Kevin Harvick 1-on-1: Reflecting on his career, the emotions of his final race

Kevin Harvick will make his 826th Cup start Sunday at Phoenix Raceway. He doesn’t plan on having an 827th.

The 2014 Cup champion and 60-time race winner announced prior to the season that 2023 would be his last in the Cup Series. The 48-year-old sounds ready for the next phase of his life, which will include working as an analyst for FOX Sports in the booth for NASCAR Cup Series races.

Harvick was thrust into the spotlight when he replaced Dale Earnhardt in 2001 after Earnhardt’s death in the Daytona 500. Harvick spent 13 years racing in Cup at Richard Childress Racing and the last 10 years at Stewart-Haas Racing. The Bakersfield, Calif., native has won two Xfinity Series titles as well as an International Race of Champions title and an ARCA West championship.

Harvick sat down last week with FOX Sports to talk about his final season, during which he has gone winless and was eliminated in the opening round of the playoffs but has been celebrated virtually every week by fans eager to see him race one final time.

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As the end gets closer, have you gotten any more emotional?

I have not. For me, it's all been just one week at a time, much as I would approach it in the past. It’s always one week at a time. And we had such a great plan coming into the season, with the whole team and everybody who's been involved in the last year of what we wanted to accomplish. And I feel like we accomplished all those things. 

I've been fortunate to be successful on the track and off the track, and I think having that closure of being able to end how you wanted to end it, it's just different than the way a lot of people do it, right? A lot of people going into their last season, when they don't have something, [they] have that anxiety. I have not had any anxiety about being done with it because that's just the plan. And the next chapter is already starting.

How many family members and friends are coming? How many tickets have you gotten?

That was really part of the plan for the last race was to try to minimize the amount of people that actually came to the race and have our foundation retirement party really be the place that everybody comes to kind of let their hair down, I guess is the best way to put it, and have a good time and have a beer and celebrate. Because it's hard to be where you need to be from a competition standpoint if you're having to worry about everybody else. We will have some family and people there, but it's not going to be an overwhelming amount of people because we'll save that for the retirement party.

Do you have a special fire suit, special gloves, special helmet? And do you know what you're going to do with them?

The car is that Harvick scheme. We have the Harvick scheme, and then I matched it with the Harvick helmet. It's got a picture from every win on my helmet like I did for my last race at RCR [of] every race that we had won at RCR. It’s got a picture of every Cup series win on my helmet that represents each one. Having that Harvick paint scheme, that will be fun.

Will you get the car after that?

I don’t know. I’m not sure now how that works in the new age of NASCAR chassis, bodies and things like that. So I might wind up with a rebuilt replica somewhere down the road.

You really have done a lot of RCR-connected stuff this year. I'm curious. How has that been? What has that meant to you?

It’s very intentional. And it was definitely one of the things on my list as we sat last November and said, "Hey, here's some of the ideas" and some of my requests. And one of my requests was to run the 29 car at the all-star race, be able to include RCR and SHR to work together. And both sides agreed. And I think both sides would agree that it's been very beneficial. That was one thing that came from the team. "Hey, this is one thing that we weren't able to do with Tony [and his previous team JGR], that would be really cool to do if we could tie something together with RCR and SHR." 

So being able to do that has just added a much bigger impact of telling the story. The goal was to tell the stories of the last 30 years of racing because of the fact that there are some fans that don't know that I drove the 29 car and I think that's an important piece. I see your pieces all the time of "You Kids Don’t Know" because we have a lot of young fans. Part of this last season was to educate everybody on my career and my path and the things that we've done that weren't just about the last few years. It was about 30 years. And I think we've told that story well.

Is there anything that you're trying to do over these last few races to either soak in the moment or with your team?

That’s part of the early planning process. Everybody knew that it was 100 percent going to happen in July of 2022 that there was zero chance that I was coming back. And I felt that was important. It's not the easiest way to do it, to be able to be competitive and do all the things that you need to do and keep the people and sponsors and everybody [happy], but it gives everybody time in order to make decisions for themselves and develop a new leader for Stewart-Haas Racing as a driver and who is going to be the sponsors for all the drivers and sponsors staying, sponsors going. 

I just felt like that was the right way to do it. And so there's really nothing that sits out there and says, "I want to do this or I want to do that." The way that it all lays out, having my last race at Phoenix, for me personally, is something that you couldn't really write any better with it being the winningest track [for me] and being a track I grew up racing that and being able to have a lot of the West Coast fans have a convenient way to come watch the race. And so you really couldn't have written the location any better.

Has it been a successful year?

I wish the cars would have consistently run faster. But we've had opportunities to win races and lead races and come close, but it's been a battle with the situation that we're in with the cars. But it's been very weird because the only person that could have screwed it up is me by misstepping and saying something wrong or doing something stupid. Because the support from the team and the tracks and drivers and fans and people — whether it's a 4 fan or a 45 fan or a whoever fan, everybody's just been so supportive of everything that we've been able to do throughout our career and the last year. 

