Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - NASCAR'S New Generation

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

The road course action at Sonoma did not disappoint, and we have plenty of drama to unpack! Fill-in host Joey Logano stops by to share his unfiltered take on Carson Hocevar and what it's like racing against NASCAR’s new rising stars. Plus, we dive into SVG’s absolute road-course dominance, Ty Gibbs' strong day, Christopher Bell’s heroic top-5 run while battling an injury, and a look ahead to Chicagoland returning to the NASCAR schedule for the first time since 2019. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00:00 - Show start 00:00:11 - Joey Logano is filling in for Kevin! 00:01:54 - NASCAR's West Coast swing 00:05:42 - SVG road-course dominance 00:08:30 - Chase Briscoe's strong run 00:09:45 - Denny Hamlin is the new points leader 00:11:30 - Carson Hocevar spins Denny Hamlin 00:12:00 - Logano on Hocevar & Young Drivers 00:18:20 - Connor Zilisch's rookie season 00:22:25 - Ty Gibbs & Ryan Preece run well 00:25:30 - C. Bell P5 with injury 00:27:40 - Keelan vs. Kevin Harvick 00:34:00 - Return to Chicagoland 00:40:30 - Mamba's Social Sips 00:47:51 - Rating SVG's burnout 00:49:40 - Chicagoland picks SUBSCRIBE for more from Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour: https://www.youtube.com/@HarvickHappyPod?sub_confirmation=1 The FOX Sports App, built for the modern sports fan: https://t.co/CRhWt4ryp3 About Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour: NASCAR legend and Former Cup Series Champion Kevin Harvick gives his expert opinion on the top NASCAR storylines weekly alongside FOX Sports’ Kaitlyn Vincie and NASCAR’s Chief Hype Officer, Mamba Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This week? Yeah. I mean, I like the 22. You know, the driver's a good guy, you know. He's a good guy. You know, he's really hungry right now. He needs this. Okay.

Welcome to Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour, presented by NASCAR on Fox. I'm Caitlin Vinci alongside Mamba Smith and three-time Cup Series champion filling in for Kevin today. Joey Lagano. It's good to have you here. What's happening? Hey, thanks for coming. We like the shirt. We got to acknowledge that right off the last.

So I haven't said a lot of real smart things sometimes and felt like today would be a great opportunity. If I'm filling in for Kevin Harvick, to bring back the old school shirt, it was still sitting in my drawer. I do find it every now and again. I don't wear it that often, but I was like, I got to keep it. Yes. And today is a perfect opportunity to wear it. It really is. And I can't wait to see Kevin's reaction to this.

I mean, did he give you, I mean, I hope you're getting some royalties off of that. You know what I mean? No, no, but I think he made a lot of money for his charity, which is good. Okay, cool. Here's a funny story. So this is back years ago after all this happened. And Kevin and I ran into each other in a clash in Daytona. Shocker.

And after the race, we were mad at each other and we're all yipping, you know, after the race. And I get back to the bus. Then I'm pissed, right? And there was my wife wearing the shirt. Oh, my. That's hilarious. And I'm like, too soon. Not funny.

Not funny right now. Way too soon. I'm still pissed off. Yeah. So a lot of, a lot of good memories with Kevin. A lot of bad memories, but a lot of good memories now.

Yeah, yeah. Now that we can laugh about it and joke about it. So it's funny how things come full circle. It is funny how things come full circle. Well, we appreciate you taking time to be here. I know it was a busy weekend for everybody.

We're going to recap everything that happened, obviously. In Sonoma, look ahead to Chicago land, where we haven't been for some time. You have your sips. Yeah, we always got some sips. Yeah,

Let's talk about this West Coast little mini swing, though, for a minute. The West Coast double, if you will. How did it go for you? Just your thoughts on San Diego and then obviously Sonoma for you. I mean, I thought for the sport it was a win, right? San Diego was awesome to see all the military people there, all the fans there. The access was really cool. The vibe was awesome.

For us, it wasn't that great. But for the sport, it was great. So, you know, just didn't have much speed there and went to Sonoma. and thought, you know what, well, that should be a good track. That's a place I feel like I'm not to get around and had, you know, maybe eight to ten laps worth of decent speed in the car, and then it just tires would shut off and to the back she went. So not the West Coast swing road courses that we were hoping for,

but you got to keep moving on, right? Got to learn from it and then just got to keep attacking. Right now, we're in a bad spot right now. I mean, we're way behind the eight ball. we guys make up a lot of points just to make the chase, which is a crazy thing to even think that we're in that spot, but we are, and that's factual. So we just need to keep working at it and keep grinding,

and only got a few races left. Yeah, hopefully things can move in a better direction in Chicago. You just got back like an hour ago from Sonoma on a red eye. Both of them, props to these two men for being here so early after a long night. How was your weekend, though, in Sonoma? Yeah, I mean, some of us have to work, unlike other people who take vacations and whatever, no big deal. But no, it was great. You got it normally said it. Oh, that guy.

No, you said it. You were looking at me. I'm like, man, I'm here. Yeah, I'm here. No, no, it was, it was good. Sonoma. Sonoma was really cool. I mean, like, so my weekend was a little bit extra because I flew to Boston. One of my oldest friends, Zach got married in Boston, and then I flew on Saturday morning to Sonoma. So I've, oh, geez. Yeah, so I'm a little all over the place. But Sonoma was sick. I always appreciate the passion of those fans. And it was interesting because they don't usually get back-to-back weeks, right?

Like we're asking the same part of the fan base to kind of do a lot. And they still showed up in Sonoma. And it was just a party like it always is. And everyone had a lot of wine. And for the broadcast, I thought the guys and the girls, everyone did a good job. I think where we're at with that part is moving along in a good direction. And so it was fun. It was cool to see Marty Smith.

have money's put around. You know, that's cool. That's fun. I do think it was neat to see a lot of the same fans from track to track. We did the road trip from San Diego up to Sonoma. And it was a blast. Like we stopped in Santa Barbara. We hung out there.

