Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Interview with Denny Hamlin's Crew Chief, Chris Gabehart

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

In Episode 38 of "Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour," NASCAR legend Kevin Harvick engages in a compelling and insightful conversation with NASCAR Crew Chief Chris Gabehart. This episode delves into the dynamic and intricate world of professional racing, offering viewers a unique perspective on the sport's inner workings. The discussion kicks off with Kevin and Chris sharing their insights on the recent race in New Hampshire. Chris then recounts his journey into racing, detailing the path that led him to become a crew chief. He reflects on the experience of being a third-generation driver, providing a personal and historical context to his career. Additionally, Chris shares the significant impact of meeting Tom Busch and their friendship. The conversation continues with Chris elaborating on his relationship with Denny Hamlin. He emphasizes the crucial role of trust and communication in their relationship, shedding light on the teamwork required to excel in NASCAR. Don't miss this action-packed episode, filled with expert analysis and all the thrilling NASCAR moments you crave! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He realized how much trust I had in him. We had SMT and EFI data and all this stuff was hot and heavy in 2019 and still is today. I shut my laptop. I didn't worry about SMT. I didn't care. I had Denny Hamlin driving my race car. I had won 38 races when I had found him over a lot of years. If he tells me he needs this, that's what we're going to give him.

Welcome to Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on Fox. We encourage our closers to follow us on YouTube. if you're searching for us on social media, anywhere that you can find us. We're at Harvick Happy Pod. And this week we've got Chris Gabehart, one of my favorite minds in the sport. And I think as we do on this show, it's always more than just racing. It's the journey to get here, how you got here, and the things that you've done. So I can't wait to hear what he tells us and how he's going to train Denny Hamlin to drive on wet tires.

So hope you enjoy the interview. Thank you. Well, we're excited to have Chris Gavehart in the chair this week, and I appreciate you taking the time to come over here. And it's always better in the studio because looking at that screen right there that you guys can't see at home right now is different. You've sat through enough Zoom meetings at this point to realize that just not as personal as it is in person. So thanks for taking the time. I agree. I think 2020 taught us a lot about how awkward and uncomfortable things can be. So this is good. I like that. Yeah. Well, let's get started right off the bat.

It was a crazy, interesting weekend. And I know that the dry piece of it was really good for you guys. I thought you were obviously in contention to win the race. But this whole new element of wet racetracks, rain tires, no strategy, NASCAR telling you when to put the tires on. Just uncork all that for me. Tell me your thoughts on all of that and how it went. It's, it's, there's so many different elements to it because, you know, I'm, I'm living as the leader of the 11. What's next? When's it going to happen? I'm waiting to see, receive communication from NASCAR.

I have compassion for the fact that they've never done it. So they're not exactly even knowing what to tell us. You know, what's the protocol going to be? We have this big line of storms coming through. We're staring down darkness. You know, what are we even going to do? And you get the sense that they're not sure. And then once you realize they're probably going to go racing here, you got to start thinking, okay. well, what's the playbook going to look like now? How long before the track's going to get dry? Is it going to get dry? You know, what am I going to need to do for adjustments?

You got some sort of idea, but we haven't lived it yet, right? So really just getting through the logistics of all that was obviously unprecedented. We opened Richmond that way and we ran a heat race at Northbrook's Whirl that way. But you realize they're getting ready to hand out a cup race win. You said that. In 82 laps. Like this, we're not playing anymore. This is for real.

right and uh to have to live through that in real time and work through all those logistics was definitely challenging yeah and it seemed as though as you guys went along nascar was communicating different things to you like at the end it was all right we're not putting tires on okay now we're putting tires on was that television or is that actually how all the communication was coming across no so i scan nascar i i wear multiple different radios for various reasons and one of them is NASCAR. My spotter also Lambert scans him as well, but I just want to hear what's being said and when it's being said, especially in those situations. So TV was getting it as soon as I was getting it. Maybe there's some other capacity that they're getting that I'm unaware of. But yeah,

it was that dynamic. Yeah. It was, it was intriguing to watch. And I think the most intriguing part to me was when they fired off to go green with the wets on there. And you saw some guys go to the apron. Some guys go to the top. Some guys go to the middle. We saw Kyle Bush crash under caution. Did you and Denny talk about any of that? Or do you just kind of turn him loose and listen to what he says? So I'm very much the guy who wakes up in the morning,

