KEVIN HARVICK, Driver of the No. 4 Busch Light Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
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Is the West Coast Swing the barometer to see where everybody stacks up, or does it extend beyond that because we do Atlanta, Homestead and then Texas after that?
“Yeah, it’s tough to know. I mean, you know what you need to work on after you get done with the West Coast Swing, for the most part. But it’s tough to adapt to what you need to do because of the fact that your cars are already built. Because of the fact that the logistics of everything that happens is so difficult for the teams, it’s really hard to make any adjustments. So you’ve kind of got what you’ve got, going through the West Coast Swing. You might be able to make some adjustments for Atlanta and Homestead but, really, you’re going to need that Easter break in order to get your stuff together and make the changes. And even then, it’s going to be hard to put things into play because everything is done so far in advance. I think, as you look at it, it just depends on where you are and how hard you need to push things in order to make a change.”
Describe the moment you knew you’d made it in NASCAR. Perhaps the moment where you’re like, “I can make a living at this.”
“You know, I think you’re pretty naïve to that up until you actually make a living at it, because making a living at it is a little bit different than probably what you think it is before you start having a family and being married and trying to figure out, you know, what a savings account is. You’re so used to spending every dollar that you had in order to buy a faster racecar or get yourself in a different position or do something that you hadn’t done before. Until you actually start learning that you have to live life, you’re pretty naïve to know what you need to actually make it and have a real job. For me, I left home when I was 19 years old to go get a job working on the Wayne and Connie Spears truck hoping to get a chance to drive one of their cars or their truck. And that worked out. And then you take the next step and drove the 98 truck and then it was to Richard Childress Racing. And I think once I got to Richard’s and actually made it through the first year of the Busch Series and we’re able to win a few races. And then we signed that Cup sponsor with America Online and had some things lined out to run the next four years on the Cup side. That’s really when I thought, this might actually work out. Before that, it was really just the dream, something that you thought you wanted to do but didn’t really realize what it took to live life at that point.”
Who was the one person who helped get you where you are today? Perhaps the person who’s most behind your success?
“There might be one person who’s involved in each segment of the progression of your career, but there’s just way too many. I went through every step of the progression that you could. That was designed from go-karts all the way up through Late Models, through all the regional touring series. And I would say it was a different person at every segment as you went to move up. So it would be hard to narrow it to one person.”
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