Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Mike Joy Interview

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Kevin Harvick sits down with broadcasting icon Mike Joy for an unforgettable conversation. Mike shares how he got his start in motorsports broadcasting, his transition from behind the wheel to behind the mic, and what makes NASCAR so special compared to other forms of racing. The two also dive into Mike's all-time favorite races, his thoughts on Kyle Larson's potential, and plenty of behind-the-scenes stories from decades in the sport. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The sport just took a giant dump. We're not attracting the younger fan base that we need to move this sport forward into the next decade. He will be a champion of this sport. I have no doubt. Welcome to Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour, presented by Echo Park Automotive and NASCAR on Fox. And today we have my booth mate and friend Mike Joy in the chair. And we just appreciate you taking the time today.

But I thought it would be really interesting to, People love the stories, Mike, and they love to hear a lot of the history of NASCAR. But you've been in this for over 50 years now. So thanks for coming today. Well, sure. I mean, it's not like we just spent all of Saturday and Sunday together. But, yeah, this is fine. This is a little different look after Kyle Larson beat everybody up at Bristol.

It was a fun race to call, but in a different way from a race where we got a lot of side-by-side racing. Yeah, it was definitely a clinic. I think that was the best way. to put that. So you've been involved in this sport for over 50 years. And when you look at everything that you've done and accomplished, but it's been awesome. But I think when you look back at it, how did all this start for you? In high school, I was looking at college catalogs. And the first thing I did was I crossed off any college that wouldn't let freshmen have cars on campus. I mean, you know, back in the late 60s, your car was a large part of who you were.

Yeah. So, okay, that was it. A magazine called Sports Car Graphic, which later folded into Motor Trend, had cars on campus. They had a monthly feature about college sports car clubs and colleges that actually, University of Pittsburgh had a Trans Am team. Colleges had race teams. There was just a lot of stuff going on. So I would thumb through the catalogs and nothing much about the courses. But, boy, if they had a sports car club, if they had a budding FM radio station, it was the Donna College Radio.

and if you could have a car on campus, okay, I would go there. And so that's how all that started. So your love for cars sounds like it started at a pretty young age. I mean, you were looking at colleges basing it upon what you could use with your car. So how did that love for cars? Because everywhere that we go, Mike has a car, has a car or a museum or something that he's going to look at. I mean, you know so much about cars and obviously you need to know a lot about cars with everything that you do at the auctions and things that you do. But how did somebody introduce you to cars? Did you just fall in love with cars? How did you start the process of getting to know so much about cars in general?

My grandfather was a road warrior. He supervised salesmen over a large, multi-state area, loved to drive, loved road. trips. He lived in Chicago. When I was young, love taking trips to Montana, to Wyoming, to go fly fishing, to go sightseeing. And we lived in Hartford, Connecticut, and he and my grandmother bundled all four of us kids up in the car one day to drive to Providence, Rhode Island, because that was the only capital of all the 48 states that he had not driven to. Wow. So, yeah, that was kind of cool. They admitted Alaska and Hawaii, and he said, never mind, I'm done, right? But that's where it started. And working for a big company, supervising a lot of salesmen. He bought a new Cadillac every two years. He said, I want the people

that work for me to see these signs of success and what could be if they continue to work hard, rise up the ladder. So that's where it started. My dad inherited that. My dad had, you know, we had four kids. He also had three kids from a prior marriage. So he didn't have a lot of cars, but he had nice cars. And that was just all, when I was 15, he came home with a brand new Pontiac GTO one day. And man, I was the happiest 15-year-old in the whole state of Connecticut. Because aside from a Corvette, that was the car. Right.

It was awesome. So, yeah, he had a love of cars. I got it from him. And first year of college, Lime Rock Park was an hour away from where I went to school. And I went up there and talked them into giving us a whole bunch of discount tickets to sell to the students. And the sports car club would caravan up to Lime Rock Park for the first race of the season, sat on that hillside.

and it's like, wow, that's what I want to do. So did you race? I wanted to, but I was lacking a few things. First off, in school, I wanted to play sports. I had the strategy of baseball. I had the whole thing down. But I didn't have any skills. Yeah.

You know? Couldn't throw, couldn't field, couldn't hit. A lot of us that drive cars don't have a lot of athletic ability. Exactly. Yeah. But you get in that car, everybody weighs 3,000 pounds. Everybody has 500 horsepower, okay? it's a great equalizer.

