Kevin Harvick hopes to extend son's birthday celebration this weekend
Kevin Harvick's son, Keelan, enjoyed his fourth birthday on Friday.
But that wasn't the only thing Harvick had to celebrate.
Harvick was at Kentucky Speedway, where he claimed the pole for Saturday night's Quaker State 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race by finally leading something at the 1.5-mile track.
Qualifying was rained out, so Harvick claimed the pole by virtue of leading the series in owners' points -- a rule change made by NASCAR earlier in the week governing how the field is set in such situations.
You see, Kentucky Speedway is the only track where Harvick has competed in his 16-year Cup career where he has never led a single lap. He's run at 24 tracks in all -- the 23 NASCAR continues to run Cup races on, plus old Rockingham Speedway (where Harvick ran in seven Cup races and led a total of two laps before it closed).
Of course, the caveat to this statistical nugget is that Cup races are relatively new to Kentucky Speedway. Saturday night's event will be just the sixth it has hosted.
Nonetheless, count Harvick as one of the drivers who was glad to see the Kentucky track undergo a reconfiguration and a repave. He said on Friday that he's even more happy about it after watching an entertaining Camping World Truck Series race unfold on the new, smoother surface on Thursday night.
"I think that the thing that deserves a lot of credit is for NASCAR and the folks here at Kentucky Speedway," said Harvick, who drives the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet and owns one win this season, at Phoenix. "You watch that race (Thursday) night and there were two grooves right off the bat. For a new repave that is pretty remarkable.
"I think there was a lot of effort and a lot of collaboration between everybody and I'm just proud that we are able to come to a race track that is still very edgy. New paves will always be, but when you have racing that is capable of racing side-by-side that is a really good sign. I'm pretty happy about that."
Edgy is one thing, and usually produces great racing for fans to watch. It's also a code word of warning for drivers who know it will be difficult finding the right balance in their race cars on unfamiliar terrain.
"I think you are definitely cautious just because you don't know where the limits are -- and every time you go out, you push or move or see something that you hadn't done before," Harvick said. "You start gathering that notebook in your mind of how far you can push things, how far you can hang the car out and how loose the balance can be or how tight it needs to be.
"Every time out you are gathering more information for yourself to gain that confidence. The hard part about repaves is a lot of places you can go and be overaggressive and slide up out of the groove. You are overaggressive here and you see what happens. You wind up knocking the side off of the car into the fence."
At least Harvick has never done that at Kentucky. He's completed all 1,335 laps he has been scheduled to run over his five previous Cup races at the track, he's just never led one.
Harvick also has three top-10 finishes at Kentucky, with a best finish of seventh in 2014.
What he'd like to do now is present Keelan with a unique gift both father and son would greatly appreciate -- leading not only a lap at Kentucky but the right lap, as in the last one that results in getting to Victory Lane.
Harvick no doubt would carry that resulting celebration all the way back to his son in North Carolina.
"It's changed my life a lot," Harvick said of becoming a father. "I think just in how you think about and approach things. Just being able to share my job with him is great, even though I don't believe I've been home on his actual birthday any of the four years."