looks in the mirror and says, what could I do better? And I go to bed the same way. I just think if a team is wired that way, that's how you have the best team. So I accept a lot of responsibility afterwards. What could I have done better to help prepare him? him and us. But the fact of the matter is no one knew. And you got to think guys like yourself and Denny, you've been running loud and for the better part of 20 years, you enter the corner a certain

way and you let off at a certain point. You drive to a certain hash mark and it's muscle memory at that point. I got to imagine. Yes. And clearly instantaneously, all that muscle memory was out the window. And, uh, you know, every groove was, every corner was a different adventure almost. So, I tried to feed him as quickly as I could. What appeared was fast, but how do you know? I mean, there's 15 different lines happening at once. And, you know, you've seen that there were certainly guys willing to take risk more than others. And it was a lot to unpack in a short period of time. Yeah. And so for me in the rain, I was anti-rain because everything we did in the dry was always so much better. And I just didn't have the experience to go through all these different processes of everything

that was happening. Now you see with the kids with Keelan, right? Everything that he's done since he was seven years old. When it rained, you put your rain suit on, you put the rain tires on and you go out on a racetrack. If there was lightning, rain, it didn't matter. You just went out there and you found somewhere to drive. And that is not how I was taught to race. I was not taught to race in the rain. If you, went to an oval track, especially if it's raining, you put your stuff in the trailer and you went home. So I think it's, there's definitely a lot that you can do in the rain that you wouldn't do in the drive. But it's very intriguing to watch. And that's the part that has kind of swayed me a little bit since North Wilkesboro because of the fact that the rain tires were so good.

They actually have more grip. And they were way better than I thought they were going to be. But sitting there watching that race this weekend, I was totally intrigued with where the drivers went, where they were looking for the wet line. But when you step back and look at it, if you were NASCAR starts raining, what do you do from there? If you do it again, knowing what we know now, what do you do now going forward? Well, we're learning, right? So we dealt with Chicago and then Loudoun a few years ago where the races ended up getting shortened by what ended up being an arbitrary light, lap number due to darkness. Well, I mean, these are tracks that don't have lights.

So you got to stop at some point. Well, when it started raining and you got this line of thunder showers behind it and you know that, well, if we were ever to go dry racing, you wouldn't have enough time to finish it. When is this time that we're not going to be able to race anymore? I would like to see them put that time out there a lot earlier. We know for a given set of conditions that let's say 8.30, it's going to be too dark to race. Okay, 830. That's the line of the sand. That way everyone knows.

The teams, the drivers, TV. let's start with that and then we can kind of work ourselves back. Okay, that means we need to go green by seven to realistically have a shot to get the race in. I think that would be helpful. And then I would also, I don't disagree at all with the approach they're taken, which is being overly cautious. Racing in the wet and an oval is unprecedented. We don't know, we know how aggressive oval racing can be versus road course racing. You could put yourself in a situation where if you just take your time, you'll get to a really healthy spot a few years down the road. But if you make one critical mistake, get somebody hurt, it could put a really bad taste in your mouth, whether it be

a driver or a crew member. So I applaud being extra cautious, but I do think the training wheels eventually need to come off. And NASCAR with Elton Sawyer is saying just that. So I think it will be a lot better racing yet when we knock some of those training wheels off. So I get the pit road thing. And I think most every time that we've done this now, the track's been too dry. I think this was probably the wettest that it's been on an oval. I guess Richmond was probably. To begin. Yeah, to begin.

Yeah, not to end. But I think, I think that the, I think the track dry needs to be concentrated to the pit stalls personally. But you're still going to drag water and things into the end of pit road, don't you think? Well, the thing that I keep going back to, and again, air on the side of caution, I'm good with it. But when I think about all the wet weather road course racing we've done, we've had lots of competitive pit stops in the wet already as a series. It was just on a road course. So I personally am not quite sure the difference between the two.

I'm not saying what we did in the past was right. Maybe we could argue in hindsight that was too aggressive and that's why they're behaving the way they are now. But the precedent has been set already that we've done competitive pit stops in the past in the wet. So I think, again, we're just airing to the side of safety. as we should so we don't step on our foot and make a real mistake that we can't walk back. But I do think we'll see them start to loosen up the rules quite a bit.

It was fun to watch. Where are you guys at right now? I think, you know, for the 11 team, great start to the season. And didn't win, but you ground out a bunch of great finishes. This weekend didn't finish where you would have if it was dry in the wet. Where are you guys at right now? Because I think that's the part that people don't understand about, next-gen racing is it's very streaky. It's so hard to go to the racetrack and get it all right.