And I wanted to race. We'd listen to the Indy 500 every year on the radio, you know, and I got to tour Indianapolis with my grandparents one day, and man, I just, I want to be here. So from sitting on that hillside that day, college had a sports car club. We ran road rallies. We ran auto crosses. And those were things you could do with a street car. Yeah.

I didn't have tools, a garage, a pit crew, any of the infrastructure you need to go racing. And back then, you couldn't just look on the internet and find somewhere that somebody could write a check to to jump in a race car. There were no legends cars. There were no bandoleros. You know, it was really hard. If you wanted a racing license, first off, you had to have a driver license and then go to racing school, find somebody to sign you off and have a car that you and your friends or whoever would prepare and crew. Yeah. And I didn't have any of that.

But I found a way to do it. who up to? In college, a friend of mine and I, MSSA was just getting started. Okay. You know, racing with a difference is what John Bishop said when he left SCCA to form emsa. So I ran my first MSA race in 1973 in a team that I had put together. We ran an EMSA RS car.

We cobbled it together in a tube bay garage. And we're putting the roll cage in. We run out of DOM tubing. Well, behind the garage of that rented. house, there was an old dog run and dog cages. Oh, my gosh. You know, with chain-link fence. We just took the pipe from there and finished the doorbars, you know, and we were off

to the races. Not necessarily the safest thing that you had, but it met the rule book. It met the letter of the rule. Yeah. Yeah. So you go to college and you're interested in the car clubs. You go run your race, the announcing side of things. We were auto crossing at a quarter mile speedway, Riverside Park.

Okay. On Sundays. They would rent us the track to run auto cross. and, you know, the fiery old Irishman that owned the place, Ed Carroll, comes walking in the grandstand one day, wondering why several hundred people are watching one car go around cones instead of outspending money in an amusement park. And he was listening to what I did. And he said, would you come announce for us Saturday nights as the assistant announcer at our modified races? Yeah. And I turned him down. I said, look, I'm into Formula One, Trans Am, Can Am. This is a bunch of jolappies and all they do is turn left. And his PR guy, Joe Mahoney, said, well, would you come to the race and watch and observe Saturday night and just see what it's all about? Sure. And I'm watching 60 modifies trying for 20 spots in the 50 lap feature. And one driver, Charlie Glazier comes through, doesn't do well in the heats. He comes through, wins the B-concy.

He gets into the Aconcy. He's coming to that. He in another car banging wheels and banging off the concrete wall, coming to the finish line. 6,000 people are jumping up and down, yelling and screaming. And I went, yeah, this is big. So their main announcer, John Wallace Spencer,

local TV weatherman, Shakespearean actor, and author, was sometimes a way doing book tours. And I would, you know, rise up and be the main announcer on some nights. This was 1970. I was 20 years old. Had almost no idea what I was doing. But gosh, it was fun. And that led to opportunities.

They would bring Ken Squire down from Vermont for the biggest races and the demolition derbies. And I learned a lot from Ken. He got to observe me. And then I went to work with Jackerood at Stafford, his dad's track. And they had a killer PA system. They had microphones all around the track. We had turn announcers, pit reporters, just like MRN.

And Jackie was working for MRN, which, of course, Ben Squire started, and then they kind of brought me along as a weekend turn announcer. So I would get a plane ticket, a hotel room, and a fairly small check. Yeah. You know, have to get my own rental car, pay my own meals. And Jackie and I described it as deficit announcing because we go home with less money than we left with. But wow, what an education. Yeah, and so you get that education.

And at what point do you realize, maybe I can make a living out of this? What was that opportunity to not be in a deficit as you went home? At the end of the 78 season, Jackie was running MRN, wanted to bring me to Daytona to work with him. Unfortunately, he had a small staff, couldn't put another person on. So Jim Foster, our boss, VP of NASCAR and International Speedway Corp, said, we'll hire you to be the stock car racing publicity person for Daytona, and then on the weekends you can go broadcast for MRN, which frankly was a great deal for him because I was doing two jobs for one salary.

And did that for a year, a year and a half. And when Jack left MRN, they looked at my resume, and I had majored in advertising and marketing, and they moved me into the hot seat. And so now I'm the vice president, producer, sales manager, and everything. And then on, you know, Chief Cook and Bottleshawisher, and then on weekends, I'm announcing with Barney Hall. Right. So I was getting to do everything I ever dreamed of doing.

