Author: Mike Hembree
Date: Nov. 17, 2014
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — How to measure the excitement and intensity and the ultimate joy — associated with Kevin Harvick's dramatic race and championship wins Sunday evening at Homestead-Miami Speedway?
Many ways, but here's a unique one: In the seconds that followed Harvick crossing the finish line a heartbeat in front of fellow championship contender Ryan Newman, one of the world's most famous, most recognizable humans walked along pit wall. Thousands of fans were rushing across Homestead asphalt toward the under-construction victory lane on the frontstretch, paying absolutely no attention to the fact that Michael Jordan — basketball superstar, global icon, a man who can fly — and his entourage were passing by.
On this night, at the end of this season, in the final race of a first eventful year with a new team, Harvick was the center of attention. Giants might walk the earth, but, hey, look here — Harvick had carried thunder for two straight weeks of bombast, winning at Phoenix when he had to, then winning at Homestead under the sort of playoff-level pressure no stock car racer before him had endured.
It was a moment of incandescence, and seemingly everyone at the track not constrained by fencing was rushing to share the thrill. Fans climbed over barriers between the pits and the track to join the swell of team members, Chevrolet officials, public relations coordinators and television technical types in front of the championship stage.
Harvick was king, finally a Sprint Cup champion, 13 years after he had suddenly, shockingly replaced the legend who won seven of the big trophies, Dale Earnhardt Sr.
Across those years, Harvick's life has been one that could support several screenplays. And might still.
The black year of 2001, when NASCAR lost one of its most decorated drivers in Earnhardt, turned Harvick into a startled debutante, a driver with the world thrust upon him. Tapped by team owner Richard Childress to replace Earnhardt for the rest of the 2001 Cup season (35 of the 36 races), Harvick was no longer the fresh kid just in from the West Coast.
The Childress plan had called for Harvick to race a year in the Nationwide Series, with a few Cup races sprinkled in; instead, Harvick sat in the Intimidator's honored seat at stock car racing's highest level, a dizzying height for a racing kid.
Only eight days after Earnhardt's death on the final lap of the Daytona 500, Harvick started the second race of the season (and his first Cup race) at Rockingham, N.C. The car was no longer numbered 3, but that made the expectations no smaller.
Two weeks later, Harvick met them in stunning fashion, edging Jeff Gordon to win at Atlanta and sending grown men in the Childress pit into spasms of weeping. Earnhardt, it was said, was watching from somewhere, but now this was Harvick's team.
And, oh, by the way, between the Rockingham drama and the Atlanta victory, Harvick made a side trip to Las Vegas to marry DeLana Linville, a racing public relations representative he had met the previous season. She signed on for a ride neither of them anticipated during their courtship.
Early success by her husband raised the bar on what Harvick might accomplish, but the Cup championships that Earnhardt had delivered to Childress were not repeated. There were whispers that Harvick was trying to be Earnhardt and that that was a mission impossible sort of idea.
Harvick had seasons both good and bad, even as auto racing made him a rich man. The requisite big house in the Charlotte area followed, as did Kevin Harvick Inc., a racing team that would field entries in the Camping World Truck and Nationwide Series.
As Harvick wrestled for race wins and became part of that group of drivers expected to excel, his temper often won the day. There were kerfuffles with Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards, Joey Logano and others, producing an opposite-effect nickname that was as brilliant as it was alliterative — "Happy" Harvick.
In the second half of his 13-year run with Childress, Harvick's career was one of ebb and flow. When the strong race runs became fewer and team strains became evident, he would consider departure for other racing addresses, but the talk would dissolve in a new contract amid promises of better equipment and faster pit crews.
Still, no cigar. Harvick finished third in Cup points in 2010, '11 and '13, and it seemed clear that he needed a jump-start to make the final leap to a championship. Tony Stewart provided that opening, offering Harvick a spot at Stewart-Haas Racing. The deal was struck, and the two friends, famously similar in approach and attitudes (and tempers), were teammates.
Although the team was new, the highly regarded Rodney Childers was aboard as crew chief. With Harvick's drive, team co-owner Gene Haas' deep pockets and Stewart's leadership, anything was possible.
The wins came, first at Phoenix and then at Darlington. But the year became one of equal parts satisfaction and frustration, a season mixed with great runs that seemed to stop short of great success. Harvick led lap after lap after lap — in the end, 2,137 of them, easily the season's best total, but the victories slipped away.
