Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Pit Stop: Kevin Harvick to drive No.5 car for Kyle Larson in All-Star Race practice

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Join NASCAR legend Kevin Harvick alongside friends and analysts Kaitlyn Vincie and Mamba Smith on the latest episode of “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour” presented by NASCAR on FOX as Kevin announces that he has been asked to drive the No. 5 car for Kyle Larson in All-Star Race practice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And our man had to make it interesting for us with a big announcement over the weekend that I had no idea. I had no idea either. Apparently, Mr. Hendrick had a different idea. He and Kyle Larson and Cliff Daniels had an idea that they wanted me to practice their car at North Wilkesboro. So I would say that it would be practice and qualifying. But apparently there are some rules that don't allow me to qualify the car from my eligibility. Apparently you lose your All-Star eligibility pretty cool. quick. Well, I don't, I mean, is that, is that what happened? I don't know. I hadn't even

gone back and read the rules. So, but anyway, I'm going to practice Kyle Larson's car while he is at Indianapolis Motor Speedway qualifying his indie car. So, not very many scenarios that I would have said, you know what, that's a good idea. But this one, I was like, you know what, that's a good idea. And so I thought it would be fun. Mr. Hendrick called me and he said, hey, and I know when these conversations from him when he when he doesn't call me all the time but when he does call there's usually something something behind it and uh his conversation our conversation started by i need a favor and i was like all right well whatever you need because he's ricks a lot of people don't understand how this sport works and and the people who are inside this sport understand that there's a lot of things that

people within different teams and organizations do for one another um when they're in a jam so Rick's been very good to me through the years was a huge part of the decision of going to Stuart Haas racing because I felt at that time you had to have a Hendricks something in the equation to win a championship and

so Rick called and said hey I want you to drive the car and I said let me make a few phone calls so I had to call my bosses here at Fox and I had to call my wife. Who was first the bosses or Duaneer? Well I wanted to get before I went to my wife

I was like, I need to make sure that everybody's good with this. So I called everybody that I thought I needed to call. And then I called my wife. And I was like, hey. Hey. Are you sitting down? She's like, I'm driving. I said, well, maybe you should pull over.

And so she's like, oh, man, this is obviously a pretty serious question that you're getting ready to ask me. I said, so about that retirement thing, I think I'm going to go drive. I didn't say that. I said, they've asked me to go drive Kyle Larson's car during the North Wilkesboro weekend. And she's like, okay, well, what did you say? I said, well, I said, yes, of course, because I just, you know, there's just not too many opportunities that are presented the way that this one was presented from Rick to say, I need a favor. And she's like, well, if Mr. Hendon needs a favor, he's done us good, you should go do it. I said, okay.

There you go. It's time this ever happened. Yeah. That's so cool, though. Shortest retirement ever, but we're excited to see you back behind the wheel. I mean, I'm still retired. It's just, I'm technically just helping some friends out. Helping some friends out.

Helping some friends out. I'm excited to be a part of the equation because I can't wait for, I hope Kyle Larson goes up there and qualifies on the pole and wins the race. And I just think that that story of when Kurt Bush and Tony Stewart went and did the double, I think that was good for racing. Yeah. I think it's good for NASCAR. I think it's good for Kyle Arson.

I think it's good for Hendrick Motorsports. And, you know, the bigger platform that Kyle Arson, is on that weekend and that week, a really month, I guess, is good for everybody. So just glad to be a little part of the equation to help in some way, shape, or form. So it'll be a fun day. Before we get into our regular schedule programming, we do need to talk about when you did come over to Stuart Haas, right? You came over with Stuart Haas. So now we weren't teammates with Hendrick at the time, Caitlin, but we were like aligned.

Yeah. There was a lot of working together. How is it being, you know, kind of quote unquote teammates with Jim? Well, we had a lot of information at that particular time. And we last week we talked about that Dover success. And we talked about what we were going to do. A lot of that started because we had that Hendrick relationship and the success that Jimmy Johnson and Chad Canals and Jeff Gordon

and so many of those cars had at Dover, you had immediately immediate access to that. And that's where Rodney and I started, said, okay, let's start here. These guys have been pretty successful here. And you look back all the way back to 2013, the first time I tested the car. I can remember it like it was yesterday because I just didn't know what the difference in the cars was going to be.

And the first thing I got in and I made my first lap and I'm like, oh, my God, why is this engine so much quieter than everything that I've been driving? Why is it so much smoother? There's no vibration. And, you know, I think we had them covered by like three quarters of a second at the very first test. And I knew from there, I'm like, all right, this is, this was a good decision. And so really before I started driving the cup car, I had to have a sit down with Rick.

Rick obviously had a pretty big say in the approval process of who was going to drive that car. So he had to approve it. But I also wanted to run some Xfinity races. So I had to go sit in Rick's office and tell him what I wanted to do. And he said, we got done. And he's like, all right, we'll make that happen. And everything that we sat down with that day, he made happen with junior motorsports. And we went on to win a lot of races in a short amount of time in that car.

won a lot of races in the cup car too. So I just felt like at that time, I felt like I needed to have a Hendrick something. So we had Hendrick cars, chassis, information sharing. And, you know, that was really the part of the equation that I was looking for the most in 2014. That's cool.

Full circle moments here. Yeah. Well, we're excited to see you back out there. Yeah. It goes well for you. It'll be different. Yeah. It'll be different for sure.

You're going to have full circles. Yeah. Full circles. You really did a full circle moment. Two weeks ago on the word of the week. Okay. You're right. And you brought us right back.

You lost us in the first half. And the second half, you had us. Hey, race fans. Thanks for watching our video for all NASCAR on Fox News, content, and the best clips from Fox Sports. Be sure to follow and subscribe to our channel.