And I'm running the biggest independent live sports radio network in America at the age of 30. And again, two, three jobs, one salary, did that for three or four years. and then Pontiac, who is one of our biggest advertisers called, they said, we have an opening at our ad agency in Detroit. We want you to come up here and run fun and games for us. So I ran auto racing, rock and roll tours, things like that for Pottyac. They're building their brand image. And as soon as I left Daytona, CBS called.

And they said, we couldn't talk to you while you were running the radio network. We wouldn't do that to NASCAR. But now that you're not, we want you on our team. And I joined CBS in 83 as a pit reporter and was in the pits there for 17 years and had stints at TNN and TBS and other cable networks. But really, it was the CBS thing. And in the end of 1997, when Ken Squire stepped aside from anchoring CBS and moved into the host role, they moved me into the anchor seat. And, of course, the first race I get to call is Bailner Hart's Daytona 500 win. And, you know, that's the clip that seems to race.

resonate and follow me, you know, everywhere I go. We'll be walking in a crowd, walking toward the booth, and people are still going, 20 years of trying. You know, it's like, okay, you know. And when you look back at that, when you look back at that moment, obviously, I mean, you can't script the things that you call you. It's just like me stepping into Dale's car. I mean, you don't script any of those things. You take the opportunity as they are presented in front of you, and you just never know that those are going to be the moments. But is that the, is that still your favorite call? I don't know if it's my favorite,

but it seems to be everybody's favorite. What's yours? Of what it meant. I'm going to cop out on you, and I'm going to say the next one. Because people ask, what's your favorite race? Well, the next one. You know, that's, we're always,

we're always looking forward. And it's not fair to look back, but I've been blessed with some really good analysts. I've worked with a whole lot of people, but, you know, people stand out. Bonnet, who was our sports Will Rogers. Buddy Baker, Buddy had just the greatest natural sense of humor of anybody that's ever done this job.

Darrell Waltrip was certainly unique. Larry Rick Reynolds, the hardest working man in show business. Still is. Yeah. Jeff Gordon, who, you couldn't throw Jeff a question he couldn't answer because he knew anything and everything. And more importantly, he knew what the viewers wanted to know. and that made him stand above a whole lot of people.

Tony Stewart similarly, you know, and now you're in the booth filling that role. And it's really great. It's kind of like being really great to race with people you trust. Yeah. It's really great to have somebody up there that can explain it all and have it makes sense for the view. In terms of the viewer will understand. And then, you know, we're always going to have a character on the, the telecast and sometimes, you know, Michael Waltrip, Clint Boyer, you know, fill those roles very

well because you and Jeff and I, I think, are really good explainers. Yeah. I'm not sure we're the best entertainers. Yeah, I would agree with that. All right. We know how to have fun, right? But we're not just, and the light bulb that went off for everybody at Fox was when we were doing those eye racing as if they were real races. And Jeff and I are doing them. And we're kind of, We're struggling, but we're getting into it as much as we can. And Clint crashes the crap out of some car. And we just turn over there and we go, Boyer, what happened? He goes, McGivetam broke.

And that's when everybody at Fox knew, we need this guy. Yeah. We need this. That's the missing part of our presentation. And, you know, and when it works and when Clint's doing the same show, we are, works really, really well. Yeah. You know, but, oh, there are squirrel. There are tangents.

Yeah. But hopefully, it's still all fun. So what's the greatest race you've ever seen? Best race you've ever, when you're standing up in that booth and you look back on it, well, maybe you can give me a couple of them. I mean, we get to see right off the bat for me when I look back at that Atlanta finish with three wide. I was just standing there. I had no idea what to say because it was so new for me, but there was so much happening

and so much going on and so much excitement. And you feel that in a booth. I don't think people realize the energy that you feel as an announcer. but you've seen so many things. When you could go back and pick a couple, what were some of those races that you were just in awe over? Well, that was one.

Carl Edwards getting his win, his first win at Atlanta, and the way he did it, the way he had to commit and ride the wall and beat Jimmy. You know, that was another. A lot of Jeff Gordon wins, some Tony Stewart win.

Tony Stewart against Danny Hamlin at Sonoma, which I think was Tony's final win. That was unbelievable. And people don't understand, that we're not cheering for one driver. We're always pulling for the second place driver to catch the runaway first place driver to make a race out of it. It doesn't matter who's where.

