THE MODERATOR: Jack Harvey, welcome to the hot seat. Jack is the driver of the No. 60 Auto Nation Sirius XM Meyer Shank Racing Honda. Jack, how are things looking for you so far this season heading into the season based on preseason testing and your expectations?
JACK HARVEY: So far, so good, mate. Honestly everybody at Meyer Shank Racing is doing really well. It's been a really exciting time for Michael and Jim and all of us involved over at MSR. New factory, got a new teammate this year which no doubt is going to come up, new co-owners, as well, in Liberty Media. It's just a fantastic time to be a part of this team, and I guess one of the things we're trying to move away from being is the little team that could. We just want to be the team that did.
Testing has gone really well, and me, Michael and Jim have all chatted about it and I think we all truly believe we are in a good position to have some good success this year. I don't know what that looks like. Obviously we're going to do our best. There's a few big races we want to win, one of them particularly at the end of May if we can. I think we just want to try and build on the success that we showed last year, didn't necessarily always get, but we qualified really well.
We identified a few things at the end of last season that we're hoping we have worked on that are going to pay dividends come the race, and we just want to keep building on the things that we've already put into place because I think it's a great team and we're doing some really fantastic things and we just want to keep it going.
Q. With Helio joining the team, how much confidence does that give you going forward? I know obviously he's only doing a partial season with you guys, but having a driver of his caliber and his experience in the team, particularly for the 500, how much confidence does that give you ahead of the season?
JACK HARVEY: It's massive, mate. How often do you get to be teammates with a guy who's won the Indy 500 three times? I got asked it earlier and the question was what are you most excited about, and I said the thing I'm most excited about is trying to ask him how did you win the Indy 500. What exactly little bits went your way, what didn't go your way on the years you didn't win it. I just want to be a sponge. I just want to learn as much as I can from him.
I think Helio is an incredibly nice guy. He's extremely genuine. He brings a positive and vibrant energy with him, and one of the reasons I think he's genuine is before I didn't know him I saw him on camera and I don't mind saying that I didn't know if that's how he really was or if he just turned it on, and that's how he is. He's just a really fun guy. He's incredibly kind, and he's an absolutely epic racing driver, and it's probably the thing I've most enjoyed about working with him so far is his enthusiasm and his passion still for racing.
I mean, what is he, mid-40s. He's had a career that most people would be extremely just satisfied with. I mean, I would be probably at his age. But seeing him test at Laguna before we got in a car is like a kid in a candy shop again, just that raw passion just for being back in the car and racing an INDYCAR is so great.
I think the way that Meyer Shank Racing has grown and is developing, the fact that people like Helio are so excited to come and be a part of the team makes you feel like everything is heading in a really great direction.
So huge amount of confidence. We all know how good he is at Indy. Obviously I'm just trying to learn as much as I can. Obviously we still want to try and compete the best we can with each other, but I feel lucky to be able to getting to know Helio now as Helio the person, Helio the racing driver and kind of everything in between, as well.
I think he was actually my first choice -- when Michael told me they were looking to maybe expand, he was who I said I really looked for as a teammate and I'm really grateful they went that direction.
Q. In terms of the new investment with Liberty and kind of the new factory and stuff, in terms of your expectations for the season, does that kind of increase your expectations because there's a greater scope for kind of putting money into the team?
JACK HARVEY: I mean, kind of inevitably right. Everybody wants to have really great success. I thought last year we had a lot of really great things to like build on. I'm not going to say we had a ton of bad luck. I don't think we had too many things particularly fall our way, but I do believe across a season things ebb and flow and they probably balance out. What I'd like to see us do this year would be to really capitalize on the good stuff and really make sure we make it pay and limit the bad. I think if we do that, what we can achieve at the end of the year will be something really great.
It's really difficult to put on, hey, we have to finish top 3, top 5, top 10 because if you look at the depth in the INDYCAR field right now, it is strong. I mean, I can't think of a time -- bearing in mind I think I say this every year, but I can't think of a time where the depth in the field has been as strong as it is from top to bottom. I think because of that, it's obviously going to be really difficult, but everybody at Meyer Shank Racing, myself included, believe we can really improve on last year and try and do something great. That's going to be the goal.
Does it change because of the investment? I mean, probably. But never in a way where any pressure is being applied in a negative way. I want to do well for the team in a year where we have got a new shop, and there's so many exciting things going, it seems like a good year to do something awesome on the track.
Q. I know a lot has been said about how close you were to having a really remarkable, even better season than you had last year, which we certainly saw in lots of ways with a lot of really good consistency. Do you feel like you guys in this off-season, whether it's through testing or other work that you guys have done, have you guys found what those small things were that could have really turned those races into being major, major moments for you and this team?
JACK HARVEY: Certainly I hope so. I would say between St. Pete finishing and us basically going to test at Sebring again this January we did a full debrief from every single weekend, so we went back, reviewed it, went through all practices, all qualifying, all races, the good, the bad, the ugly, and then after that tried to look at if there was a general theme or a trend. Turns out there was one or two, and then we just spent a lot of time and effort talking about why it happened, ways to try and prevent it.
And then the hardest thing is making sure that when we go to the track that we actually put in a solution to try to prevent it. At this point I'm really happy with the level of hard work and effort that went into trying to identify these solutions and try and put them in place to try and rectify them. Time will tell, clearly, you know, how good a job we did at that.
I think last year was -- if you look at our whole INDYCAR career, I think it's been a really nice progression of the more races we got, the better performances have been. Clearly with more experience on my side, I've done a better job, I think the team have done a better job, so naturally we're excited for more opportunities to go out and compete.
