Harvick unsure 'anybody in the garage' agreed with Junior's assessment of driver market

“He had his opinions the week before on driver salaries and driver ages and those things, and I don’t know that anybody in the garage agreed with those, either,” Harvick said. “There’s definitely opinions on a lot of things, but it’s nothing personal. And I didn’t take anything that he said the week before personal, either.”

I’ll tell you one thing that’s new and that’s good. A lot of these young drivers are taking smaller contracts. You’ve got to look at guys like myself. There’s sort of been a major shift in how much drivers are getting paid. How they’re getting obviously changed with the new agreement we had a couple of years ago. Drivers started taking more of the purse. I don’t know everybody’s contract situation, but there is a less of a base and more purse-driven. But one thing that’s changed is that you’ve got a lot of young guys coming in being offered and accepting contracts that are a fifth to a tenth of what veterans are getting paid. And, that’s money that can go into the team, you know? These sponsors aren’t giving teams the money that they used to. So, the owners and everybody’s got to take a little cut. Everybody’s got to dial it back. Everybody’s got to realize that they have to accept some of that fallback and difference. And that’s the same with the drivers’ contracts. A lot of these veteran drivers are getting paid multi-million dollars; and a lot of these guys coming in are getting a fraction of that.

“Well, when you look at it, you’ve got a car, right? Say we all are sitting here with race cars and nobody to drive them. You’ve got a guy that you think has got a lot of talent, very young, a lot of potential. And then you’ve got a veteran who is established. But he wants three, four, five, or six times the amount of money. You’re going to go with the younger guy because it’s a better deal financially. So, that’s something that I think is transitioning in the sport. It took a while but when we had our major reset when the recession hit and everything sort of changed and the value of everything changed, the trickle-down affect I think is coming down through the drivers contract and it’s making a big difference in the decisions these owners are making. You can’t pay a driver five to eight million dollars a year if you ain’t got but $10 million worth of sponsorship. That ain’t going to work. Guys aren’t getting $20, $30, $40 million a year on sponsorship. Owners aren’t getting that anymore. Drivers are having to sort of understand that change is coming down the pike if it hasn’t happened to them yet, it’s going to happen to them. And the young guys, they don’t know any better. They want to race and they’re taking whatever they can get. That’s a good change for the owners. Somewhere in a quote years ago, I do believe I admitted to being overpaid (laughter). But I wasn’t going to complain. That’s a shift that’s going to be better for the sport and get those salaries into a realistic range for how much money we have from corporate America. All those things have to change, you know? Drivers’ salaries included. Yeah, all those drivers out there in the garage are going to say that’s easy for him to say.”