We're race fans. Right. We're race fans. And that's what we want to see. But Sunday, I watched Kyle Larson not just put on a clinic, but I watched how he would vary his entry into the corner based on where everybody else was that he had to pass. and he would enter the corner differently depending on where he was going to catch him and how he was going to pass him. That to me, that was just so instructional and just so, so awesome to watch,

even though he had a big lead and neither Denny nor anybody else could catch him. I think one race that stands out for me was because it was my hero, Dan Gurney. 1980, Les Richter lures Gurney out of a 10-year retirement. Would you come run a race at Riverside, run a cup race? and Dan agreed. They put him in a second Rod Austerlund car. He was teammate to Dale Earnhardt. And the car shows up to Monte Carlo,

and it has 480 on the side, 480. Yeah. Which didn't mean anything. Right. What it meant was Gurney's number was 48. Well, James Hilton had 48 in the Cup series. So they had to enter Gurney as a Winston West driver. I mean, this guy's won in Formula One,

and he's got the same credential as St. James. Davis, you know, this doesn't work. Because the rule was, whichever qualified faster, the Winston West driver or the cup driver would get to keep the number for the race. So Gurney, handily out-qualifies

almost everybody, and they put a big white thing over the zero, so he's 48. Otherwise, he would have had to have been 80. And he's out there running with the leaders, smoothest road racer you have ever seen. Takes care of his equipment. He's running third. He's within striking distance.

He definitely has a chance to win the race. There's Gurney for President and Viva Gurney banners all over the track. And they had a huge crowd because Dan was the star of Riverside. And then told me one night at dinner much, much later, he said, the darnest thing happened. He says, I've never seen it before or since. The input shaft on the transmission broke. And he was out of the race. Yeah.

You know, but for that reason, you know, for that reason that's... Well, you've been around the sport for so long and you've been able to see so many of the great, we've been able to see pretty much all of them on the NASCAR side for sure. And I think as you look at today, you mentioned Kyle Larson. Where do you think Kyle Larson fits in, and he's got a long ways to go in his career. Where could Kyle Larson fit in among the all-time greats? Certainly top 10 and possibly top five. It's very, very hard, of course, to compare eras. Yeah.

You know, we have no idea how David Pearson would do in this car today or Richard Petty or even Jeff Gordon. Yeah. We don't know. We'll never know.

We have no idea how you might have done in one of those cars in the 70s and 80s, say before power steering or, you know, or even before front steer cars, before Bobby Allison

made the front steer car a thing. And everybody was driving rear steer banjo cars. Essentially, they were all racing 63 Ford Galaxies. with different sheet metal on them. Yeah. Because that was the underpinnings, you know, and maybe different engines.

So we'll never really know. The other thing is, sometimes you get a driver that's so dominant that the success of other drivers pales by comparison. I was looking at your stats the other day, and all, not just all the races you won, but all the top fives, all the lap slet, all of everything. And I'm going, you know, when Kevin was racing, how did we not make a bigger deal out of this, oh yeah, Jimmy Johnson was winning five championships in a row. That's right.

And everything else, you know, kind of was well down the list by comparison. So we celebrate it now. Sorry if we didn't celebrate it so much then. That's okay. You know, when I look at Kyle Arson, though, it's been a long time. Tony Stewart, he could go to sprint cars and he could go to midgets and he could go to IndyCar. Did you see the list yesterday, now that he's won a top fuel race, of all the different cars he's won in? It would take us five minutes.

to recite it. Yeah. And now it's a, you know, a straight-line drag racing car. And, you know, you look at Indy Cars. Obviously, Tony went through IndyCar. Kyle Larson didn't go through any car. He's gone through NASCAR and now back back to IndyCar. But there's a, there's a small group of guys that have done that over the last three decades, I would say. Well, you're right. You got Tony Stewart, you got Kyle Larson. I think Christopher Bell, given the opportunity, could do that. Now, when I was growing up, and again, I'll use Gurney as an example, but it could be Mario, it could be AJ, it could be Parnelly Jones. Gurney wins the first ever Formula One race won by an American driver in an American car, the Gurney Eagle. Yeah.

And he wins what spot? And then he goes to Lamont, and he wins that with A.J. Foyt. And one reason they won, well, they had one of the best cars. They had the Ford G.T. The great drivers get the great cars. But one thing that Dan did was he never poked the bear. Yeah. He never ran a lap within a couple of tenths of AJ's best lap because he didn't want AJ to over-extend the car by trying to beat him.

