On this week’s edition of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour Podcast, Harvick was joined by Richard Childress, who he drove for from 2000 to 2013. During the interview, Harvick brought up a lot of details from the beginning of his Richard Childress Racing tenure, and even the moments and decisions that led to him joining Richard Childress Racing in 2000.
One of the most endearing memories Harvick brought up on the show was the first time he got his ass chewed out by Earnhardt.
Back in 2000, Harvick served as a test driver for RCR, and he would help the team dial in the cars for Earnhardt at the majority of the races on the schedule as Earnhardt notoriously only tested at Daytona and Indianapolis.
When Harvick would test for RCR, he would typically pilot chassis No. 51, which was a test car that the team would test out unconventional set ups on. However, at one particular test session, RCR unloaded one of Earnhardt’s personalized chassis. Harvick, 24 at the time, blasting around the track in the chassis built for The Intimidator, put Earnhardt in a very uncomfortable position once the media corps found out the situation.
“Yeah, he was mad at us because he didn’t know we were testing his car and we wound up being fast. And then at Phoenix, he got there and had to answer all the retirement questions because I was out driving his car,” Harvick recalled. “And that was the first time that I really was able to kind of be a smart ass to Dale in a way where he was kind of like, yeah, who is this kid? But you know, it was just one of those things that you had to get to know Dale, and I had just kind of started to get to know him over the testing piece of it.”
Harvick says after the press conference, Earnhardt pulled him, crew chief Kevin Hamlin, and even Dale Earnhardt Jr., who happened to just be collateral damage, into the hauler for a little talk.
“And he brought me, and Kevin Hamlin and Dale Jr. just happened to walk by at the wrong time and we walked up in the trailer and he ripped our ass because we were putting him in a bad position because we were out there testing his car,” Harvick said.
While Earnhardt wasn’t a fan of the questions about when he would retire, Harvick serving as the test driver for Richard Childress Racing ultimately helped the seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion compete for a record eighth championship in 2000, a championship fight that he would finish runner-up to Bobby Labonte in.
Harvick getting the chance to log laps in a NASCAR Cup Series car in 2000 also put Richard Childress Racing in a position to keep rolling with decent results after Earnhardt passed away in a last-lap crash in the 2001 Daytona 500. Harvick stepped into the newly renumbered No. 29 Chevrolet and would win in just his third start with the team at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
In the end, despite a lot of heartbreak, it all worked out. However, Harvick even joining Richard Childress Racing took the young driver nearly going bankrupt to pull it off. Harvick recalls signing a three-year contract for Liberty Racing in the NASCAR Truck Series at the end of the 1998 season just before Childress and other NASCAR Cup Series programs came calling.
“I look back at 1999 and I had just gone to Liberty Racing, which was Brad Daugherty and Jim Herrick at the time to race their truck. And I went there at the end of ’98 and sat down in Ohio, signed a letter of intent to race their truck in ’99. Somewhere along the line, I guess I signed a three-year contract at that table that night to commit myself to run in this truck. But at that time, the sport really blew up,” Harvick said.
As a wave of legendary drivers were closing in on the ends of their racing careers, several organizations began looking for their heir apparent. Harvick, who cut his teeth racing on the West Coast while sleeping on Ron Honaday’s couch, says he remembers three NASCAR Cup Series teams lighting up his phone.
“And so, ’99 I get a call from [Richard Childress], I get a call from Joe Gibbs, and Cal Wells,” Harvick recalls. “And you know, at that time I was going through it with Hornaday and my dad. My dad came to me and he’s like, ‘I really think you should just go Cup racing for Cal Wells.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ I really wanted to go race for RCR because I wanted to race with Dale. That was really where I wanted to be. So we really started pursuing, trying to figure out everything to happen at RCR in ’99.”
Harvick’s desire to join the team that Earnhardt had carried to six NASCAR Cup Series championships was met with a big financial hurdle.
“Well, I had just signed this contract and you, I remember [Childress] telling me, you were like, you’re more than welcome to drive here, but you got to get yourself out of your contract first,” Harvick said. “And that was really one of the first lessons that I learned along the way because I had to put a second [mortgage] on my house, and I had to go get a loan to buy myself out of the contract. After we negotiated, we lived off of Delana’s credit cards for three months because I had spent everything I had to buy myself out of the contract.”
With his contract at Liberty Racing bought out, Harvick was able to officially sign his deal with Richard Childress Racing, and the rest, as they say, is history.
