In some ways, Kevin Harvick’s arrival on the NASCAR Cup Series scene feels like a lifetime ago.
In fact, a handful of drivers he competed against this year weren’t even born or were yet to celebrate their first birthdays when Harvick won in only his third Cup Series start.
That emotional afternoon at Atlanta Motor Speedway in March 2001, less than a month after Harvick replaced the late Dale Earnhardt at Richard Childress Racing, now belongs to a different era.
That longevity alone is an accomplishment.
Across Harvick’s 23-year Cup Series career, and several seasons prior in late models and what was then Winston West, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and the NASCAR Xfinity Series, the Bakersfield, Calif., native has touched nearly every part of the stock car world.
He’s been a fresh-faced, brash young driver thrust into the spotlight. A hard-nosed competitor, a villain, a successful car owner, the elder statesman in the garage area and, most recently, a racing dad.
Yet throughout all his incarnations, success has been a constant.
Those who have watched almost from the beginning include Tony Stewart, a three-time Cup Series champion and Harvick’s car owner at Stewart-Haas Racing.
“It actually took me a while to get to know him,” Stewart told SPEED SPORT. “I think it was probably before I started driving his Xfinity car that we started really being buddies. We didn’t hang out a lot then, but I think we both respected each other a lot.
“I saw what he did with his program, building a truck program and building an Xfinity program, and when I got asked to drive for him it was something I was excited about. I knew how good of a driver he was; I knew how good of a car owner he was, and knew that he knew how to put together a solid program.”
Stewart and Harvick entered the Cup Series two years apart.
Stewart’s rookie season was in 1999, while Harvick entered the premier series in 2001. More than a decade later, Harvick sent shockwaves across the sport when he left his longtime home at RCR to drive for Stewart. He promptly won the series title during his first season under the SHR banner in 2014.
Stewart had made it a priority to bring Harvick into his organization, knowing he had the tools, talent and intelligence to build his own winning team.
“I’ve always thought the world of him,” Stewart said. “He’s a tough competitor, but he’s the kind of guy that shoots you straight all the time. He’ll tell you the hard stuff that you don’t want to hear and he’s just that guy that does things the right way.”
The two drivers also became legendary for their willingness to be vocal in a sport that can sometimes become sanitized. Occasionally, that included being critical of the sanctioning body and simply speaking their minds.
“That’s part of why our personalities mesh so well together,” Stewart said. “There’s been conversations where he’s told me things I didn’t want to hear, and I’ve told him things that he didn’t want to hear, but we know it’s from a place of caring and a place of respect for each other. I think that’s something that’s hard to find when you have people that are as competitive as both of us are.”
Stewart was also becoming a stock car star during the chaotic 2001 season when the entirety of the NASCAR world was turned upside down and a 25-year-old Harvick replaced perhaps the sport’s most iconic figure.
“He came in under the toughest circumstances you could ever get put into in the Cup Series and he rose to the occasion,” Stewart said. “I don’t know that there’s very many people that could have done what he did and done it with the poise that he had. But it shows what kind of person and champion he is.”
While Stewart and Harvick entered the Cup Series roughly as contemporaries, Ricky Craven was well-established as a Cup Series regular when Harvick burst onto the scene. Craven raced against him for several years, then watched his career from an entirely different vantage point when he stepped out of the car and into a role as an analyst with ESPN and later with FOX.
“I consider Kevin from the very beginning a raw talent, and now at the end of his career, a generational driver,” Craven told SPEED SPORT. “There are a handful every generation that win in everything they get in. When others win with great cars, Kevin could win with a good car.”