And he knew he would. Yeah. You know? And so wins Lamont. Then he comes back and wins an Indy car race. And then he goes, I mean, just one week you're in one car, one week you're in another. And you're winning every week in all kinds of these different disciplines. Tony Stewart, Kyle Larson, and there are others that could do it if the opportunities and the schedule presented themselves.

Who's the guy you want to see go try the Indy 500 outside of Kyle Arson? Christopher Bell. Yes. Yeah. He's, wow. He will be a champion of this sport. Yeah, I have no doubt. I really wished he'd had the chance to run for it last year.

You know, Martinsville got in the way and so did a couple of blocking Chevroletes. Yeah. You know, all right, we know what happened then. But, you know, the way he handled that and the way he made his point about whether things were fair or not without taking on NASCAR, I think really elevated his status in the garage and in the sport. And I think now he's someone that NASCAR respects and listens to. And I think they're ready for him to be a champion. And he is. Yeah, I think he is too.

And when you look at the maturity of Christopher as a person, and he's developing into being a leader. And you look at our garage and you've got Joey Legano. You look at Christopher Bell compared to a Joey Legano. It's a big gap of time that difference, that Lugano has been in this garage, and you look back at Christopher Bell. Christopher Bell came in during COVID, 2020.

Think about that. You know, he's had four full-time years. Three of them in a quality car. He started in that 95 car. And that year was difficult just to be thrown in into the Cup Series. And really, when you look at our Cup Series driver lineup right now, it's pretty young. And I believe the potential of these guys is a lot bigger than most people get credit. because I hear people say all the time.

They're like, hey, we don't have any big stars. We don't have any big personalities. Honestly, we have a lot of great personalities. We have a lot of kids that are maturing into being adults. And I think that makes a big difference in how you express yourself and the things that you're willing to say. Would you agree with that? I would.

But I think that maturing process is hindered by what is permanently attached to our pocket, and that's the cell phone. Yeah. A lot of these younger drivers, and I'll even put Larson and Bell and a lot of them in that category. You know, their social skills have pretty much been determined by their cell phones. And that's their interaction with their peers. And people's skills and media skills take a while to develop.

And Christopher Bell is a great example. He wasn't even on our radar the first couple of years in Cup because he wasn't out with the media. You know, he just, his personality, his external personality took a while to develop. And like I say, now he's a spokesman. He's a leader in our sports. So is Kyle Larson. But these younger drivers, it's really taking a while maybe longer than it should

to bring that out of them and try to make them into stars. We have stars. We have great drivers in this series. And I guess it's up to you, me, and the people that will follow us this season to make heroes out of them. But when I think back to even when I started, I remember being at dinner with the media. I remember drinking beer with the media. I remember all these things that we used to do and interact outside of the racetrack. That has to have changed. I think social media in general has changed the personality. But I also think that the way that the media works, a lot of times those people don't even come to the racetrack anymore to cover the race.

Some of them are even in different countries and, you know, for click bait. but when was the last time you got a call from a PR person saying, hey, would you come to dinner with my driver? Yeah. You're right. It does, it should. It really doesn't happen. And the interesting thing about the evolution and change of our sport,

it is a much shorter time at the racetrack. We used to get there on Thursday. You used to do the sponsor dinners, and you used to go, you know, do whatever else you did on Thursday night. Now you show up, a lot of times showing up Saturday morning. Yes. And so that time at the restaurant, racetrack and the way that the flow of the schedule, in my opinion, and it sounds like yours as well,

it has changed the way that you interact with people outside of your team. Absolutely. Now, it used to be in the 80s, 90s, and even the early 2000s, local newspapers had beatwriters that would cover the sport and travel and go to every race and write their stories and write their columns. So for us full-time media members, I could go in the press room, the infield press, press room or stop by the press box and grab, you know, Al Pierce or Mike Embry or Mike Harris with Associated Press or whoever, hey, did you talk to, who talked to so-and-so? You know, did you get

a quote from this guy? What's going on with that? And we'd all trade story ideas. Well, now, not only are there no beat writers, Darlington closed their press box. They sold it as a suite this race. There was no press box outside the racetrack. There was just the infield media center. So you're right. There are less people generating stories. There are. is less time and less opportunity to get with the drivers, I was able at Darlington, walked through the garage, race morning, saw a few drivers standing by their haulers, had a great chat with Todd Gilden and Zane Smith and found a few other people, but by and large, those opportunities to chat just don't exist anymore.