We went to the zoo. We went to C. We did all the kids stuff, had fun. And then the drive's beautiful. Yeah. Like we went a little bit on Pacific Coast Highway, but then we just hit one-on-one and went up there. And it was awesome. Yeah.

I mean, it's beautiful. There's a ton of farmland. I didn't know California had all. that stuff. I just, all I've seen is the cities. Yeah, you go airport to the track. I actually could live around here. That's a nice experience for your family. I want to have a little space. He says that until he sees the taxes. I don't like that part. I don't know. The weather. Holy cow. The weather has been beautiful out there. Yes, the definite benefit for being in that part of the country. So once again,

we saw SVGs that continued dominance. He had the double win, obviously, in the O'Reilly's and Cup series. Winning in spectacular fashion. Eight wins and 68 starts for SVG. what do you take note from him and see from him when you're competing against him and also how he's changed the road course racing game? I mean, he's just better. I mean, there's just no way around it, right? He took a car that I don't know if it was the winning car. I think that was like the example of strapping a team on your back and carrying him.

Yeah. Right? Like, no disrespect at all. Like he's had cars that are obviously great and he wins by 15 seconds, right? Like, that's almost what we expect when he's got a car that's good. You're right? But when he barely wins the race, it's like, man, that thing must have been a struggle for him. That's the expectation of how good he is on road courses.

He's just, he's light years ahead of everyone. He's able to pace the field, and then he just annihilates everybody when it's game time. And he didn't quite annihilate everyone yesterday, which makes me look back and say, okay, everyone's catching him from a car perspective. Maybe some of the drivers are also getting better. I mean, he's pushed us all to raise our game for sure. But I still expect him to just drive away, you know, as we try to inch up on him. But it's incredible to see how specialized he is in something, how he got that good at this discipline to come in and win that many races, right, in a short amount of time, all on road courses.

Yeah. Like that's pretty incredible to see that. Yeah, his racecraft is pretty amazing to just. Joey's point, he did have some complaints about the car throughout the course of the race and even saying afterwards they did an amazing job turning the car into a winner. Yeah, I think he had the same thing. We saw the chink in the armor, I think, in San Diego. It was like, maybe, maybe. If they have a little bit more struggles, someone might be able to just get to the bumper.

If you can get to the bumper, then you never know what can happen at that point, you know. And I think what Joey said is completely correct. I think that he's pushed the rest of the moment. of the field to be better, but also because he's been so much better, it's also pushed the crews to be better and build better road course cars for the drivers to then drive them at a higher level. So he's kind of pushed everybody in a direction, and now the gap maybe has gotten a little closer because, you know, the Chevroletes have struggled a little bit throughout this year. So he had to, I think he had to dip more into his superpowers the last two weeks.

Yeah. And he got out to strap up the cape and have that thing flying. But, and then, You saw this burnout was insane. I know we'll talk about that later on. But Chase Briscoe, I thought, was interesting. He was very disappointed. He felt like he let one slip. And I'm like, bro, no one's been that close to him yet. Like, you, I don't know if you let it slip, really.

I think, like, you put in the best effort you couldn't. You were close enough to be there, you know what I mean? That's the racer in him, though. Like, when you're that close and he almost got to his bump. He tried to get there, and I don't think it was enough anyways. but he was close. And you're that close as a driver. You're like, oh, man, he's probably going back to the three or four laps before that

and thinking, all right, if I just hit that lap a little better, this one, I would have got there. Yeah. Instead of getting there and turn 11, maybe I would have got there in 7 or the lap of 4 and had a real chance to duke it out, right? But he's got there too late, right? He needed another lap. And you're going to, I mean, every driver does this after race, no matter where you finish. But when you're that close, you're definitely going back and looking at every little nitty, nitty, detail and saying, if I just did that a little bit better, I would have, I would have been there and

had a chance. And that's frustrating and hard to go to bed at night. Yeah, Chase Briscoe, the runner-up, that's his first runner-up performance again since all the way back to Atlanta at the beginning of the season. So he was probably disappointed. So too had to have been Denny Hamlin because we've been watching that points battle between him and Tyler Reddick gets involved in something not of his own doing. How frustrated do you think he probably is? I mean, he's the point leader. Listen, you want to switch. We get. I mean, I'm okay with it. I'll take, I'll take his bad day any day. Oh, God. He can switch seasons with me. I wouldn't be that frustrated. It's funny how your perspective changes pretty quickly.

It's, uh, yeah, I mean, it's amazing to think he's caught up. Yeah. Right. I mean, it was easy for all of us to think Reddick's that far ahead of the field. He's got the regular season championship wrapped up, right? Five weeks ago, six weeks ago, I thought that. You know, and now Denny is. just ate away at it. And it's not like Tyler's been running bad. Sure, he's had a couple issues here and there, but he's still in the hunt. Like, he's still fast. He's still in contention, and Denny's been doing that much more.

And, you know, this just happened to be a race where they both had issues, right? One with power steering issues, another one that got dumped, you know, and, you know, still there's a, he made up some points again. Right. He's still made up points.

Seven, right? Because he was only eight back. Yeah. So now he's one. He might be thinking what could have been. Sure. He thinks maybe I could be 25, 30 points ahead instead of seven or eight where he is right now. I think for him it's like he hasn't been good on the road courses in like years.

A decade plus. And now all of a sudden a light switch has gone off for them. I was talking to Chris Lambert a little bit and there's the points right there in the corner. I was talking to Chris Lambert a little bit. And I was like, what was last week an anomaly? Or are we going to see this again? He's like, no, no, no. They found something in Sim.

Like, he's rewired how he approaches road course racing. And so I think he felt like they really had pace and he should have had a top 10. So now he's mad like he would be anywhere else. But even in that wreck, too, I know a lot of people got on Carson about it. And, like, it's kind of close. Like, I think that they probably make contact regardless, because Carson was kind of, like, charging into that corner pretty hard. Brad was also pushing Carson.

