Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Kevin Harvick, the 2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion who is entering the final seven races of his career. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity, but the full version is available on the 12 Questions podcast.
1. You must pick one chore or obligation to do every day for a year. But if you do it every day for a year, you never have to do it again for the rest of your life. So what would you like to knock out forever?
I have a helper here today. (Son Keelan whispers in his dad’s ear.) What are you telling me, Keelan? Meetings? Yeah, well, I don’t really understand exactly how my days are actually going to operate going forward (after he retires from racing). It’s a new schedule, so I’m sure my obligations at home will probably be different compared to what I do now. But if I never had to sit in another Zoom meeting again, that would be really, really good. I sit in more meetings now than I probably ever have in my whole life. So if I could figure out how to just do every meeting for one year and then never have to do another meeting again, I’d be perfectly content with that.
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2. Can you describe how you are as a passenger in a street car?
I’m not good. And I’m especially bad if it’s my wife (DeLana) driving, because she gives me a lot of grief when I drive that I drive too slow or I should have turned here or I shouldn’t listen to the navigation. So I try to give her the exact feedback that she gives me while I drive. And I think she’s not a very good driver in general. She’s an overly aggressive street driver, so I wind up giving a lot of feedback from the passenger seat.
3. What is an app on your phone you love using and think more people should know about?
Probably the Weather app. Maybe people should know exactly what they’re getting into for the day. I’m always two races ahead on the Weather app to try to prepare for whatever it is I’m getting into that particular week. I think the planning people have is a little short in today’s world. Kinda dorky, but that’s the way it is.
4. What do you do to make yourself feel better when you’re having a crappy day?
When I’m having a crappy day, usually I just go home because my kids are pretty oblivious to everything that’s happening. And I have a 5-year-old (daughter Piper) who is way more oblivious to everything. That is really entertaining to hear what the first thing is that usually is asked from her when you get home. Keelan has become more like a little adult, so his questions are a little more smarta– then they probably have been in the past. He’ll try to do exactly what I would do: gouge around a little bit to see if he can frustrate you a little bit more. So usually Piper can spin things around pretty quick when I get home.
5. I’ve been asking readers to submit “Dear Abby”-style advice questions for drivers. This person says: “My kids, ages 9 and 7, refuse to do their laundry. My wife has expressed to them that doing their laundry and their baby sister’s can be exhausting, so we decided our two oldest kids should start doing their own laundry twice a week. However, they put up a huge fight and they say it’s too hard and they don’t know how to fold their clothes. How should we handle this and who should be doing their laundry?”
That one is pretty simple. So when Keelan put up that same fight, as soon as he ran out of clothes, it pretty much solved itself. We just let his clothes pile up in the hamper or on the floor in his bedroom and his towels and everything that were in his bedroom. We just let those things pile up. And eventually, he figured out we weren’t going to back down and he wound up being able to do his laundry.
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He does have some assistance with folding his clothes because that is more of a process of following through. He can and does wash his clothes now, but he would 100 percent just take his clothes and throw them back on the floor and say they were clean. So the folding process is probably a little more difficult to follow through on than the actual washing part.
6. This next one is a lifestyle question. You seem like someone who really has their stuff together and you’ve worked hard to get your life organized. But you have your racing, Keelan’s racing, your normal parenting duties, being a husband, your various businesses and all sorts of other obligations you’re trying to juggle and balance. So what habits from your life would be good for other people who are dealing with fewer things, like me, but feel like they’re in chaos?
Proper planning prevents piss-poor performance. So being a little more organized — I live off of my calendar. If somebody calls and says, “Hey, let’s meet for lunch on the 4th at 3 o’clock,” I immediately put it on the calendar. Because if I don’t, I’ll forget. And then I’ll have somebody call me and I’ll have somebody else scheduled and then it becomes chaos, right?
So for me, it’s all about structure and organization. I would start with a calendar and making sure everything you do is put on the calendar to be structured and organized. It’s super simple once you get it set up.
7. This is a wild-card question. You’ve said you wanted to be done after last year, but you came back to give everybody a proper chance to do a sendoff. As a result, you’ve been given a chance to reflect more because people keep bringing memories up to you. So as you’ve had a chance to reflect a bit, what do you think are the contributions you’re most proud of?
The thing this year has really made me realize is the impact we have as drivers and athletes on people’s lives in general. Hearing those stories and those moments, whether it be inspiring a driver or inspiring somebody to get through a hard time period, through COVID or something personal they have going on — when we’re in the day-to-day grind, going week to week from race to race, you lose sight of the fact that what you do is much bigger than winning or losing to the people outside of this hauler. The impact you have on people’s lives is much different than what you realize inside of the competition walls.