But where would you assess your team currently? Well, for me, I have a stat that I keep up with that's very subjective, but I'm very critical of it. And is where were we capable of running if everything went right? And that's a number that I'm very critical of. I've kept up with it for five and a half years. And it is the all-encompassing single metric of how should we have done if everything went well. this race is the toughest. I've never dealt with conditions like this where, you know, for the first whatever, 220 laps it was X and then the last 80 laps it was Y. But the bottom line is I think we're executing at a really high level.

You go back to Charlotte. We had issues on Pit Road that were of our making when you look at qualifying. But other than that, we're situational. Still run top five. Gateway, we ended up second. North Wilkes World, the All-Star race running really well. Same thing at Iowa once we got through a really shaky first stage. I was really proud of how our team rebounded.

And before we got wrecked, we were passing for sixth with a shot to run top five. So I think we're executing at a really high level in terms of running capability. But as you mentioned in the Gen 7 era, now more than ever, mistakes just cannot be tolerated by the driver, by the team, by the circumstance on the racetrack. Maybe it's not even of your own doing. but if it drags you into it, it's so hard to recover from. So I think we're right where we need to be

and that we're capable of really good days, you just got to be able to execute them all the way out. When you talk about this car, it's, you know, the intention was to bring everybody closer together. Yeah, it has, but it's also the same, right? The good teams have separated themselves, not consistently, but more often than not. And I think as you look at the short track racing and some of the road course racing, where do you think we are with the car?

What can we do with the car to kind of put ourselves in a position to make it better? Just theoretically. I mean, I don't want to put you on the spot to say, hey, we have to do this. But we know that they don't want to try the horsepower because of the manufacturer thing and where the engine stuff might be headed down the road. So where are we at with the car and what we can do with it to make it better as far as the racing goes? Front to back is always going to be an issue. I mean, the most complicated aerodynamic cars in the world have the biggest arrow push that you could possibly have with F1 cars. So I think that's always going to be an element of what we do.

But what could we do going forward to make it better? I think you nailed it with your last sentence there. when I look at the stated goal of parity, and that is every driver, every team can buy the same parts and have the same opportunity to go win a race, I think that's a great stated goal. The problem is physics gets in the way. And the car that's leading is going to have an advantage over the car that's in second,

and it's quantifiable. And then so on and so forth throughout the rest of the field. And if you can't overcome that disadvantage, then what you're actually doing is handcuffing all the drivers and all the teams into an execution battle. It simply becomes a race of QC Monday through Sunday.

So in my view, what we've got to do as wild as this is to say in a world of 10thow. I mean, we 10thile this car to death now. That is the secret is there is no secret.

But what we've got to do is make it harder. I think whether it's more horsepower or, you know, smaller footprint on the tires, which I think we could do, by the way. I mean, all the revisions that we've made to this car, how big a deal would it be to make a two inch narrow wheel from the inside and make the footprint of the tire smaller? Right. We simply have a horsepower to grip ratio imbalance.

We knocked out 100 horsepower. We went to a wider tire. We went to independent rear suspension. We increased grip, decreased horsepower. That's too easy for you. Right. That's too easy for the race teams. And therefore, the physics disadvantage from however you line up on the track, given a scenario, is hard to overcome.

Now, you do see the best teams still finding their way forward when you, it's interesting. I take a survey every week of how you're parking in the garage, right? How you're parking in the garage every week kind of gives you a litmus test for how are we doing. I had 200 cars to my left, one to my right, two Toyota's to the right of that one. pretty telling that the best teams are still finding their way to the front, but the optics are it's harder than ever to pass. And I think it's just because it's a little bit too easy. Yeah.

Well, and harder to pass comes from more competitive because the cars are so close together. And I hear Jim Hunter telling me in my ear right now, it's, you've got to have people to pass in order to make it a great race. So it's an interesting balance. And from whether it's the teams or NASCAR or, whatever it is with with everything that you guys have. So enough about all that. Tell me how you got here. Where did you start in racing? How did you get involved in racing? What sparked your interest to just get this whole process as being a Cup Series crew chief for you? Yeah. So my story's an interesting one.

I'm a third generation racer on one side. So my grandfather raced on one side. He was actually did some NASCAR racing probably one of the more interesting stories I can tell about my grandfather is when they had the famous replacements race at Talladega way back when my grandfather is one of the replacements no kidding Alstrob so yeah he on my mom's side and then on my dad's side my dad was first generation on his side but into go-kart racing and the whole bit so I was raised in racing at a very young age have very fond memories of going to Louisville motor Speedway I grew up four minutes Seven turns in a joke. Yes.

It was amazing. I was so young that I didn't realize how special that place was at the time on the local level, but they packed that place out every Friday night, every Saturday night for 30 weekends out of the year. It was incredible what they did at Little bit more Speedway. But anyway, grew up three miles from the track there. My dad raced all the time. And then at 10 years old, I got my first go cart and we drug it down to Bargetown, Kentucky

and started the process. So I raced go carts competitively. for 10 years, World Carting Association, lots of dirt and pavement oval racing, won a few national championships at that level, and then went pavement midget racing with a team out of Little Kentucky, Mike Nowicki, the old L.A. car, Kenny Nichols,

used to drive that car at IRP is probably back at the Thursday night thunder. So I was after that, drove those for a couple of years, and that was right about the time I was transitioning to go to college, Purdue University. And it was always with the intent of making, strengthening my racing background.

I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted the race, whether it be driving or working on them, the hope was driving them. But the intent of the mechanical engineering degree was just to be smarter about making faster race cars. So I got that done. Start a racing pavement late models for years throughout the Midwest during my college years as well. And then started to transitioning to the reality of,

okay I'm spending a lot of time of money we're racing I've got to start figuring out how to make a little money right this too maybe the driving thing's not going to happen and started transitioning to entrepreneurial side of things both uh as a driver as a crew chief as a shock builder advanced racing suspensions out of Indianapolis is uh kind of where uh I got my roots in the the the shock side of things got a pretty good background so was there was there was there a moment though that said okay this is this is the night was there a night that you can look back on and say i had to have a conversation with somebody yourself or was there was there one moment that really sticks out that says i need to move on i i had won the 2007 CRA super series championship as a driver and i did it with with my car owner

uh jim winters out of indianapolis who jim was was a great steward of my career i think a world the world of jim and everything that he took the time to take out of his life to help give me an opportunity to continue my racing. So I won with the championship with him as my car owner. And the reality was for what we could afford and where I was in my career age, that kind of thing. This is my mid-20s now. That's about as far as he could take me. And he told me that. So I had sort of exhausted all options, realized that I'm not 19 at this point in my career. I'm 26. And, you know, I realize that if I'm going to move on. I need to do it now. I can't, I mean, I'm 43 now. I easily could be sitting in a chair at 37 like a Cliff Daniels, but I chose to push the driving entrepreneurial side a little

bit longer. But that was the night was 2007 winning that championship. So you look back at all of that. And there's also those moments that we all have, right? You, you decide if you're going to work on the car or drive the car. Well, you say, okay, I'm going to work on the car. So now you have your Purdue background, you've made the decision. So what's the path in the NASCAR world at the highest levels? What was your path that leads you to leading Denny Hamlin's team today? So it's why I want to look back at it. It's very clear and I'm very thankful for all of it. But it was late model racing. Tom Bush was running Kyle Bush's late model program around the country. Kyle would drive a little bit. They had some other mainstay drivers that would also drive.

but Tom took note of kind of the little team that could with our 28 foot tag along and there's this guy over in the tire impound doing all of his tires. There's this guy that jumps out of the car and changes all his shocks and springs. It goes up in the trailer and rebuilds a shock and gets back out. And then he can actually get in the car and go pretty fast too. So I think, you know, in that and kind of transitioning from driving to working on him, I went crew chief and for a team one year in Atlanta in 2009. still owned my own car at that point and raced it when I could. But as I look back in arrears,

I didn't know this at the time, but I was building a relationship with Tom, and Tom had taken an interest in me. So late in 2009, they asked me to be the crew chief for their late model team over at KBM. They had not quite moved into the new building yet that Spires in now, but it was close. They were still over at the drag strip.

And I said to myself, man if I'm ever going to get into this NASCAR gig and try it what better way to do it than in an environment that I'm still comfortable with I know everything about these cars everything about these tracks but I'm now doing it under the watchful eye of you know Kyle Bush and Tom Bush and

kind of their NASCAR truck program right so if I can succeed in my own environment and show some some you know abilities then obviously I'm in with the right people to maybe help jumpstart the NASCAR career. And they'll know where to put me in to when to put me there. And I'm so thankful to this day for everything that Kyle Bush and Tom did for me in those years because it worked out exactly like I hoped. They took an interest in my abilities and thought a lot of my work ethic, I guess,

or just want to get me out of there, one of the two. But Dave Rogers at Joe Gibbs Racing was looking for a second engineer in the start of 2012 and I became the candidate for that and that's how I got the JGR and the rest is history. So you progressed through JGR. You guys are in contention to win championship pretty much year after year at this point and in contention to contend for it again this year. What are the challenges of keeping that team together every year but also having to deal with the highest level driver? What challenges have changed from that time at the, you know, from the time that you were engineered to now managing this team? What were the, what are the massive differences between

what you dealt with as the engineer to dealing with what you deal with now at the highest level? Yeah, that's a good question. For me, what I have learned, and it's definitely been year after year of better understanding, is that it's not just me and my efforts anymore. That will not carry us to the weekend, week out, race winning contenders that we've become, it has to be how do you inspire all the people around you? And even more than that, how do you help them succeed and whatever they need, whatever their job is? How do you make them happy? How do you challenge them? Because if I limit our team to my brain, it's going to be very limiting at the end of the day. So you surround yourself by people that you trust, people that are worthy of being there. And then you trust,

and then you trust the people you surround yourselves by. And I take more, I'm never the first person to Victory Lane. I'm always the last. Oftentimes I'll go to the bathroom first or drop my stuff off. That's not what it's about for me. What it's about for me is giving everyone on the team all the tools that they need to go succeed and then helping them do that and being happy for them when they do. It's a very selfless act for me.

And I didn't, you know, that's a major transition from where I was 13 years ago at KBM as a, the guy mounted the tires and built the shocks. But really for me, that's the magic is investing in the people around you and truly investing in them. Well, you're obviously a great leader. And, you know, dealing with all those things is much different than people look at what they see on TV. There's so much that goes into it. But you're obviously very good at putting Denny Hamlin's career back on track. What makes him so good with you? Well, I go back to, and I've told this story once or twice,

but it really is the cornerstone of what makes Denny Hamlin so good. So heading into the 2019 season, which would be my first with him, a lot of talks had gone on behind the scenes about wanting to make a change and thinking I would be the guy. But there was never a sit-down moment with Denny and I that was really like, okay, how does he feel about this? So we went to a lunch, end up being a two-hour lunch. And in that moment, I realized just how competitive he truly was. I had worked with him as a race engineer in 2015 with Dave Rogers as crew chief. But I realized that guy still had a lot of gas in the

tank. He really wanted to compete at a high level. He was just obviously struggling with how to do that and, you know, that given era of NASCAR. So when I, when I, when I, I got the job, I realized, man, this guy's ready to go. I just got to figure out how to harness that. I spent two or three months deep diving stats and just really going into the 11 car, strengths and weaknesses. I set him down. He absorbed it all. And he never wants to put his thumb on me in any way. You look at where this guy was at in his career. And this was really going be a make or break relationship for him he's doing it with a rookie crew chief um i'd only had three three years of exfinity experience prior um that that says a lot oh yeah about him and his ability to

understand what he's good at and what he needs those around him to be good at it's a lot of wisdom in that yeah and that was the key and i think denny's very similar denny's situation was very similar to mine. You know, he was kind of in a rut when I went from RCR to SHR. And he found you and trust everything that you have. That's very similar to how I felt with Rodney Childers. It's like all of a sudden, everything that you've worked for in your whole career, it's like, now I don't have to worry about the car anymore. All I have to do is is my job. And I have to be the one to give him the information because I know he can fix it. And I feel like that's how, how Denny is with you.

And I think that that was always, I mean, there's such a relief from a driver's standpoint. And I have to feel like you feel the same way because I feel like that's how Roddy felt towards me. It's like, I'm not going to worry about the driving. I'm going to give him some information. But from there, he's going to handle it. Is that fair to say?

Yeah. And the other thing that I think Denny would tell you, he realized how much trust I had in him. We had SMT and EFI data and all this stuff was hot and heavy. 2019 and still is today. I shut my laptop. I didn't worry about SMT. I didn't care. I had Denny Hamlin driving my race car.