And I think it was Bowman is also pushing Brad. Like there was a chain reaction and just the car in front kind of got was Denny and he just kind of got run over. Speaking of Carson, I would love to get your thoughts on him because the debate kind of got brought up again this weekend after Kyle Larson did an interview with Bustin with the

boys and mentioned that he respects his talent and the speed that he has, but they acts like an eight-year-old a lot. Basically citing his immaturity to which Carson responded by qualifying on the front row and making a comment about it on X, you know, that he let a eight-year-old qualify on the front row. What do you think of, Carson?

I mean, I'd agree he's got a ridiculous amount of talent, right? Like raw talent. He's just wicked fast, right? And that's something that is impressive, right? He's shown that from the beginning of his career, that he is a bit of a wild card out there, right? I mean, I think he's proven that, and then that's not a secret to anything. like there's he's gonna sling it in there and whatever happens happens um it's interesting to have that attitude so much to just whatever right like well whatever's gonna bite you eventually right and and

kerson have i've had issues and and we've been able to work them out we've talked about it and we've had a contact back and forth on the race drag right and it's it's nobody wants to be in that situation right and there's some people that that'll probably take it and not do anything about it and then there's drivers that are going to do something about it and you're going to figure out which ones those are pretty quickly right i i dealt with it i'm sitting in the guy's seat that i had to deal with right like i did it i lived and i can relate a little bit to what carson's going through right now um but there's also a moment where you got to look at big picture i say okay what what do i want to accomplish in this sport what am i trying to win a one-off race here and there or am i trying to win

championships and that game has to be played all the way through the whole season. I've made the mistakes. I know this. I've cost myself, I think, at least a championship and not playing it out correctly. And so he'll learn that, right? And he already has some, but not enough because it hasn't changed him enough. But his ability to go fast at any racetrack at this point is going to, like he will be around forever at this point.

You can't deny that, the talent that he has. And his ability to just not care. Right? Like, he don't care. Zero. He literally like, whatever. He says things. He does things.

He's just like, what are you going to do about it? And then people do things about it. Like, it's not like he doesn't get dunged back. It happens. And he's like, yeah, whatever. Well, Corey, Corey, he was having, so Carson is having, like, again, kind of like similar to Danny Carson's like, it's a road course time of the year.

Like, I'm just going to ride around. Then he goes to San Diego, has a good run going. He's running second, right? At the final stage, told you the latter part of the race. Corey gets one shot at him. Doesn't like, I don't know if Corey was like seeing, I don't think he was like going at it. Like, I'm going to dump him, but definitely wanted to move him immediately and shipped him.

Because Corey also didn't care because it was Carson. Like everyone's been talking about, oh, eventually someone's going to get him. Yeah. I'm surprised, though, Joey, that it wasn't any of the vets, and it was the guy that he had problems with in the truck series. You know what I mean? But then Carson's like, I had that coming for like four years. It's like, why isn't it one of the vets?

Why does the vets not do it? Probably saving it. Okay. If I had a guess. I mean, vets also have a big picture of mine, too. I was saying they're going to do it when it's worth it, and they're going to do it when it's a real benefit to them, right? and they don't want to hurt themselves when you do it.

It's not easy to just take someone out, let's be honest. Like, I mean, it's, it's, you're going to hurt your car some amount, possibly. So, and, and I don't think the vets have in their mind that, like, my, my motive today is to wreck somebody, right? Or to equal the playing field, right? Like, or to get back. I don't think that's the mindset of the people that are out there racing for championships. Yeah. Or for wins.

It's how do I maximize my job? day. How do I win this race? Drivers are elephants, though. They remember everything. So it's still in the back of their mind. But they'll save it for years, right? They'll just say, hey, remember when? And you'll be like, oh, I thought I got away with that one. I thought we were good. It was four years ago.

No, we're not. No, it's my turn. It's just how drivers are. And like I said, you got to kind of work all this stuff out. But again, like, I don't want this to sound like Carson. Like, I think Carson's great for the sport. Yeah. Right? I think he brings a ton of new fans, different fans.

Like, I mean, just the way he is is different than the rest of us. Right? I mean, the way he speaks. Like, he's just, he's younger, right? Like, I mean, it's, I don't know the league. Yeah, I don't know what he's talking about half the time. I'm like, I don't know what these words mean, you know? What do these words on such a meaning?

I don't get it. But it's, but people love it. And there's no denying that. And that's great. That's great for our sport, for sure. He does have a legion of fans that he has been building up over time, for sure. What I don't understand, though. Let me just get a finger out.

When I came into the sport and I had run-ins with veterans and all this stuff, right? And people hated me for that, right? He's like, damn it! Forever. And to this day, I still get booed like you wouldn't believe for the things I did when I was 19 years old. That is odd. This kid comes in and wrecks way more people than I ever did. and people love him

how does this happen what am I missing mom but tell me something what it might be Joey is like when you got in you were like the guy like you were dubbed going to be the guy and that pressure

that people expect certain things and they get mad when a young guy's dubbed the guy Carson wasn't dubbed it he just kind of came in out of he became yeah he kind of like grew into that a little bit

and I think all the all the accolades that you were getting so early, maybe, like, hurt that a little bit. That's not fair. I didn't say it was fair. I just told you what it is. It's not fair. That is the truth.

Hey, but you know what? You're a three-time champion, so who cares? I want to touch on Connor Zillage for a moment. As a young driver, what has it probably been like for him going through all of those struggles now to finally cross over and get a top 10? Again, I can relate. Maybe more so to Connor than I can. Probably, yeah.

With what Hosefar has gone through. Because Connor was dubbed that guy, right? And he was that in the O'Reilly series. Just like I was when I started over there, right? On my third race, he was out there and wins a bunch of races too. Like it's, it was, you know, this whole like hype, living up to the hype, get to the cup level. Uh-oh. Right?

Like, and that's exactly what happened to me. The first two years was like, This wasn't what I was expecting. These guys are really, really good. And that's fact. Like the jump from the O'Reilly series to the Cup series is the largest jump in motorsports, period. Hands down, there's not a larger jump from talent level.