For me, being able to open up and hear those stories and understand you have that effect on people and can impact people’s lives with the things you say and do is not something you really realize when you’re 25 years old or in the middle of a battle with somebody after a race. That has been very impactful for me personally to just really enjoy that you’ve been able to affect people in a positive way just by doing the things you think are right.
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8. In your career, what is the deal that came closest to happening that ended up not working out?
I think back to 1996 and if I said, “OK, I’m just gonna stay here and race with the family team and not go to work for Wayne and Connie Spears to be the mechanic,” or if I don’t say, “OK, I’m going to leave Wayne and Connie Spears and go to work for Jim Herrick and Brad Daugherty at the 98 truck.” There are six or seven hard decisions along the way.
But for me, that moment of Earnhardt passing (in 2001) and taking over the No. 3 car — you just look at how different of a trajectory that puts you on as far as what I did and where I went. You wonder what it would have been like if you just worked with that group of guys that you worked with through the Busch Series days and went into Cup with the natural move through the series and through your career.
(After Earnhardt died), it just all instantly started, and you had your biggest press conference, and you had your biggest win, and you had your biggest moments and things to work through in the very first year — instead of that natural progression through the ranks. So that Earnhardt moment for me is just so much different than everybody else in the way I started my career. You just wonder what that would have looked like if Earnhardt didn’t have his accident.
9. Who is a person you’d be starstruck by when meeting them?
I’ve been fortunate to meet Presidents and governors and people who have big roles throughout the world, so I don’t know there’s really anybody who can make me starstruck. I always feel like I’d rather not say hi and bother them and just let them do what they’re doing than actually go over and say, “Hey, how you doing? I’m Kevin Harvick.” Meeting a few of the Presidents of the United States, that’s been as close to starstruck as possible, because no matter what side you sit on or what you think about politics, meeting the President is a big deal. And I enjoyed the conversations I’ve been able to have.
10. What is the single most important skill a race car driver can possess?
Leadership. So many people look at this as, “Hey, he’s a good driver,” or, “He’s fast,” but in the end, that isn’t really what gets you what you want. You have to be able to communicate and be part of the process of how you get to where you want to be. Whether it’s setups or helping with the conversations in the team, everything you do is about being a good leader and being a part of that process in order to make things better.
There’s so much more that goes into it than just saying, “Hey, we have a fast car and I can drive it.” There are years that go like that, right? Those are the easy years. The hard years are when you have to work through things, and it’s keeping that dip from being as low as where everybody else would go that’s not involved in the process.
11. What life lessons from a young age stick with you and affect your daily decisions as an adult?
A lot of progression just comes from life in general. You become more mature as a person from just living those lessons you experience — good or bad. The thing I’m looking forward to the most when I retire is getting out of that competitive mindset and not having to worry about all the things that come with the car — having a good year or good weekend or whatever it takes to be positive. That part is very consuming.
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So being able to process all that is something you learned through life and having to deal with things. That circle of life is as simple as paying your bills and keeping track of your finances and keeping your relationships on the race team and doing what you need to do from a professional standpoint. Everything affects everything else in that circle of life. It’s very difficult to get all that balanced at the same time. But the quicker you address whatever piece of the puzzle is not balanced at that particular time, the faster everything else gets back in balance.
12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. Last week was Kyle Larson. He wanted to ask you about Keelan racing in Europe and says: “What makes the drivers in Europe so much better than the American kart racers? Is it the tracks they’re used to? The style of racing? Their culture? What is it and how much longer do you think you’ll be taking Keelan to race in Europe?”
So Keelan came back from Europe at the end of June. We moved him up to the bigger karts here. In the karting system, it’s much different over there because they don’t have a lot of choices to race like we do in America. In America, you have ovals, road courses, Legend cars, go-karts, quarter midgets — you just have so many more choices.
For them, life in Europe is F1. So the system in place for F1 goes all the way to the bottom of karting, and all those kids want to be F1 drivers. That’s really the only reason it’s more competitive — because it’s really their only choice. Over there it’s soccer and F1. That’s a lifestyle for those kids, and it’s part of the process in order to get to the top of F1.
So for us, it’s been great because we can just go over there and put Keelan in the middle of that system, but the reason it’s so much more competitive is because it’s really their only choice and outlet to race. Whatever you race in Europe is pretty much all through karting.
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
