car counts.“
Another concern of Harvick’s has been how the economy has affected his conversations with potential sponsors. The key? Finding a way to offer them more bang for their millions of bucks.
“It’s a competitive market from all different aspects, as far as everybody’s trying to run their company as efficiently as possible right now,“ Harvick said. “So everybody’s looking to somebody who wants to get creative with everything that’s happening. . . . It’s pretty common across the board that everybody’s looking at the books and trying to keep everything as tight as possible until we get a stable as possible economy.
“There’s a lot of activity, just people are asking more questions than in the past, and hopefully you can have those answers and make it worth their while.“