By: Mark Aumann
Nascar.com
What started out as an attempt to win a single race eight years ago has evolved into a win-win situation for the people whose lives have been touched by Kevin and DeLana Harvick.
Whether it’s chasing championships, giving back to the sport, or providing college scholarships for athletes, Kevin Harvick Inc. has far surpassed the expectations of its owners. What started out as a simple moonlighting endeavor has grown into a definitive second career for the Harvicks, something that should fuel their passions for racing long after Kevin Harvick hangs up his helmet.
“For us, a two-car Nationwide team is our goal. And we’re working very hard to hopefully make that happen once again. We want to be involved in this sport for a long time to come, and the longevity for us is important.”
—DELANA HARVICK
“There’s just that feeling of giving back to the sport, to the people who care about the sport,” DeLana Harvick said. “A guy like Elliott Sadler, a Tony Stewart, a lot of these crew guys. They give time away from their families and they’re as passionate as we are about it. That’s the kind of people we really want to surround ourselves with.”
Sadler, who won at Pocono earlier this season in one of KHI’s trucks, said the Harvicks are all business when it comes to the business of racing.
“They’re there every day,” Sadler said. “It’s not a hobby to them. They’re racers, pure racers. They’re going to be in the shop, each and every day, making it the most competitive team they can be.
“He’s an awesome race car driver, we all know that. But I was very surprised and amazed at how much effort they put in that shop every single day and it shows, because they’re very competitive. I think, him driving the cars, he knows what he needs as a driver to be competitive. I find that’s a big part of it.”
And the fact that KHI runs at the front every week is a source of pride to Kevin Harvick.
“I think just the fact that we’re competitive, week in and week out,” he said. “And that’s what you’ve got to do to keep the sponsors and everything going.”
And when running a team, sponsorship is always part of the equation. Kevin Harvick said 2011 plans are shaping up nicely.
“We’ve been very fortunate on the sponsorship side,” he said.“Hopefully, in the next three or four weeks, we should have a lot of things wrapped up. And that’s a good thing.
“Our intentions are to still compete in the Truck Series and the Nationwide Series with the vehicles that we have and hopefully maybe a few more races than what we currently run. ... Our current sponsors are all going to still be involved from the Nationwide side and many of them on the Truck side. For us, we’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of success on the sponsorship side and things are going great.”
That wasn’t necessarily the case when KHI was formed in 2001. The single goal was much more simplistic.
“KHI was started because Kevin had never won a Truck race,” DeLana Harvick said. “It was completely ego-driven for him, actually. He had come pretty close in the Trucks during his career and had moved on to Nationwide and the Cup series. And it was a group of guys who got together at a friend’s garage at night. It was kind of the way racing used to be. You’d work all day and then go and work on a car or truck after.”
In fact, when the team made its debut in the 2002 season, it was decidedly low-key. That was, until he finished second at Richmond and followed with a victory at Phoenix.
“We had two goose-necked trailers behind a [dual-wheeled pickup truck],” DeLana Harvick said. “We didn’t have a transporter. We had everybody helping out. And then he won the race. We went home and talked about it. Not that it was easy by any means, but it felt good to be a part of the sport in a different way.”
That got Kevin and DeLana Harvick to thinking. What if they took their little operation to the next level?
“We knew back then that Kevin wasn’t going to drive forever,” DeLana said. “That’s a given. That’s reality of his career. So how do we become involved in the sport that both of us are so passionate about? We never really thought about it before that fateful, ego-driven race. But that’s what it turned into.”
But instead of leaping in with both feet, the Harvicks dipped their toes in the waters at first. After running part-time in the Truck Series for a couple of seasons, they put Matt Crafton in the truck full-time in 2004. That same season, they had Tony Stewart drive in two Nationwide races.
“We did it pretty methodically,” DeLana said. “Kevin got in it and drove it a couple of times. We had Tony Stewart get in our Nationwide car. So we built those programs. We weren’t ‘all in’ in the beginning. That’s pretty difficult to do. I feel like we were pretty methodical on how we put together the team, put together the resources.”
KHI victories
Nationwide Series
Driver Wins
Kevin Harvick 5
Tony Stewart 3
Bobby Labonte 1
Truck Series: 31
Driver Wins
Ron Hornaday* 20
Kevin Harvick 9
Ryan Newman 1
Elliott Sadler 1
* Two drivers’ and owners’ championships
And putting together a cohesive team of talented people is one of the things that DeLana Harvick said is something that can only be learned by doing.
“I think that’s probably been the hardest part,” DeLana said. “You can go out and buy pieces and parts, and transporters, and shocks and springs. But [the key is] to learn how to manage people, and to get the best out of those people. You can have the smartest engineer, the smartest crew chief or the tire guy. But if they don’t work well together and pull in the same direction, you don’t have anything.
“So it’s all about getting the best out of people and getting them to work together. And that’s an evolution. That’s still an ongoing process. There’s no handbook to learn how to deal with people.”
In 2010, Harvick has handled the bulk of the driving duties, running 24 Nationwide races and winning at Las Vegas, Nashville and Richmond. Stewart added a fourth team victory in the season opener at Daytona. In addition, Mike Bliss, Ron Hornaday, Max Papis and Sadler have seen seat time. For Sadler, who may wind up with the team full time in 2011, seeing Kevin Harvick’s commitment is all he needed to know about the operation.
“I think it’s very hard to be an owner/driver,” Sadler said. “He’s concentrating so much on what he’s doing on the Cup side, because he’s got a great chance to win the championship, but he also wants to put a lot of effort in on his Nationwide team. With only so many hours in the day, there’s not but so many hobbies you can have when you’ve got to work on your race team that hard.”
But it’s not just about racing. This past weekend at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, the Harvicks announced the funding of a full athletic scholarship at Cal State Bakersfield, with sophomore volleyball player Lauren Holderman receiving the first grant.
“By providing this scholarship fund, DeLana and I will enable students to follow their dreams to get an undergraduate degree and participate in athletics at the collegiate level,” Kevin said.
So what does the future hold for KHI? Expansion is always a possibility.
“We certainly want to look back to the days when we had a two-car Nationwide team,” DeLana said. “That was certainly beneficial. And we had to scale back a couple of years ago. I think we’ve learned a lot about how to run those teams more efficiently, better, and more of the team aspect.
“For us, a two-car Nationwide team is our goal. And we’re working very hard to hopefully make that happen once again. We want to be involved in this sport for a long time to come, and the longevity for us is important.”
At the same time, DeLana Harvick said there’s no way to force change in this sport.
“We don’t set unrealistic goals or timetables,” she said. “There’s so much pressure already in this sport. If you add that pressure of ‘we’ve got to have two Nationwide teams, two Trucks or three Nationwide teams,’ that’s unrealistic. I think we’ve been really smart about grabbing onto the opportunities when the time is right.”
And even though the team has accomplished many things in eight seasons, there are still heights to be reached.
“We’ve proven that we’ve been championship contenders in the Truck Series,” DeLana said. “We haven’t quite gotten there in the Nationwide Series. We’ve proven we can compete, we can win races, but we’ve never had that ability to put together a championship season, and that would be our next goal.”