I really love my team. I love everybody at Meyer Shank Racing. All the guys and girls that work there are giving it 110 percent, and it's a relentless sport, this. I think the drivers' schedule can be bad sometimes, but I can tell you that all the guys and girls in Columbus and everybody at Andretti technologies as well are working so hard to try and deliver us fantastic performances.
Yeah, honestly, it's just that time of year where we just want to get back on track and get going again and try and show everybody how hard we have been working.
Q. You mentioned earlier about wanting to try and shake that moniker of being the little team that could in this paddock. When you look at trying to take a step up, does that come by simply winning a race? Does it come by stringing together the type of season that puts you in the top 10, the top seven or whatever of the championship? What do you view in your eyes it will take to try to change that perspective a little bit?
JACK HARVEY: Probably everything you said. I think if you win some races, it's a big eye opener. I think we've been incredibly close a couple of times now, from even races in 2019. I think last year the thing we showed that I was really happy was with our consistently qualifying towards the front. I think we were the fifth highest qualifying average car last year, which was great, especially with so many places that were new for me, a lot of new ovals and things like that.
I think it's a balance of going out and achieving just fantastic results and then having the consistency in place to replicate that week in and week out. That's what I thought we actually did have last year. I think with a little bit of better luck and maybe a few things going our way, maybe take out like a few little random things that just are out of your control and you don't expect them to happen. St. Pete is a good example. I think it would have been pretty realistic for us to have finished eighth or ninth in points last year.
So you know, naturally I just want to keep building on that. You want to be one of the drivers where we do now when you look at some people and you look at what group you're in and you're like, that's a hard group, and we want people to see us in that group and go, wow, the 60 is going to be really quick today, and they know coming into the race we're going to be really quick today and we have great pit stops and great in and out laps and all those things.
The thing is to compete in INDYCAR at the minute you just have to be extremely well-rounded, so that's what we're going to go out and try and achieve. I don't know if that's exactly a pinpoint answer to the question, but I think it's kind of awe-encompassing. We have to tick off all these boxes to be able to at the end of the year feel like we could be a powerhouse in this series.
Q. You talked a lot about Mike Shank, but when you look at what you guys have built together, his first year when he came to Indy, you told me that he rented all of the pit equipment, rented everything rather than buy it so that he could fit it into his budget. Now you guys are going to have a state-of-the-art race shop that's under construction. He's moved up to the big cars over at IMSA, and when you look at the amount that he's achieved with you, you being part of it, you've got to feel like you've been along for quite a ride already.
JACK HARVEY: Oh, it's been epic, mate. I've loved every moment from my first phone call to when I was told that I was moving from Andretti Autosport at the time to racing with Marco because of Fernando coming to do the 500. From that phone call the things I've really cherished about Michael is his honesty, his transparency, his honor to his word, and also his ambition. And they're things that I think together we match each other, we push each other. Nothing would make me happier than having a great year and trying to extend again.
I love racing with Michael and Jim. I probably spend more time communicating with Michael than anybody. Just to give people an example because they see this side of him but they don't know it all the time, Michael was texting me last night at 10:30 like how was media day, did this go well, did that go well. This is a guy who cares. He and his wife, they are racers in their hearts. They deserve every bit of success they have, whether it's in INDYCAR, IMSA, because they put everything on the line to be able to do this and have a successful business because as I tell people all the time, this is Michael's business. He hasn't got anything else that he siphons off to funnel back into motorsports. Without all the amazing partners that we have at least on the 60 car, the primary sponsors being Auto Nation and Sirius XM, without them this team doesn't exist. It goes back to just racing sports cars.
So then it comes back to everybody at Acura, Honda, HPD and their support, they're what allow us to do this. I take a huge amount of personal satisfaction just being around the team and seeing it grow from just the Indy 500 to now, building a brand-new shop, like you said, one car doing a full season, a partial season with the other, but oh, by the way, it's also driven by a three-time Indy 500 champion, some incredible ownership and investment has gone into the team, and I just think it would be something really neat if I was Helio's age and we were still on this Zoom call saying, hey, it's your final year, you've raced with Michael and how does that feel. He's a great guy. I've learned so much from him. Honestly I'd just love to see this program continue to grow. I'd just like to be one of the drivers being a small part of that history really.
Q. Also Michael Shank has formed a pretty symbiotic relationship with Honda up in Marysville, Ohio, with a lot of tech transfer and all of that. How important has that been to the development of the team?
JACK HARVEY: I mean, that's probably more of a question for Michael. I'm more of a recipient of those kind of things because that's what allows Michael to build an infrastructure and a foundation in his race team which I'm just a recipient of.
I think he'll tell you that without his Acura deal, just to do GTD a few years ago some things would have been really tight and really difficult. But I think you see the kind of person that he is because of the success that he's had before he came to INDYCAR, now obviously racing with the Acura DPi car plus everything we did on the INDYCAR side. MSR, it's a really exciting time to be there. It gives you the warm and fuzzies just thinking about it. When you start describing it now and I start giving you the answers back, I just get this feel-good wave of positive energy. I just feel so honored to be a part of it and extremely privileged.
I guess the thing that I'm so happy with with Michael is when we sat down in Detroit the week after the Indy 500 in 2017, we came up with this crazy plan of how we wanted to go INDYCAR racing, and it has blown me away. We have overachieved, and the position we're in now is beyond anything I thought we'd be in. Obviously I want to get on track and deliver the best results I can for him, his wife, for Jim and everybody associated with this team because they deserve it.
THE MODERATOR: Jack, we thank you for your time and wish you the best of luck.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports