NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Kevin Harvick told the media on Friday that the opportunity to drive Kyle Larson’s Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet during practice and qualifying for the NASCAR All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway is “priceless.”
Harvick, who gave up full-time racing at the end of last season and is now an analyst for FOX’s NASCAR coverage, will drive Larson’s car while he is at Indianapolis Motor Speedway preparing to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.
“It’s priceless,” Harvick said. “This sport evolves quickly. To be understand the tires, the scenario that goes with how long these tires will last, how fast they go, what the feeling is and what all the scenarios are… listening to someone else’s team, I took my team for granted because we had been around for so long.
“To hear other people’s thoughts and process and understand all those things to be able to relate to the fans, it’s a pretty big deal to get a mid-year check of things that go with the evolution of our sport. It evolves quickly and can leave you behind quickly. To be still engrained in it and understand where everything’s at is always good.”
Harvick said the knowledge will help him understand tire strategy and how the new pavement at North Wilkesboro will react during therace.
“If we run this race on Sunday on slick tires and you’ve got the tires going on and off, just understanding how far the soft tires will go,” Harvick said. “There’s a good possibility that if you do that and the soft-tire guys have to come to pit road under green, just all the little nuances of little things. The more detail that we have, the more we have to talk about and relay to the people and you guys to understand. I look at it that we want to teach people about what our sport is, as well, and the things that are happening. There’s a number of things that go into that in order to make the car go around the racetrack that people just have no idea.”
Harvick, who ran the final 10 years of his career for Stewart-Haas Racing, said it was a good chance to get an inside look at how other teams such as Hendrick Motorsports operates.
“I heard from the owner twice in two weeks, so that’s different,” Harvick joked regarding his former team owner Tony Stewart. “It’s interesting to see just the race shop, the structure and the way that everybody goes about it differently… there’s a million different ways you can do things.
“The thing that sticks out for me about Hendrick Motorsports in general, it’s truly run like a business that is part of an actual structure of how things flow and who you talk to. There’s just the depth of the business side and the racing side, it’s deep. That’s pretty eye-opening – just the structure from the whole thing. And I like structure. That’s something that has been good to see.”
The 2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion said driving Larson’s car this weekend will help him better inform fans in his role on television.