Nothing against what's going on in the Riley series. But everybody in the Cup series can go to the O'Reilly Series and win today. Every single one of them. They're all really freaking good. I learned that I remember shoot I remember I remember him see my first races and I thought those guys

that run in the back every week in the cup series I'm like oh I can beat them and then I'm watching them just laying two black marks off the corner right just doing burnouts off the corner and I'm like holy cow these guys are really good and I couldn't keep up and it's just those little details

like the talent level is amazing but then the details of doing it for a long time the experience level of the drivers knowing what they need in their team in their car and how to just manipulate so much stuff, that's what makes them great. And it takes years to do it. Connor will do it. Connor's an amazing talent. He's great. But a diamond in the rough at the moment, right? Like, he just needs to be around long enough. And I think that's the big thing for young talent coming in

these days is that they have to give him a chance, right? Like, I almost lost my chance. I mean, I technically did, right, until Team Penske gave me a second chance. But I was this close to not making it. Forget three championships. Not making it. Not driving race cars. And we need to give these younger guys a chance to keep up and catch up. Yeah. And so obviously there's been a learning curve for Conner's Village. But do you think some of that too is their cars that track house are behind the ape all of it right now? It's all, I think a lot of it is timing and when you get somewhere. You know what I mean? I mean, Joey just talked about that jump from O'Reilly's to Cup.

Well, also, if you're not into O'Reilly's level at the right time, and you lose one engineer, you lose one mechanic, well, that person might have been doing a lot of different things, and it takes the team a lot to adjust and then to be good again. So the cup field is just really hard, and, like, the difference between the talent, not only in the driver's seat, but in the garage, as far as mechanics and crew chiefs and just organizational properties

from O'Reilly's to Cup is, also mass will be different. So even though track house is a place that we look at that they've had speed and success early and we expect them to keep having that and they do stuff a little different, a little bit more fun in some respects. It's also really hard. They've really smart people over there.

But it's just really, really hard to do this. Where the pinnacle of stock car racing and maybe motorsports as a whole as far as what it takes to be great for a whole team. And Connor's a world class driver. He's going to get there. I'm glad he got a good finish. I think he's probably bummed because he probably wanted to be, you know, if not beating, if not on SVD's bumper, like more on the top three, top five, and he ended up

like seventh. So that's a little bit of a bummer probably, but you got to stack those days. But he also had a good day at San Diego got taken out. And so now he had a back-to-back good one. So now we're going to Chicago and hopefully they can kind of keep building on that. Yeah, for sure. So he had a good day. So too did Ty Gibbs. Massive points day for him, winning both the stages. And Ryan Priest, he has been slowly collecting some points. What did you see out of those two teams? Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, Ty would obviously qualify and great and then just capitalizing, right? Like taking advantage of the day that's there when you have a fast car.

And Ty's a great road course racer. He's proven that from the get-go. So, you know, he had good speed and was able to capitalize on the points. And, you know, I think what people forget a lot of times is like, okay, you took the stage one. remember where you have to restart after you take the stage with. You know, you're 20th-ish, right? Like you're in that, in the soup, right? Like, here's a lot of stuff going on, right?

Like, Denny got dumped because he was in the suit back there, right? And so that's where they put themselves multiple times throughout the race. Two times they did that, right? And he's able to drive himself past cars, clean, keep his car in one piece. again going back to like getting some experience behind you right like tie gibbs has the talent to do it and now we're starting to see him refine that talent and get better and better and now you're starting to see the results it took three years right i mean that's just what it seems like it's taking right now and it it took me that long too um and like i said if you can stay around long enough

and keep your job long enough there's there's a lot of fruit to be able to be able to had for these teams. It's just you got to hang long enough. Cornucopia. Cornucopia. A fruit. A fruit. On the table. On the table for you to get young bucks. Give yourself some tie. Is he tied? Would you see how to Ty Gibbs this weekend and Ryan Priest's too? Yeah, well, one I'll start with priests, one of our New England brothers.

He must be punching air right now because he ran eighth, right? So a great effort. But yeah. Yeah. That's just getting, he got stomped up and he did. And he did just that because he had a good effort. They ran eighth. They had a top 10 run. And it's just he was up against SVG in the bracket challenge. So like, this is like an impossible thing to do. But Ty Gibbs, I mean, he's now 23. He's lived some life.

Obviously, he's had a lot of life things thrown at him. But he's starting to build on those things and becoming, not becoming. I would say he's a man now and has figured out more of his. Kevin always talked about the circle of life and he's figured out more of his circle and what he needs around him and I think he's starting to become a leader of his group and I think that matters a lot and he actually

I think he has the confidence I think he truly believes he can go toe to toe with SVG at these roadcourses. I think he's one of the only guys that thinks like when he goes he's like I think I can win because he's run with him like he's ran like close like really really close. Even this

weekend it looked like for a while on the big of the run. It was the long run, the SVG really kind of closed the gap. But the middle part, it seemed like Ty was in control for a lot of it. So,

you know, they're just going to keep clocking away and see what happens. I got to give credit to C. Bell, though, too. That's where I was going next. I figured you were. But C. Bell, I mean, brother, broken wrist,

running a road course. And then, like, not only, like, was, like, competitive, but, like, top five. I was shocked. I was impressed. I wondered when,

when he got shoved off the track, in turn one, I was right behind it. So I was watching this like, okay, they're about to dump each other. But I was thinking like, he's in there with his broker wrist or whatever he's got going on. And he's swat and flies in there, right? He's back and forth at the steering wheel off into the dirt.

And I'm like, huh, that's gotta hurt probably. And I was like, man, I wonder how this is gonna play out here in a second. Yeah, that was an interesting turn 11 to turn one sequence that happened. And I got a front row view of, I thought it was impressive. He held on to the car.

I thought for sure he's going around. And then, and obviously what he's being able to do, he's fighting. I mean, he's hurt. Yeah. It's fact. He's hurt.

And he's still quick. Do you think the only thing worse than like a right wrist or left wrist break would probably be right because you're shifting? I'd assume so. Right. I feel like as a driver, like that's got to. I don't know if he'd be able to,

I mean, I mean, that's a lot of shifts all day long and that just pounding on it. I would assume would not be possible. Yeah. You know, I think, and obviously he's gone to, you know, two hard racetracks, right? Yeah, back to back. And I know he jumped out last week, but this week, I mean, Sonoma's no easy racetrack to get around, turn the left and right and all that type of stuff, right? I mean, this week may be a little bit easier just because your hands run the wheel the whole time, both hands.

If you, you still got to take your hand off the wheel to shift. So you're holding on with your broke hands. Yeah. Right. And at some point. At some point. A lot. It's pretty good. Yeah. It's not bad. It was reported too. He still does have three weeks of recovery, but good for him. Also overcoming. We just saw that slow pit stop for the 20 to move on to get a top five performance. So good for him. And good for our friend of the show, Keelan Harvick, who had the win over the weekend, by the way, at Evergreen Speedway holding off his father. What did we think of that? If I thought Kevin was awake right now, I'd call him and make sure. him in on the show and ask him why he's letting the 13 year old just belt to ass. Belt to ass.

No, no, Joey, Keelan is, um, Keelan has been like this since he started racing. He's just really good. His racecraft is. He is. It's amazing. Really, really good and refined at such a young age. And like Kevin, now that he's running more of these style races, he's starting to close the gap back up to him a little bit. but like he's not he's not letting him have anything like keelan is outrunning him on a regular basis

well knowing kevin like i do he's not going to give him no easy anything right like he's going to make him earn it and i mean keelan's been in the car a lot a lot like i mean he's racing all the time he is um so yeah he might be 13 years old but he's got the experience of maybe a 16 or 17 year old at this point, right? Because he's just been in the car that often. So his racecraft is going to be better than most. And he's got, yeah, he's got a great coach. Yes, he does. Right. Like, he's got the best coach that you can ever ask for. Right. And so I could only imagine being Kevin because on one hand, you just, just got beat. But it's your son. And like, I'd be like, and that's so cool. It's so cool. Like, I mean, I would assume, like, watching your kids success.

is better than yourself succeeding. I would agree. I want more for my kids than I'd ever do myself, right? Like, that's what you want. And to see that happening and especially if you know deep in your heart as you're racing him that like you gave it your role and he kicked your butt today, I'd be like, cool. Like that's great. Like you want that.

So, you know, I'm sure it's a little bittersweet because you still got beat, but if someone's going to beat you. He'd rather, he never seems to. Family. Yeah. Yeah. When he comes in here after. weekends when Keelan beats him. You can sell like sense of pride for him. Yeah, he's like,

yeah, just keep getting beat by, you know what I mean? It's cool. It's cool. And I'm interested to see, I mean, Keelan's 13. So like he's really not that far from getting into Arka and trucks. Like that's coming really quickly. So how, how they navigate, I mean, they's in the Toyota camp right now. And we all know that if you're going to, you know, go through a program right now, they're probably the best as far as developing so he's in good hands. But think about how cool and how special that is though. I agree. Not many people get the opportunity to do that.

To race against your dad. Like not many people will ever get the opportunity to compete against your father at that level. Right? Like in your dad was a dog, right? Like he was Kevin Harvard. You know what I mean? And then like you're out there with your dad racing. Like those memories are it's going to be I don't I don't want to speak for Kevin.

But I assume this is the most. fun he's ever had behind a wheel racing your kid. He has said something to that effect before. Yeah. And I would assume that years down the road, Keelan will look back at those moments and say there's the best time he ever had behind the wheel. Yeah. For sure.

Even, even, he's going to have a great career. He's going to win cup races and championships and all the stuff, right? You see the trajectory he's on. He's going to do it. But I still think he's going to look back. Because I mean, I still look back at just racing, not that I race against my dad, but with him. Going racing with my parents when I was young, it's the best time I had to.

driving a race car. Like, it's still my favorite time. So that's like a whole other level of racing with them out there against them. Like, it's a whole not level. Have your kids, any of your children expressed an interest in racing yet? Yes and no. It probably just depends on the day. Right now, it's just me and Hudson. He's the car kid right now. Because we've seen the videos of, yeah, so we just tear up the yard together. We have, and that's a blast to me. Like, if you want to race, that's fine. Just keep racing dirt bikes with me. This is fun for me too. We've used a lot of the Joey Lugano family stuff here, family stuff for

Mamba social sips. Like you and Danielle, like Danielle getting in the... That was amazing. Yeah, it's so great. Like, I was completely shocked when I saw that actually. You know that was... That wasn't her, that was Joey. We got you that good for this long?

Are you serious? Wait a minute. She showed this. Yes, we showed it. But of course I wasn't going to let everyone know. Like, I knew. She knew it was Joey. She was ripping.

That is not dead. Yeah, I know it. That is ridiculous that I still didn't know that this whole time. There was no hair or anything out of the... Yeah. Danielle can't drive like that. It was wide open and a full drift. Wow, you guys had me totally fooled for quite some time.

I can't remember when we showed that, but it was a while ago. Sorry to tell you the tooth fairy isn't real. All right. Before we get back to it, got to give a shout. shout out to a sponsor of this podcast Shopify for a second I have friends and colleagues who run their businesses on Shopify and they all say the same thing it just makes everything easier so when they asked me to talk about it I figured I'd pass it along that sound that's Shopify it's the platform behind a huge

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We are headed to Chicagoland next, Joe. We haven't been there in seven years. So what do you think this will be like with this car and what are you guys anticipating? Yeah, I mean, you know, Blaney did the tire test there. So we got some data back from that to kind of, you know, go through, listen to Ryan a little bit on the bumps seem like they have gotten larger, which isn't a surprise. I mean, I've never seen them fix themselves. So I would assume over years it's gotten worse. The next gen car in general, the bumps are worse in it because you're sitting on those limitors so much.

He kind of sounded like, you know, restarts could be a little sketchy when you got to go over to bump. And that could, you know, you think about Texas turn four when cars hit the bump and boom, that could possibly be a thing here. How wide the track gets. I don't think we know yet. I mean, it used to go up to the wall. Yeah. I would assume we're going to get up there again.

You know, and tire wear, it didn't seem like, I mean, it seemed like they wore some, but it didn't seem like they fell off much. but I'd assume it's going to be like everywhere else we've been lately where they kind of hang, don't fall off much, and then it cliffs, right? It just takes the tank at the end and it falls off much. So that's what I think's going to happen. But yeah, it's

it feels like we're going to a new track. Okay. You know, it's been a while since we've been there, but we're going there for the first time with this car. You know, it feels like it's just new. Yeah. Again, like it's like the first time showing up to Chicago land. Do you think that presents an opportunity for more of an even

playing field? Maybe. I mean, as much as it feels like a new track, it's still a similar track to others, right, that we run. What do you say? Like Kansas? Oh, just like, yeah, yeah, maybe it's a lot bumpier in Kansas, but like somewhere between Texas, Kansas, Charlotte, like it's within that, right? And where the cars that are making a lot of downforce right now are going to show up. Toyota's, they're going to be fast. Right? Like, we know that's where they're at right now. they're going to be fast as can be. So, you know, those are the, you know, I would expect the same cast of characters that have been fast lately are going to be fast again because the track is similar.

Sure, there may be some, you know, opportunities for somebody to hit on something different and new with practice, but we'll kind of wait and see. A lot of unknowns going into it, which will make it fun for us on the media side, your facial expression. What are you expecting out there on Pit Lane? and I'm expecting it to be hot as hell. It's going to be, no, it's going to be hot this weekend, like all over the, all over the country. So there's a conversation that keeps coming up on socials about the cool suits.

And since we have a guy that's in it, do you use one? Hell yeah. Okay. Or Ryan Blaney. Yeah, can you? Yeah. So R.Bs obviously went out this weekend and he fought through it, which it always seems like they go out at the war, like a road course.

and I always feel like that's good. Can you explain the difference between life before the cool suit and life with the cool suit and why you guys risk putting it on? Because I think people think that it's not worth the risk, but it is. I mean, I'm going to say this and it's going to break this week. But typically, they've done pretty well, right?

Mine's only broke a couple times. Yeah. In the amount of races there. So I'm okay taking that chance. The teams have come up with ways that we're like if it does break you can get the fluid out of the shirt to like that's the problem when it when it stays when it breaks and then all the fluid sits on you and then it just i mean it's 140 degrees in the race car so eventually in your body temperature it just worms the stuff up

and it feels like you're sitting in a hot tub eventually right which is not ideal right when you're already in a sauna right like you don't want hot water on you yeah um but boy when it works it's like jumping in the pool. Like it is beautiful. Like you crank that thing on and it's just, ah, you know, and there's, there's performance gain to that. Like if you can, yeah, there's focus, but like, think about it. If you're going to go run a mile as fast as you can and do it when it's 70 degrees outside and do it when it's 90 degrees outside, tell me which time you run faster, right? It's just like an engine, right? It's the only run so high, right? And you're going to start losing performance. Well, the drivers notice that too where you can, you can focus. You got to hustle these

cars hard to go fast. It's not the old day. anymore when you can kind of float it around. And these cars are like they're twitchy. They're like got grip. You got no grip. Like you got to be quicker. You got to be quicker with the wheel. You got to be quicker with everything you're doing.

And that takes more out of the driver now physically than ever. And so if you can find an advantage to keep yourself at a top level performance personally as a driver, you're going to take that. You're going to take the risk too. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But you're going to go for it. I think we need to develop those for pit road reporters. We need a cool suit under.

That is a hard job in the summer months. The pit road reporters, I mean, the crew guys that are in the fire suit just sitting on waiting to go over. Like, everyone's hot. Like, everyone's that's working. I mean, the fans are hot, too. Don't get me wrong. But you guys have beer and you guys can kind of figure that out. Everyone else is out.

Yeah, you guys got to figure that out. I mean, everybody is just like smoked by the end of the day. like there's always like four to five races a year. It's just like. Brutal. It's the T&T ones. Yeah. It's the dog days of summer.

Yes. Indy is always won. And we got spoiled the last two weeks. Yes, we did. That was a fortunate change. And now we're going to get. Do you have to do any different training for the summer months or do you approach it all kind of the same?

I think just naturally your body like I spend a lot of time outside. I don't go inside much in general. right? I mean, unless I'm doing something like this. But if I'm home, I'm outside. Okay. And I'm running around. I work out outside. So I just try to get used to the temperature as much as I can from that standpoint to where, you know, 100 doesn't feel that hot, right? Like, you got to get to that point. And so there's only one way to do it. It's just to do it. Yeah. Right? So then we get used to it. Well, that's a lot to manage there for sure. So we look forward to Chicago land and seeing what that will present after a bit of

hiatus from the racetrack. It is time now for your segment, which is his favorite, and according to him, the entire world's favorite as well. Did we give him a drink? No, he's got water over there. I have water. Yeah, Joe, you got to take a sip. Oh, this is like part of it. Even Kevin does a sip. Guys, he's new here. I like the 22 cent hat, by the way, with your deal like that. Yeah, that's nice. Every Sunday. It's very July 4. You can save 22 cents a gallon at Shell. job, Joey. See, I was trying to set you up for a promotion. I know for race day.

What he seven does a good job. What is seven does a good job. Okay, stop hijacking my stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, closers, my friends, welcome to your favorite segment of the show. We're just short and sweet on this one, but, you know, we're going to get after it all the same.

So it's summertime. Time to get the pool, the lake. I guess you could use this thing in the ocean, but I probably wouldn't. This is floaty that I found. Oh, boy. This thing is awesome. Look, look at this guy.

Oh, that is cool. No, what? No, just wait. Watch him to take off. Motorized? Hell yeah. Oh, it rips, too. Look at that.

