FOX NASCAR QUOTES
HARVICK JOINED FOX BUSINESS NETWORK’S MORNINGS WITH MARIA TO DISCUSS WEDNESDAY’S NCWTS RACE AT ELDORA SPEEDWAY
Former Champ Talked Trucks on Dirt, Tony Stewart’s Role as Track Owner and a Possible Post-Driving TV Career NCWTS Producer Shares Challenges of Producing a Race on Dirt
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Former NASCAR champion and regular FOX Sports analyst Kevin Harvick joined FOX Business Network’s MORNINGS WITH MARIA today from the NASCAR RACE HUB studio to discuss Wednesday’s NASCAR CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES race at Eldora Speedway, which airs on FOX Business Network live at 9:00 PM ET. He and co-host Dagen McDowell also discussed his increased visibility in the FOX Sports television booth and a possible on-camera career post-racing.
Harvick, driver of the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford, has qualified for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoffs and currently sits fourth in points. He is serving as a FOX NASCAR analyst for the Eldora race alongside Vince Welch and Michael Waltrip. Below are excerpts from Harvick’s interview. To watch the interview in its entirety, click here.
McDowell: FOX Business is going to be broadcasting the Truck race on dirt. Please tell the viewers why they should be watching Wednesday night.
Harvick: “Wednesday night is a very unique event, just for the fact the national series hadn’t been on dirt in a very long time, but that’s really what built our sport, or was a part of building our sport into what it is today. To have the trucks go back to Eldora Speedway and race on dirt creates a very unique event. When you look at the Eldora Speedway, and really through the years -- it’s been there for 50-some years and Tony Stewart owns Eldora Speedway. When they brought the trucks there, it brought this excitement to the series and the Truck Series going on dirt, and now it has become one of their marquee events. It’s a lot of fun to watch. You get a lot of dirt racers and a lot of the guys who have had to get better at dirt racing who didn’t have a lot of experience on the dirt who race trucks every week. It’s a great mix of dirt racers and every-week truck racers -- and Kyle Larson and some of the Cup guys coming in to run as well.”
McDowell: Tony Stewart, as the owner of Eldora, is very dedicated to making sure that the track is in tip-top condition.
Harvick: “That’s really what Tony likes to do. He likes to sit on the tractor and make sure the race track is right. He’ll ride around, and if it doesn’t look right, he’ll plow it up, and the next thing you know, it won’t be as dusty and there’ll be a little moisture in the top of the race track or the bottom of the race track. Tony is very passionate about what he does with the race track, and that bleeds over into the racing. That’s really what has kept Eldora Speedway in the marquee dirt-racing spot. From sprint cars to dirt late models, there’ll be 60,000 people that roll through this race track over the two weeks …”
McDowell: Do you want to do TV full-time when you stop racing?
Harvick: “It is definitely something that I’d like to do, and FOX has allowed me to kind of dabble in sitting in a booth and doing different things in the studio. For me, it’s great because I can do my full-time job on Sunday racing the car, and on Saturdays (NASCAR XFINITY SERIES events) and sometimes Wednesday night at the dirt track, to sit up in the TV booth and get some experience while I’m actually still doing my real job.”