And Harvick's take on why things haven't worked at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif. : "I think one of the problems is people don’t want to sit in 110 degree weather and watch a race. That is the first problem, probably with the second date. I don’t necessarily know all the answers or have all the answers or know all the problems, but I think you probably could make a list of things that could be changed to make it better.''

 

Kyle Busch on reports of Chicago being the first race in the Chase for next year: “We’ll just have to see how the schedule lays out.  You gotta build yourself for the final 10 races.  If Chicago’s in there and Kansas is in there, there’s two race tracks right there that I seem to struggle at so I got a lot of work to do in order to get better at those places.  Chicago, I won with in 2008, but the rest of my races there have been horrible.  We’ll have to look at turning that around.''

 

Jeff Burton on the issue of safety at Pocono in light of last weekend's wreck by Elliott Sadler where he slide through the infield grass and slammed a barrier so hard it ripped the engine out of his car: "I told several people four or five years ago that race track had to be fixed.  I had a conversation with the race track and every time they had the conversation it was, ‘this is the first time anybody has every brought it to us.’  I heard that on many occasions.  The new group there is very committed to changing the race track and to making it better to try to make it safer.  My calls to improving the back straightaway at Pocono fell on deaf ears, it’s just that simple.  The race track has to change it and all I could do is bring it to their attention.  I brought it to their attention on numerous occasions and nothing happened.  So I had some people that didn’t like me talking about it and I talked about it to the media one time years ago and some people didn’t like that. 

 

"Nothing fell through the crack as far as I was concerned other than the race track delaying fixing it.  The race track is committed to fixing it and to their credit, they are committed to fixing it.  They were committed to fixing it prior to this incident.  We shouldn’t learn the same lesson over and over and over.  We saw a fatality at California Speedway years ago, Greg Moore, hit the inside wall of a wall opening.  We didn’t see a fatality this past week.  We saw a severe impact on the inside wall opening how many years later.  That is something that we as the drivers, the race tracks, we all collectively need to always been looking to be better.  It’s what I talk about all the time when I talk about safety. 

 

"If we think we’re good enough, we’re going to fall back to where we were.  NASCAR has become the leader in the industry when it comes to safety and it’s because they’ve been very, very, very proactive in order to make it better.  They are looking for ways to make it better.  We have to have everybody.  We have to have the track operator. We have to have the car owners, we have to have everybody involved and everybody willing.  In the track’s defense, they have spent an absorbent amount of money putting up SAFER barriers with no return on that investment.  There’s no return on that investment. 

 

"I’m not sitting here saying that Pocono or any race track for that matter is not doing anything because that’s not fair.  In Pocono’s case, they had not done enough and it’s clear to the new management that they had not done enough based on their actions.  They said prior to the race that they were going to fix it.  It was just one race too long.  We shouldn’t learn lessons over and over and over, but we’ve got to have the drivers willing to participate, we should be willing to go look at race tracks, pay attention to them. 

 

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ODDS AND ENDS

 

# Kevin Harvick on what his driver lineup will be at Kevin Harvick Inc. next year: “Right now, it is all just kind of up in the air. Obviously, I’ll drive the Nationwide car a fair amount and the truck a fair amount. Then everything from there is up in the air as far as whose is going to drive where, what and when. Can’t really do a whole lot until you know where you are going to race. So, we are kind of in a holding pattern as far as we can’t finish selling your sponsorship stuff until you know where you are going to race. Until we finish selling our sponsorship stuff, you can’t decide who is going to drive.''

 

# Scott Pruett is on standby this weekend for Jeff Gordon, whose wife is expecting the couple's second child soon.

 

# Carl Edwards saw car owner Jack Roush on Thursday and says about his boss: "He is a lot better than I expected. He is Jack. We talked a lot about the race this weekend and what we were doing with our teams. He seems really good to me.”

 

# Richard Petty Motorsports announced Friday that it had signed AJ Allmendinger to a multi-year contract extension. Allmendinger's contract expired after this season.

 

# Denny Hamlin admits he's not commenting as often on Twitter after being fined an undisclosed amount by NASCAR recently for comments series officials felt were hurtful to the sport. Said Hamlin: "I'd say half of the time I was on (Twitter discussing NASCAR stuff and whatnot. They really don't want me going there, so I'm not going to go there. It's just one of those things. I'm still part of that stuff, but obviously with getting a fine and everything, you've got to be a little bit more careful.''

 

# Kyle Busch on the recent struggles of Joe Gibbs Racing after being so strong earlier: "We’re well aware of it.  We’re asking the same questions you are, where to go.  We don’t know.  For Denny (Hamlin), I know we talked in our meetings earlier this week that the race tracks that he excelled at during that 10-race stretch were race tracks he really likes and runs well at.  Then we lost our momentum at Sonoma and just haven’t really picked back up.  We both had fast race cars at Daytona.  I wrecked his in practice, mine in practice and we were still fast in the race.  We just haven’t quite been able to hit it here lately.  Hopefully going back to Michigan next week where Denny ran well in the spring can bounce the 11 team back and we can learn from them and carry some JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) momentum.”