There's a 100% chance we will build a floating NASCAR track, it says. Yeah. Oh, that looks great. Yeah, the caption is great. They're basically saying, like, don't show this to Americans because we will put. We will have a hundred of them on Lake Norman. Yeah, we will be out racing these. Absolutely.

You put a couple buoys out there? I need to see if it's a real thing or if this is just like a fake AI thing yeah I'm not sure everything seems AI now I don't really know the difference anymore but that either way if it was AI someone needs to build that it's all a bunch of them I'm in yes you got 1,000 percent three customers right here yeah Caitlin has a pool too he's running up back and forth sign me up no sign me up and then um there was so everybody stayed out not everybody but people stayed out west and obviously World Cup is going on you know Fox is broadcasting. It's been really cool.

Riley Herps and Brad Kislauski seem to be on a similar tour over the West Coast swing. They're at baseball games at the same game. They were at World Cup together. That's cute. Watch Riley here. Riley gets really hype. He knows what he's doing.

They're hyping up, you know, the whole stadium. Okay. And then we got Uncle Brad. Uncle Brad. It's just standing there like, like a proud, like a proud And it's like, watch my, look at my nephew go. Go on, kid. That is so funny.

And like, that was my only part about this video that I mean, I was just like watching Brad the whole way. It's like, he's just happy to be there. Yeah, not a huge reaction at him. He's just observing. Yeah. I do feel like it's always an awkward moment. You know, like when any time you go to a sporting event, oh, look at him, John.

Oh, no. I didn't tell you that part. I didn't tell you that part. That's funny. But they always keep. you on the screen too long. He's going to be sporting events and like, you're like, oh, hey, you know, Joe McDonough here and you're like, hey, you know, hey.

But then they leave you there and you're like, hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm 22. I don't know what else you got. Like, you're out of stuff and you're looking for like people around you. Like, hey, get on TV. I don't know what else to do, you know. That's hilarious. It's a really awkward exchange all the time. But you get free tickets for it and that's good enough for me.

Cool experiences. Yes. Get fun social media. videos. That reminds me of Brad playing basketball. Remember that? No, don't think that. The jump was very similar. He still got it. He still got it. Brad, I didn't think that they were going to go that way, brother. I'm sorry.

I'm bad. I'm sorry. Hey, how do you not? It was a classic moment. It was a classic. Real quick, this is like kind of a sub-sip. But I did see a video. I saw a video. I think you guys were in Pocono and it was basically you, Blaney, and Cindrick all like doing a Q&A together. And the fans really

love that and me and joey did one at coke 600 at straight talk wireless um and i just feel like you three together doing you you guys could just run your own q and a and a bian it's pretty much at this point yeah i feel it's so funny you know it's it's um they're two funny dudes you know like they're both hilarious uh Ryan's funny in his way and Austin's funny in his way it's a completely different way um and so are you but like everyone just kind of like gets along pretty well And, like, when you take us away from the race cars, like, we take the racing stuff very serious. Then we're wrong. Like, our meetings are very serious.

But, you know, Austin's always up for some wild thing that comes out of nowhere. Like, then I'm like, what? I can see that. It's funny. You know, he's a funny dude. That's good. It's a nice dynamic. These are very unique.

Oh, I'm sure. There's a lot of things about Austin Cendrick that people don't know. And if they knew, they'd be like, no, that might be my favorite person in the garage. Probably so. Probably so. Austin can be the one to let you guys know what those things are. But thank you again for coming to Mamba Social Sips. Joy, welcome to this segment.

I mean, I feel like I must have to take a sip now, too. You can do whatever you want. I was just, you know. How was NASCAR Sundays, by the way? Oh, man, NASCAR. So Joey is a big supporter of NASCAR Sundays. That's nice. They gave us four tickets to the concert to give to our people that come out to Joey's Foundation concert.

So we had, I think we had another 56. 60 people that showed up to hopping in Southend. Awesome. This week, we're going to a new venue. Oh. Going to Tiber Creek. Tyber Creek. Where's that at?

Tiber Creek is in South End. Oh, okay. There you go. I don't know how to explain it. He's just down the street. Yeah. There you go. Tiber Creek is one of my favorite spots to go to.

They're going to have an Irish band out there. And they have like a big projector that drops down. Oh, neat. It's going to be fun. Don't miss it. Don't miss NASCAR. Sunday. You know what this weekend is? July 4. Yeah, but

do you know what, you know what it's America's birthday? Right. Yeah. Two-fitty. Yeah, this is a big week in general for our country. That's right. It's exciting. I'm excited. Speaking of excited, SVG was quite so after his victory. Take a look at this burnout.

I think it is one of the best we've had this year. I was sitting here alive. I bet it was loud. It was so loud, but I thought he was going to hit the wall eight times. Yeah. Joey, watch him sling this thing around. Like, you're doing this, I feel like, you do the, like, 720 situation.

Yeah. He's got good car control. No, watch this part. Yeah, now this is pretty cool. Yeah. And I love how the team gets in on it every time. He does the high fives to the crew on the wall. So this is how I know how much this one meant to him because he always does a good burnout,

but this one just kept going and going. I think it was a relief of a lot of feet. Yeah, a relief, exactly, of like, God, I would. He's expected to win, right? He got wrecked last week. And he didn't win by a lot. You know, like, a lot of times when you win by 15 seconds, you're just like, relieved, like, okay, good, we won.

You know, like, you just waiting for something to go wrong. But when you barely win it, you're like, there's just a lot more emotion, right? You're pushing harder. You're running a car as hard as you possibly can. You're getting caught and you're able to hold them off. There's like a, you don't know you got it until you get to start finish line. Right. And so the emotions are larger.

And he showed it with her cool burnouts. So we grade it. We do a number scale, right? Yep. Yeah. Well, it depends on Kevin's mood. Sometimes it's a letter like an A. Kevin gets confused about like A's and tens and what would you grade that burnout?

That's a 10. That's a 10 and 10 burnout. I mean, like he's got good control. He didn't like to me sometimes if you just put it up against the wall, no talent. Just cool smoke show. Not hard to do. Too easy. Right.