Yeah. When you look at our sport today, it's changed a lot. You've seen a lot of generations. You've seen a lot of things. if you were in charge for a day, what would be the first thing that you changed? What's our biggest challenge? I think right now,

and you said it, the driver base is getting younger. I mean, we have, well, Jesse Love, 20 years old. We have 18 and 20 year olds coming into the Cup series and making a mark. The fan base is getting older.

We're not attracting the younger fan base, that we need to move this sport forward into the next decade, into the next couple of decades. So my first thing would be to energize the teams, the PR people, the sponsors to get out there and activate. All right. So Sunday's race was the Food City 500, a local grocery store chain, you know, mostly in that area in Tennessee. during the heyday of NASCAR, which coincidentally was about the time Talladega Nights came out. That was when we hit our peak for fan engagement and crowds at the racetrack. I remember going into a food lion in Bristol, Tennessee,

and you couldn't push your cart down any aisle without knocking over a cardboard cutout of some driver hawking something. Right. You know, you couldn't. You couldn't go in a supermarket without knowing about NASCAR. It was everywhere. And I can't blame COVID. I can't blame the sponsors. But when NASCAR transitioned to being a sport with mostly B2B sponsors,

you know, the uniforms that your guys wear at the car dealerships you own, the motor oil that you pour in your service department, you know, when these started becoming the sponsors and the sponsors stopped absent Bush beer and a couple of others. stopped activating toward the general public and toward the race fans, the sport just took a giant dump in the relationship, relativity, relative to everyday life department. Yeah. And we lost a lot of that young fan base that we really need to covet if we're going to, if we're

going to grow this sport again. Yeah. And I think when I listen to your story, it's very similar to mine. I mean, you had to do every aspect of the position that you're in, but also everything around it that made it go, whether it was funding it, whether it was managing it, whether it was on the air, off the air. And I feel like sometimes just that self-motivation of wanting to build your brand is not because the drivers don't want to. It's because they don't know how. I agree. And with the way that this system works now, you take Toyota, for example,

these kids get into this system at 12, 13, 14 years old, and they start building the driver's side of the things that they have to do. Toyota does a pretty good job in building commercials and doing the PR training. But I remember when I started, I look at this A.C. Delco car right behind your head. Before I even got to go on the racetrack, A.C. Delco, GM, had you do media training for days. And, you know, I think a lot of the kids do that now. but like you say, the phone has, the phone and social media and things has just changed it. I would have been, it would have been terrible to have to grow up during the time of having social media because I can't imagine how much trouble I would have actually, you know,

been in with some of the dumb things that we did. Oh, I'll take you back. I'm glad I didn't grow up with cell phones. Yeah. My mom would have known where I was all the time. Yeah. That wouldn't work out well. Yeah.

Well, my only rule at night, you know, we didn't have cell phones when I was a kid either. my only rule was I had to be home when the street lights came on. That was the rule. Yeah. If the street lights were on, you were late. Yeah, right. Because during the day, they were at work and you went to school and you rode your bike. And so it's a much different sport than what it was.

A couple more questions. And this one for me has been a lot of fun because we've incorporated this word of the week thing into our broadcasts from this digital group and the podcast. Do you have a favorite, or am I just making myself look like a fool? I liked curmudgeon. Oh, my gosh. Probably because it went right over Clint's head. Yeah.

That was probably the best part of it. Yeah. You called him one and... Yeah. He's, you know, when I look at Clint down there, sometimes I wonder, half the time he has his back turn to me. I don't know what you see from your angle, but half the time he's on that button more of the time than he's not.

When you go back and you were a kid, what was the first car that you drove? First car you bought that you drove on the street. Oh, boy. I learned to drive in a Rambler Marlin, which was the fastback version of the Rambler Classic. You know, AMC, they couldn't have. The javelin was yours away. And the reason that I asked for that car out of the drive Redpool, was it was the only car with a standard transmission.

And I wanted to learn on a stick because that's what I intended to have. I wanted a sports car for my first car. And, of course, I had all the magazines. I knew all the stats. I had it all figured out. And my dad said, no, you're going to have something really substantial. So my first car was a 60 Impala with a 283 wheezy little two-barrele 283 automatic. And boy, I ran a set of tires off that car really fast.

But it was fun. And then I went to a Mini Cooper S, an early English mini Cooper, little tiny car. And do you still have that? Oh, God. Do you have one like it, though? What's that little? I did. Yeah.

