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Motorsport

Sport

It's not about how fast the car goes for Kevin Harvick anymore, it's about having fun

Kevin Harvick Fox Podcast Keelan Motorsport Cup Fox Sports NASCAR

As 2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick entered the second half of his racing career, he did what many do: He began considering what came next. Harvick knew he wanted to stay in motorsports, and two avenues came to mind. He could either own a team and field drivers in the sport, or he could move into the broadcast booth and talk about it.

He chose the latter.

Harvick was a month away from turning 48 years old when he retired after the 2023 season, making him the oldest Cup regular at the time by almost five years. But moving into a new career didn’t feel drastic or misplaced; it felt right.

“I'm very fortunate that I got to end my driving career how I wanted to, and I felt a lot of closure,” Harvick told Motorsport.com. “We talked about it for probably five or six years before I actually did it. I felt like I could have been ready to get out of the car before I got out of the car.

“But when I got out, it was the right time. I fulfilled my team contract. I had the retirement tour. The fans knew I was going to retire. Fox had an opening to make TV work. All of a sudden, it just worked out, and that's kind of the way all the people I talked to said it would work out.”

Harvick enters the booth(s)

Harvick entered the Fox sphere with experience in the booth. It began about a decade ago with the “drivers only” broadcast, an annual Fox Sports tradition where the normal on-camera talent gets replaced by drivers. Harvick also hopped in the booth for other lower-series races.

Now, more than a year since Harvick’s last race as a full-time Cup driver, he’s all-in on broadcasting. He’s in the booth for the Fox Sports Cup broadcasts, and his podcast, Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, has largely taken the place of Fox’s former NASCAR talk show, “Race Hub.” Nearly half of the Cup season belongs to Fox, and Harvick’s become the heart of its coverage.

"I probably know more about the sport now than I did when I was driving,” Harvick told Motorsport.com. “I don't think I really had it on my playlist to sit in the studio and do a podcast every week, but it's really allowed me to stay ingrained into the competition side — the ins and outs of what's happening on a weekly basis — so I don't miss the details of everything.”

The 2017 "Drivers Only" Broadcast Booth, including Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano. (Photo by: Fox Sports)

Avid NASCAR viewers knew before Harvick retired that he was the next generation of Fox’s Cup booth. What none of us knew, including Harvick, was how central he’d become there. Fox launched Harvick’s podcast at the start of 2024, then ended Race Hub after 15 years a few months later. Harvick’s podcast began filling the television hole left by Race Hub, and it snowballed into a program with tons of segments, including interviews with special guests like Jeff Gordon and weekly Cup race winners.

Harvick said the podcast’s trajectory has been “more of an accident than a plan,” but he’s glad it worked out this way. It’s also been a personal evolution for him, because he “wasn't really a big podcast person” before.

“I guess I'd been sleeping under a rock,” Harvick told Motorsport. “I didn't realize how many people listened to and watched podcasts.”

Harvick doesn’t listen to much at all. Unlike his wife (who likes podcasts), his daughter (who likes Taylor Swift), and his son (who “likes anything that he's not supposed to be listening to”), Harvick often finds himself driving down the road in silence.

“I don't really listen to any other racing shows, to be honest with you,” Harvick said. “I feel like when we go to do the show, that's our opinion. I want to watch the race, and I want to listen to the resources of people I have around me. I like to draw our own conclusions. I don't want to be swayed. I don't want to be looking at somebody else's opinion. Otherwise, we all have the same opinion, and that's not fun for anybody to listen to.”

Right now, Harvick feels deeply intertwined with the races he covers. He has extensive experience with the current Cup car, the Next Gen, and most tracks and drivers. Last year for Motorsport, he even broke down everything a driver needed to do — prep, braking technique, driving lines, restarts, and more — to win the Cup championship at Phoenix Raceway.

But a common battle for sports commentators is the passage of time: how to continue providing deep insight as a sport marches further and further away from the one they played. Harvick doesn’t think that will be an issue for him, because he’s still involved with teams, drivers, and management. He’s also racing at lower levels, especially as his son, Keelan, gets older.

“To be in the middle of the talk and the lingo, that's really the way all this was designed and planned,” Harvick said. “[The plan] was to be able to run Late Models and help build short-track series, but be involved in certain situations so that you understood the progression of the sport and what goes with it. Everything was planned around racing, and how to continue to be relevant and stay up to date with everything that's going on. If you're not involved in it every week, you're not going to be up to speed with it.”

Staying active in his “retirement"

Since retiring, Harvick’s learned a few things about himself. He still loves racing. He enjoys relaying the highs, lows, and challenges of that competition to television viewers. He also struggles to let things go.

But once he does, he sees how good the other side can be.

“Gosh,” Harvick said. “I love the drivers and what they do, and being able to talk to people about how hard it is and the things that we do outside of the race-car drivers. But I competed for so long, I think I underestimated how much I was looking forward to not competing. That part has been really good. I was more ready for it than I thought.

“When we’re doing the broadcast, and even the podcast, you take your earpiece out and you're done. It's like, ‘Oh, well, yeah, that's it.’ I don't have to worry about how fast I go or what's happening with my team this week, because it's done.”

Being “done” at the end of a race or broadcast isn’t something Harvick has known — at least, not for a long time.

“Even in the Late Model races and things that I run, it doesn't matter where I finish,” Harvick said. “It’s about having fun and being a part of the event. Did I help grow grassroots racing? Did I grow the racing series that I was in? Did I help Keelan with sponsorship? Did I help him with his drive? Whatever that box that needs to be checked on that particular weekend. The competition doesn't matter.

“For me, that has been so refreshing, to not have to worry about how fast my car goes and what I need to do next week to be better. It doesn't matter anymore. It really does not matter. It would be more fun to win all the races, but that's not going to happen, not being in a car all the time, no matter what series you’re in.”

When Harvick is completely done with it all — not just with racing and broadcasting, but with his entire career — he hopes people won’t just remember how he performed, but also what he did to get there.

“For me, it's just work ethic, right?” Harvick told Motorsport. “I probably wasn't the best driver, but I could outwork most of them. Whether it's sponsorship, drivers, or teams, I think that nobody will question the commitment I had, on the track or off, to make something work.”