The guy had won 38 races when I had found him over a lot of years. If he tells me he needs this, that's what we're going to give him. Right. And I made sure he knew that every day in every way. I wasn't worried about how this guy was driving his car or that guy was driving his car. It didn't matter because I believed, and I still believe to this day, that if we do our jobs the best of our ability and we give him, what he tells us he needs. And we've come up with all different kinds of ways that are much,

much more advanced than it's looser, it's tight at this point. But at the beginning, it was that. You had to start with something. But if we give him what he needs, we're going to have a shot to win weekend or week out. And that really is the foundation. I think in a lot of ways that relaxed him. It reminded him, you know what? You're right. I am Denihan. I can do this. We just got to work on what the this is. And that was really powerful. This will be a fun question. So how do you go back now and say okay all right denny hamill we got to make you a rain racer so how do you how do you break that down you know it's it's funny you say that because a lot of times on the flight back and two i will fly with todd barrier we sit together a lot and you know we were going over how the last 80 laps went how was a

challenge for us and he says so what do you do how do you make him better and i said well i got to make better adjustments number one look look in the mirror the reality is i don't think that was the truth but that's always going to be the first place I look. So we got to talking about that. And it's such a hard thing. I can't imagine how difficult an environment like that would be for a guy like Denny or yourself. Yeah. Who has become so trained and your instincts are so cutely trained for X.

But now there's a Y form of racing that we've never dealt with. So the short answer is I'm not sure. I don't know how, I don't know if I don't know if I don't. even want to unravel that at this point. You have to. You have to unravel because I know for me, when I went to the road courses in the rain for the first time, I felt like a fish out of water, didn't have a clue where to go from there. And it is the most difficult thing. One of the most difficult things that I've ever gone through was racing that stock car in the rain on a road course. And it is just like you're saying, so totally different than anything I've ever done. So

I just, I think that'll be a, I can't wait to hear the progression of this conversation. What I mean by that is we talked about the most analogous thing I can make it to is dirt racing. Yeah. And, and, you know, maybe it's just street stock dirt racing or put him in a dirt late model somewhere. I really think those are the types of things that would help him. Yeah. But at this stage of his career, with all the other things that he's got going on, the little bit of time he has left for his family, his business. Is that the wisest use of his time, probably not, versus getting us off of what our strengths are. And that is the lion's share of the schedule. So for me, I think you really got to balance how much you try to get good at the few things you're bad at at this point in his career versus making sure you capitalize on the things you're good at. Now, that's not the rose colored glass answer that we would all want to

think that, hey, we got to make our weaknesses stronger. But it is about an investment. And you only have so much time and effort to invest. You have way more strengths than you do weaknesses. That's a good thing with Denny Hamlin. All right. We don't have a lot of time, but I have to ask this question. What was your first car? Well, I know this is your go-to question. So I've been thinking about the story. Very easy. It was a 93 red Ford Ranger crew cab. I was about 18 years old, 17 years old when I got it. So I'd driven a few family cars prior to that. And of course, I needed to be able to haul a race car part. So it was a truck. I drove that for five or six years, took it into my Purdue career before I finally traded it out for a 93 Honda Accord.

What in the world, man? You went straight engineer quick. Yeah, well, and it was old. It was just this thing was old and ran out and I was dumping money in it or I was going to get this. Now, Jim Winters, who was my late model car owner, he owned salvage yards. So he was all the time coming across good cars that would come across a lot for cheap. And we got that one for me. and I drove it all the way to North Carolina.

This is the best part of my car stories. So I went to work for Kyle Busch Motorsports in that 93 Honda Accord. My now wife and I were renting a place. We ended up buying a place five months into being in town. Our first house we'd ever bought together. It's $280,000 we bought it. And then a week later, not a week later, we're in my Honda Accord, just car shopping, just riding around,

not really planning on buying anything. We end up in an infinity dealership. I buy a brand new infinity two-door coop. And I go home and I lay in bed and have an anxiety attack like you won't imagine. Here I am. I used to owe nobody anything. Now I've got this brand new $280,000 house. I've got this brand new coop.

What am I going to do? I'm five months into this late model crew chiefing gig, right? Well, what I did was wake up the next morning and say, you know what you want nice things you go to work for them that's right i went to work for them i never looked back i treated it as motivation and uh that's my that's my car story that's awesome well congratulations on everything i appreciate you taking the time today i think it's fun when we get to hear a little bit more about people uh and and what they've done throughout their career not just the drivers there's a lot more to it than just just the drivers so thanks for taking the time

today yeah thanks for doing it and i think it's great i think it's great that you're digging down a little bit deeper and hopefully you're enjoying your new roll. I'm having fun. Thanks. Well, we hope you enjoyed that interview. Always great to have our guests in studio. We thank Chris for coming in this week and taking some time to talk through his career and everything that's happened. So you can follow us anywhere on social media at Harvick Happy Pod, or you can follow us on YouTube and all you closers out there, give us a like. So thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.