Got a bunch of MG midgets. Yeah. And the one I drove to Martensville was a triumph, a TR8 with a British V8. But I wanted cars that were nimble and handled well. And went from the mini to. A local Pontiac dealer had an alpha spider on their lot, but they didn't know what it was because it wasn't in the NADA guide. So they had it priced like a little fiat,

a cheap little fiat. So I convinced my dad, I said, we need to get that. And so he supported that. But the first car that I bought with money I had earned, mostly from short track announcing, was a 71 Z-28 Camaro, four-speed car, LT1 engine. And I wanted that car specifically because

that's what Chevy was racing in the Trans Am. And so that's what I wanted to drive. And, you know, Mark Donahue was winning with Camaros and that's what I wanted. So, yeah, last question. That was cool. What's the most exhilarating race car, street car, car, car that you've ever driven? I worked part-time in college for the local foreign car dealer. They had MGs and Fiatts, but they also sold Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, De Tomaso. Not many of them, but that was it. So the hard. The hard. So the Hartford Auto Show was up and over Avon Mountain and down into Hartford. It was probably about 20 miles. And we all had to ferry cars down to the auto show and then clean them up and all that. So we got all the cars down there, get them all. And all the keys to all the cars were kept in one basket.

So at the end of the show, we could, you know, drive them all back. So first day of the auto show, I went over to that basket. I grabbed the key to a Lamborghini Miura and a De Tomaso Mangusta, both very very. exotic cars and put them on my pocket for the weekend. So Sunday night, I knew what I would be driving. And those were just awesome, unbelievable mid-engine sports cars. They were really cool. But since then, that was 55 years ago. When we went to the 10-10th Motor Club, which Marcus Smith and Rick Hendrick opened a week ago,

and we brought Scott's, my son's historic Trans-Am car. And they split our group because it's a short course. they split our group in half. So that man, he would drive the car in the A group, and I would drive it in the B group. And hot day, we're out there wailing on those old cars, and they are so fun to drive. So when we come to Sonoma,

I want you to bring your stuff and come out at least for a practice session. And after practice, after qualifying, I was gassed, and I realized I still had to go to Darlington and work for the weekend. So I told Scott, I said, you need to finish on the podium. Because that way, I won't be able to drive. in the second race, because the car will still be in victory lane. So he puts the car on the pole, first three guys, he and Peter Clutes, Mustang, and Ken Adams,

boss 302, a smoky unic car. They trade the lead back and forth through the whole thing. It's a great show. Everybody loves it. He wins the race and goes into that clubhouse. And, you know, here's all of automotive royalty congratulating him. And he says, Dad, he says, I felt like I won the Indy 500. And I couldn't have been more proud if I'd won the race, you know, just to see him do that.

That's, you know, you're seeing it now with Keelan. Yeah. And I think, you know, there's just no greater joy than being a racing dad and seeing your son succeed. Yeah. Being able to see that success, you know, from your child and just something that you're so emotionally attached to. Trumps all the, all the wins and any other moments that you're able to participate in. And it takes everybody, you know. And you have Delane and your daughter and I have Gay and Caitlin and, you know, they're all part of making.

all that happen and getting him to this point. I think, and you've got to be careful, and I tell dads this all the time, because racing is either going to be your way of bonding with your child and being all in like you and Keelan are, or it's going to become, racing's going to become your child's competition for your time. And so that's a difficult thing to manage. Katie has her interest. She likes cars. She's very specific about. what she wants to drive, but she doesn't really want any part of the racing thing or driving a stick shift or whatever. So she has her interest in music and other things. And of course, you know, Gay and I, we lean into that and try to lean into it as much as we lean into the car thing

with Scott. But boy, I love to see that car up front. Cars are a lot of fun. And fortunately, for us, it's been a great way of life to, I love the lifestyle. I love the people. I love everything that comes with motor racing in general. They're just my kind of people. So Mike, thank you for taking the time. I'm glad that everybody got to learn a little bit about Mike Joy today. And I appreciate everything that you've done to help me get going in the booth. It's been an absolute pleasure the last couple of years. Well, I told you the first day. I said, I know my job. It's to make you the best Kevin Harvick you can be on the air. And it's been a thrill ride. Proud to be a part of it. We'll keep those bobbleheads bouncing for at least a while, all three of them.

Maybe we can get this guy to quit talking so much. Nah. That's what makes it fun. Thanks, Mike. Thank you.