Kevin Harvick is a legendary NASCAR Cup Series race car driver. A for sure a first-ballot NASCAR Hall of Famer, when he decides to hang up the helmet. But his 10-year-old son Keelan Harvick is forging his own racing legacy already.
On Sunday, Keelan Harvick competed in the X30 Mini class at the IAME World Finals, a prestigious karting event, that was held at Le Mans.
In all, 91 competitors attempted to make their way into the 37-kart field for the X30 Mini Class. Harvick advanced through the heat races with finishes of 11th, seventh, eighth, third, and fourth. Then, he won the prefinal event to lock himself into the final.
According to a post on Instagram, Harvick, who was the only American representative in the event, says he didn’t quite have the pace he expected in the final, but he was able to score an impressive fifth-place finish.
Harvick finished 1.576 seconds behind race winner Gianmatteo Rousseau.
The youngster, who has been really cutting his teeth in the karting world over the last few years, has expressed to his legendary father that he aspires to reach Formula 1 some day to compete against his favorite driver — Max Verstappen.
Back in April, Harvick spoke about his son’s F1 aspirations and the impact that the building popularity of F1 in America can have on the future of NASCAR.
“I live at the go-kart track and none of those kids want to race Indy cars; they all want to race F1 cars,” Harvick said. “They all want to drive the Ferrari or the Red Bull. This is something that I’ve talked with Jim France and with people in our garage [about] is how do we make sure that all those kids whose dreams don’t come true, how do we create them to be gentlemen racers and put them in sports car racing and attract the great ones over to NASCAR.”
Time will tell if Keelan Harvick ultimately makes his dream of racing in F1 a reality, but one thing is for sure; the kid can drive.
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