Championship media day: Drivers try not to make any enemies
HOLLYWOOD, Florida – There were no verbal replications of the kick Holly Holm delivered to Ronda Rousey during Thursday’s Chase media day.
The pre-race media festivities before the Sprint Cup Series season’s final race at Homestead have usually delivered at least some sort of trash talk. Tony Stewart jabbed Carl Edwards in 2011. Just last season, eventual champion Kevin Harvick poked Joey Logano.
Harvick was back on stage Thursday along with Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon and Martin Truex Jr. But Harvick, nor any of the other three drivers, decided to single out another. Instead, it was a press conference full of stares straight ahead and, once the drivers got comfortable, some laughs.
Harvick blamed it on Gordon.
“I think it’s his fault,” Harvick said. “We’re going to blame it on him. It’s a little bit different, I think, just for the fact that I know we all want to win. We all want to have a championship.”
“But in the end, you don’t want to be the guy that was disrespectful at Jeff Gordon’s last press conference or say something that’s just a total jackass move.”
Gordon identified Harvick as driver to beat.
“He’s the favorite,” Gordon said. “We’re the sentimentals.”
Harvick won last year’s race at Homestead en route to the title. He’s also the only driver in ths year’s final four who was in last year’s.
“I have the confidence in my team and the things that we’ve done this year that I believe that our car will be competitive,” Harvick said. “But as we’ve proven throughout the Chase, even though your car is competitive, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong in our sport, just whether it’s mistakes from me or parts failures or whatever goes on.”
He continued: “You know, you’re confident in what you have, but you can’t be confident in the results just for the fact that you just never know what can reach out and grab you.”
Busch, Gordon and Truex Jr. are the sentimental favorites for obvious reasons. By now you know that Gordon’s final race of his illustrious NASCAR career is Sunday. The four-time champion hasn’t won a title since 2001 and has even said himself that a fifth title would be a fairytale ending to his career.
Truex Jr. unceremoniously lost his ride with Michael Waltrip Racing following the 2013 season after a race manipulation scandal started the team’s slide into oblivion. He joined with Furniture Row Racing in 2014 and after a season of struggles on the track, won in June and has been a consistent member of the top 15. His longtime girlfriend, Sherry Pollex, is also currently in chemotherapy for ovarian cancer.
“The way I see it, these three next to me are supposed to win the championship, and I’m probably not, so that’s a pretty cool story in itself,” Truex said.
In addition to Truex, Busch is going for his first title too. He missed the first 11 races of the season after breaking a leg and foot in a nasty crash in the Xfinity Series race at Daytona. He was given a waiver to make the Chase by NASCAR and won four races in a five-race stretch over the summer.
Busch called Gordon his childhood hero on Thursday and said he’d been dreaming of winning a title since his early teens. And yes, beating Gordon is included in those dreams.
“Yeah I’ve beat him a few times in my championship dreams for sure,” Busch said. “I’ve already had probably six or seven by now when I was 13 years old thinking of it. But right now I’m at zero so we’ve got to make the first one happen”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