Yeah. He's slinging the thing around on a pretty narrow area. He's using the clutch. He grabbed a gear at one point. He went for more smoke. He knew, like, I need more wheel spin here. I need more smoke. And then coming by and bringing the team into the burnout.

Exactly. That's a full 10. That is a full 10. We, you know, award the creativity side. Yeah, yeah. We like the showmanship on the show. And I got to believe that the next time you see the double deuce in Victory Land, there'll be some showmanship.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I would like to do the high five one day. too. It just depends on where you win. Yeah, well, yeah. You can't do that everywhere. It doesn't work everywhere. Yeah. What I do like with the burn ads, though a lot of times is like they'll have the, you know,

whoever a reporter is to interview you and start, finish line. And there would be like standing there with their pickup truck and all, and you're just like, who. Back up. Not done? I'm coming at you. And then you get Jake running out there with his camera. And I'm like, bro.

I know. But he gets in there, though. I know. Like, you like, he gets with it. doing donuts. I did donuts around him one time. He's just in the middle and I was just going around him. Like, it's cool. It is. He's got a lot of trust in us. He does. He's one of the best

though out there in general of being able to capture those moments. Okay, so we're giving him a high marks 10-10 for SVG. Speaking of point standings, some of us picked SVG. So I don't know how much you follow this segment of the show

because it's not really great for me. So I'm sure you turn off at this point. Okay. But so Kevin has been leading the points now for probably a few weeks. He's got a pretty healthy lead here. But Caitlin won our championship last year. Because it basically resets. It resets because we reset with everything else.

And I picked Kyle Harris. With the playoffs last year. Right. Okay. So you're going to reset again. And I picked the champion correct. And she picked the champion correct before the season started. So it was an extra points.

So Kevin's changed her rules. Of course. Because it's Kevin Harvick's happy hour. Right. Not Caitlin Vinci's. Right. Also, Kevin got really mad at us that he took the week off of like back. What was that? Yeah. I don't know. It was earlier in the year. He got really mad at us. He took the week off so he didn't get a pick. But he could have sent it in. So now he's mad at us that we didn't give him a pick.

But he wasn't here. But he wasn't here. Yeah. So I texted him yesterday to make sure that he sent a pick in. And he was not happy with me. He's like, you know, you should have just let it like crash and burn, basically. Gotta be present to win. You got to show up if you want to win. So, Joey, who are you picking? This week? Yeah.

I mean, I like the 22. Yeah. Why do you like the 22? Well, you know, I think he's, you know, the driver's a good guy, you know. He's a good guy. You know, he's really hungry right now. Really needs a win. Needs it really bad, you know?

So I think that's a big deal right now. I think the team wants it. Can you cite your source on that? Yeah, I can. My source is pretty reliable on this one. He knows him really well. He spoke to him earlier today, actually. Oh, you did?

Yeah. It's just an inner conversation. You can tell the anger and frustration at the side of him and just needs, he needs this. He really does. So we have a vote of confidence for the 22 from the 22 camp. And what say you, Mamba? I'm actually going to throw a little bit of a curveball to our production team. I'm sorry.

I'm going to go with C Bell. Oh. Yeah. Joey kind of convinced me with like, you know, I believe in the height, whoever's been good on the downforce tracks matters. And I think C-Bell has a lot of fire right now just because I think people kind of would count him out and he kind of showed some of that in Sonoma. And now he can kind of be back in his element per se here at Chicagoland.

I am doing a Toyota as well. Tyler Reddick is my selection. A solid pick. Yeah. So that's who I'm going to. If I didn't pick, if I didn't have the sources that I have, I would have probably affect him. Yeah, well, we'll see. And apparently, Kevin did submit his pick, and he also went with a Toyota of Chase Briscoe. So there you have it. Yeah. We'll see how those three selections are fair. Okay, tell me, real quick, since we're still on this segment before we, you know, move on, can you tell me if you think it's fair? Not fair. Fair is not the right word. Oh, boy. Do you think it's, I don't think it's as fun, because Kevin will do this. He'll pick the 11 for almost every oval. He always takes SVG on the road for. And he takes SVG. without a doubt on every road course

how does the order go and everybody and everybody we can pick the same one you can pick the same driver if you want to but I'm like you know you know going to limb guy right like yeah step out of the box

yeah step out of the box cap don't pick the obvious yeah he doesn't do it to where you have like you it can only pick each driver like three times throughout the year oh that's a nice caveat we can change it up then you're forced to do that I'm gonna tell you Kevin likes to win

Kevin's gonna do what it takes to win That's what I was about to say. So you got to, like, put rules around it. Needs parameters. Yeah. Well, you mentioned him winning. So the standings right now, Kevin at 87, me to 66 to Mamba 56. So we'll see how different that looks after Chicago.

Yeah, but hang on. I mean, you're on a limb, but you probably need to rein it back in a little bit. But think about, but my two wins were back to back with two different guys. Ty Gibbs was one of them. Ty Gibbs was one of them at Bristol and then it was Brisco. That's, okay. Like. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's right. But you're still way behind. No, that's not right. I know Ty Gibbs was one of them. Whatever. And so he went on on a limb. I'm not saying that's a limb, but it was impressive because he did actually win. When he picks SVG for six road courses.

I mean, it is the one to pick, though. And it is a defense. See, I'm not sure. You're not helping me over here. You're not helping me over here. All right. Well, we'll have to see how his Chase Briscoe selection does this weekend in Chicago. Hey, it's been really fun having you on the show.

show, Joey. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it. Come back anytime and make sure you wear that shirt when you do. It's a designated. It's a designated shirt. I don't really wear the fire suit either. I get it. I get it now. I wasn't married then. We appreciate the nostalgia with that t-shirt. All right. For Joey, Mamba, myself, that does it for us on this edition of Happy Hour. Make sure you follow us on Harvick Happy Pot and we will see everyone after Chicago. Two-toes. Two-toes.