In the spring and summer, he led 119 laps at Kansas, 100 at Charlotte, 63 at Michigan, 75 at Bristol, 195 at Atlanta, 223 at Dover — all races he failed to win. A wheel failure here, an oil line break there, a blown tire, a broken engine, pit-crew issues — potholes on the road to where the team knew it should be.
"We made some mistakes along the way," Harvick said Sunday night. "I don't think any of us ever dreamed of making all those mistakes in front of the world, leading races and the things that we were doing. But, in the end, I feel like it all built up to this moment to be able to experience and handle the things that we did today."
Harvick made the Chase group of 16 drivers, and it was a new season. He won at Charlotte five races into the playoffs but had his back firmly against the wall in race nine at Phoenix, needing a win to advance to the final four and a continued shot at the championship.
In the Arizona sun, he did much more than win. He pranced and danced, leading 264 of the 312 laps on the way to the checkered flag, building a foundation of momentum for the season's final week and becoming, in the eyes of many, the favorite for the title.
In the end, the two races Harvick had to win were the two he did — Phoenix and Homestead.
Now, almost 14 years after he got the call from Childress to replace Earnhardt, Harvick stands alone above it all and sits in the same honored space once occupied by the driver of the 3. A champion at last.
Even as Michael Jordan marched through the post-race noise and confetti to console his friend, Denny Hamlin, one of the night's three losers, Harvick was driving into a sea of celebrants along the frontstretch. Cell-phone flashes popped, guys in Chevrolet T-shirts hoisted another beer, Stewart-Haas Racing team members hugged with barely restrained violence and SHR team managers ran wild in the moment. Glee multiplied.
"You've got to be a little bit crazy to want to do this," said Stewart, who won Cup titles as a driver in 2002, '05 and '11. "The odds say you're going to be unsuccessful more than you're going to be successful, but it's these single moments like this that make all of that hard work worthwhile, and that's why we do it."
Childers had made the correct late-race call for four tires, and the fresh rubber gave Harvick the upper hand over the title pretenders. In the heat of the moment, it was a championship decision.
"If you want to win the championship, you're going to have to figure out how to win races, and in the end, that's what it came down to was winning the race, and obviously a gutsy call and four tires on the pit box," Harvick said. "In the end, you had to win the race to win the championship, and it all worked out."
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This was why they worked, why Childers had called for a rebuild of much of the No. 4 car fleet in the weeks leading to the Chase, why they went all in with the Stewart-Childers plan. And, for Harvick, it was the final play — the end game — in a long journey that started for him in the dark days of February 2001.
"I don't think I've ever been happier in my whole life than I have been this year just for the fact — from a personal standpoint, from a professional standpoint, and you see all the things that you have around you, and you're lucky," Harvick said deep into Sunday evening, after the victory-lane celebrations and the television interview responsibilities and a quiet moment with his wife, DeLana, and their 2-year-old son, Keelan, who bounced in his father's arms and then did a quick celebratory dance for onlookers.
"I'm pretty lucky to be able to do what I used to pay to do for a hobby," Harvick said. "You show up and you're having fun doing it, and it's like a hobby, honestly. I have no idea how much money I make or what I do.
"I love showing up to work. I love coming to the race track and love what I do. And it's been a long, long time since I can sit up here and honestly tell you that I love the experience of everything that's been around me, and it just makes it fun."
It was a bit of a gamble to pair Harvick, who has been known to become overly agitated when things don't go his way (or when other drivers get in his way), and Childers, a low-key team manager and logistical and mechanical expert who had built a strong reputation at Michael Waltrip Racing but had no experience chasing a championship.
It worked. Marvelously well.
"It's been a lot of fun," Harvick said. "He (Childers) has become one of my really good friends, and there's not a day that goes by that there's not a text or a phone call or email or something that doesn't go by that we talk. If there's anything going on, he'll give me a heads-up, and I'm sure that I've told him from the beginning that there's some things I just don't need to know, so I'm sure there's a few things I don't need to know.
"But, in the end, I feel like we're pretty straight up and honest with each other, and that makes it a lot of fun, and I think that that bleeds over into the team and the guys. And they see the relationship that we have, and nobody ever really has pointed a finger and been mad at each other. It's just we may get frustrated, and you just walk away, and next thing you know you're working on a solution.
"It's been an unbelievable first year, and pretty awesome."
Harvick seemed to hint that there is more to come, that 2014 could be simply a first act for a new and potent combination.
Happier Harvick? Could be.
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