Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

NASCAR America: Dale Jarrett sits down with Championship 4 drivers

hafy8Gz7zB2A
Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick are live on set to preview the NASCAR Championship at Homestead and describe what is crossing the line.

Five days before the Cup Series’ championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, NASCAR America’s Dale Jarrett sat down with all four championship drivers.

The NASCAR Hall of Famer spoke with Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick about various topics, including how difficult it is to make it to the championship race in the current format and what they would consider crossing the line in trying to win the title on Sunday.

Here’s how Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick responded to the latter question.

Busch: “I’ll just answer like this. I think in my personal taste and my opinion, I don’t try to go out there and dirty race anybody or wreck somebody in order to go for a win. This is a rare circumstance, and we got to do what we need to do for our team in all instances. That track is pretty wide, so there should be opportunity to race each other with class and like champions.”

Harvick: “You look at the last two weeks (with Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott), that took those guys totally out of championship contention. That’s where you don’t want to be right now. You don’t want to have somebody that’s just looking for you on the race track and you don’t want to have the circumstance that (Hamlin) and (Elliott) were in. You want to go out and race hard and earn it the right way.”

Among the four drivers, Truex is the only one who doesn’t have a Cup title. He came close in 2015 when he finished fourth.

Jarrett asked Truex how that serves as motivation for the Furniture Row Racing driver.

“I feel like we left there (Miami in 2015) and it was just a lost opportunity,” Truex said. “Ever since that day we’ve been working to get back there, to get another chance. I think we’re ready for it. I think we have the right mindset. I think for us honestly, we just really need to do what we’ve done all year. We’ve literally gone to every race this year and said, ‘we need to win this race. This is like Homestead.’”

Keselowski said a championship under the current elimination format would mean more to him, simply because it’s in a different format.

“Championships are about legacies,” Keselowski said. “The three of us here (Busch and Harvick) have a chance to join that club, 15, that have won multiple championships in NASCAR (Cup Series). ... That’s quite a club to be in. Of course Martin has a chance to add to his own legacy and be one of the (31) champions that there are in the sport. I think it’s an interesting position to be in and it’s one we all want to make the most of.”

Watch the above video for the full interview.