Everybody's showed up to support you, whether you're winning or losing, running first or last, it's just been this weird thing that you can't really mess up. But that all goes back to having a good plan and trying to do it the right way. And that's really the way that we've tried to do things all through the years is how do we do it right? It might not make everybody happy. But usually making the right decision leads to good results.

What are you going to miss the most?

I love the competition with people. I love being around my team and the guys and gals that put the cars on the racetrack. I love that piece of competing. But it's also the thing that I'm looking forward to the most — not having to worry about it. Because it consumes you for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It just consumes the mindset that you have and everything that you do. In order to do it well, you have to think about it all. 

And so getting out of that competition mindset, for me, is something that's just going to be such a relief that I can't even stand it. And it's going to be the first time that I can ever walk into the garage and say, "Man, I can really enjoy the race today." I can look around and I can look at the fans and the campers and people and not be aggravated by somebody yelling at me because qualifying did good, because they want an autograph or whatever it is. You can just enjoy all the sights and sounds of everything that's happening and take it all in. I want to take it in. I love the sport. I can't wait to tell people about it and talk about the amazing drivers and teams that we have on the racetrack that are out there doing something that everybody watching can't do for the most part.

What will you miss the least?

The things that I will miss the least I will probably respect a lot more as I go into the next piece of my career. I think that competition mindset is still the thing I’m going to miss the least because it's just so consuming. I talked to Carl Edwards last week and he's like, "Kevin, I can't tell you how much more in-tune you're going to be with your kids and your family and the conversations that you have when you don't have to think about everything else that you have going on with that car, and that team and those sponsors and those people." 

There's nothing against any of the people or the team or anything else, he's like, but in order to do what you do, you don't even realize what you're doing. To remove myself from that and just be more present with everybody and the things that you're doing because you don't have to think about all that.

And finally, you might not know the answer yet, but do you have any idea what you're going to be doing during Iowa Cup weekend next year, which would be the first race after the FOX schedule? 

That all depends on [my son] Keelan's racing schedule. If he's racing, I'll be at a racetrack. For a lot of the guys that have retired or not driven anymore, I think, for us, we have a very different plan because racing is our life. And I learned a long time ago when we tried to do other businesses and different things that we didn't really understand how to do anything else other than race. 

So we've really structured the post-driving career around racing. We have a super late model team, two late model stock teams, we have Keelan’s racing, we have the golf-cart business that's very racing-oriented. We have the management company that will have nine or 10 drivers and sponsors. There was no way that I was walking away from 30-some years of relationships that we’ve built through the years [and] with Keelan’s racing. I like being around people that are in racing. For me, post-driving is still racing. And that is what I like to do. 

So I'm not going to disappear. My goal is to try not go more than three or four weeks without being to the racetrack, even if I'm not in the TV booth because we still have a responsibility with our drivers and sponsors and people that we represent to go and stay relevant and pay attention to what they're doing in the car. And one of the ways that we got to where we are is by shaking hands and having conversations and meeting new people and taking it in from a different perspective. Whether it's people in the garage or even NASCAR. I've developed such a good relationship with the folks from NASCAR from top to bottom that I like being around everybody from those things that we do. We're still going to be heavily involved on the racing side. I'm just not driving.

What To Watch For

On the track, watch for drivers doing all they can to use the apron after passing the start-finish line on restarts as they look to make a quick pass.

On pit road, watch for drivers taking two tires if there is a late caution. Two tires (not four) was the right call in the spring, although the tire is different for this race and is expected to have more wear through a run.

And on the radios, expect to hear drivers and crew chiefs who are competing for a title to have tense and urgent conversations. On Harvick’s radio, expect some emotional moments.

Thinking Out Loud

NASCAR has the four drivers vying for the championship select their pit stalls before everyone else. It is a little bonus for those drivers to know they will all have relatively good pit stalls. 

But is it fair? This is a race after all, and the other drivers and teams are trying to win.

No, it’s not fair. And that’s OK as the four championship drivers and teams earned this perk thanks to their performances this year. By allowing the four teams vying for the title to pick first, the battle on pit road will be relatively even and none is at a distinct disadvantage. They will have an opening either on their way in or way out of their pit stall.

It also lessens the potential for their teammates to pick a stall near their championship competitors in hopes of possibly disrupting their pit stop with their entry, exit or positioning in their pit stall.

So while it isn’t fair for the entire field, it feels right with so much on the line for those four drivers.

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They Said It

"There will be a lot of championships in their horizon." —Rick Hendrick on the driver-crew chief combination of William Byron and Rudy Fugle

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass, and sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass.