Kevin Harvick

He would start 24th and finish 42nd due to engine failure.

He drove four races in the No. 72 the next season, his best finish was 11th at Mesa Marin.

Kevin Michael Harvick (born December 8, 1975) is an American stock car racing driver and commentator.

He last competed full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series, driving the No. 4 Ford Mustang for Stewart–Haas Racing.

Harvick was born in 1975 in Bakersfield, California, to parents Mike and JoNell (Walker) Harvick, and has a younger sister, Amber.

He began kart racing at an early age, after his parents bought him a go-kart as a kindergarten graduation gift.

Harvick grew up a fan of IndyCar driver and fellow Bakersfield native Rick Mears, and raced go-karts with Mears' son Clint.

He achieved considerable success on the go-kart racing circuit, earning seven national championships and two Grand National championships.

Harvick began his NASCAR career in 1992, he is the third of only six drivers that have won a championship in both the Cup Series and the Xfinity Series, and the fifth of 36 drivers to win a race in each of NASCAR's three national series.

While in high school, Harvick began racing late models part-time in 1992 in the NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Series.

During the racing offseason, he competed on the North High School wrestling team, qualifying for a CIF Central Section title in his weight class his senior year.

Harvick also played baseball, basketball, football, and soccer.

After graduation, he attended Bakersfield College with the intention of majoring in architecture, but later dropped out in order to pursue a full-time racing career.

Harvick made his Craftsman Truck Series debut in 1995 at the Mesa Marin Raceway, in his hometown of Bakersfield, where he started and finished 27th in his family-owned No. 72.

In 1997, he signed to drive the No. 75 for Spears Motorsports mid-season, posting two eighth-place finishes.

Harvick also moved up to the NASCAR Grand National Division, AutoZone West Series in 1997, and in 1998 Harvick won five races on his way to the Winston West Series championship while driving for Spears.

He received his first real national exposure during the winter of 1997/1998 on ESPN2's coverage of the NASCAR Winter Heat Series at Tucson Raceway Park.

In 1999, he drove the No. 98 Porter Cable Ford for Liberty Racing, finishing 12th in points with six top-fives.

On October 23, 1999, Harvick made his first NASCAR Busch Series start in the Kmart 200 at the Rockingham Speedway in the No. 2 Chevrolet.

The race would be his only start in 1999.

In 2000, Harvick would sign with Richard Childress Racing to drive the No. 2 Chevrolet for his first full Busch Series season.

Despite failing to qualify for the second race of the season at Rockingham, Harvick would go on to win the NASCAR Busch Series Rookie of the Year with three wins, eight top-five finishes, and 16 top-tens as well as garnering third-place points finish.

For 2001, Childress planned to run Harvick in the No. 2 Chevy in the Busch Series full-time again, while developing him into the Winston Cup Series with up to seven races in the No. 30 Chevy.

The death of Dale Earnhardt on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 changed Childress's plans, and Harvick began his first Cup race the following week in the Dura Lube 400 at Rockingham, filling the seat vacated by Earnhardt's passing in the renumbered No. 29 Chevrolet.

On March 11, 2001, in the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, only three weeks after Earnhardt's death, Harvick won his first career Winston Cup race in just his third start by narrowly edging Jeff Gordon.

He won the race by only six one-thousandths of a second (.006).

After the win, he paid tribute to Earnhardt, driving on the track backward with three fingers held aloft outside the driver's window as a show of honor and respect.

At the time, this broke the record for earliest career start for a driver to win a race in the Modern Era, since surpassed by Jamie McMurray and Trevor Bayne, both of whom accomplished the feat in their second starts, and then by Shane van Gisbergen in 2023 in his debut.

He won his second career Cup race at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Illinois.

At the end of the season, he finished with two victories, six Top 5s, and 16 Top 10s.

He planned to race Harvick for a full schedule in 2002.

Harvick is the owner of Kevin Harvick Incorporated, a race team that fielded cars in the Xfinity Series from 2004 to 2011 and the Truck Series between 2001 and 2011.

The team's No. 29 late model is driven full-time in the CARS Tour by Brent Crews, alongside the No. 62 late model which is driven by several different drivers, including Harvick himself.

In the media, he has sometimes been nicknamed "the Closer" and "Happy Harvick."

Harvick won the Cup Series championship in 2014 as well as the 2001 and 2006 Xfinity Series championships, and the 2007 Daytona 500.

Harvick holds the all-time record for Cup Series wins at Phoenix Raceway with nine wins.

Harvick's 121 combined national series wins currently rank him third all-time in NASCAR history, behind Richard Petty and Kyle Busch, respectively, while his 60 Cup wins are tenth in series history.

Harvick has worked as a broadcaster off-and-on for NASCAR on FOX since 2015, calling Xfinity Series races.

Since retiring from NASCAR Cup Series competition, Harvick is signed to call Cup Series races for Fox starting in 2024.

He ran a full schedule the next season, posting 3 top-fives and finishing 17th in points.