Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Pit Stop: Why Denny Hamlin is Joe Girardi’s favorite NASCAR driver

Episode Date: April 13, 2024

NASCAR legend Kevin Harvick is joined by Joe Girardi on “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour” presented by NASCAR on FOX to discuss the origin of his love for racing and why Denny Hamlin is his favorite current driver. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I know that you're a race fan. You've obviously been around for a while. Tell me how you became a race fan, your first interaction at the racetrack, your first race that you attended. So Gene Monaghan, as we talked about early, got me into racing. And when I was a player and Joe Torrey was a manager, Joe Tori teamed up with Stevie Donahue, the assistant trainer. And they called their team was pits and chips.

and it was Monahan Racing. And my name was bootleg racing. And Charlie Wantswitz, our video guy, was Wans Racing. And what we did is we had to pick one driver from each tier, the top 14, then the next 14, and then the bottom 14. I know the numbers have changed. And you took your total score and the total score you won and we kept points the whole year. And at the end of the year, Gino would give the points later.

a little die-cast car on a plaque with a championship trophy basically. And Gino would write news and notes every week. He would rip us. He was the commissioner, and we'd always go to him with some of our complaints, and he'd always say, duly noted, but denied, is what he would always say, right?

So I really got into it, and Gene took me to my first race in Rockingham, North Carolina. That was the first race. and then I continue to go with them a few every year and I remember going down to Homestead. I remember going to Daytona 500 with Gene and we got up early that morning and drove over

and the race is about to start and Gene's walking right down between the cars and I'm thinking, are we going to get in trouble? Shouldn't we like get behind, you know, the wall and, you know, these guys got the car started. But everyone loved Gene and Gene just kind of did what Gene wanted to do.

And I've fallen in low. And I tell everyone, unless you go to a race, you truly don't understand how great it is. You have to go and watch the speed and the precision and just how exciting it is. And I absolutely love it. I always have it on and I'm doing things. I mean, I was listening to the story about the clock yesterday and how many people's houses it's moved to and where it is. You know, yours got put in the basement, I guess, but the grandfather clock. But it was just really...

It's got to wind up on the set here shortly. It's got to wind up on the set. I promised them I would bring it to the set because it sits in the garage. So my wife said it didn't match the... Didn't match the decor in the house, but I was adamant that there's no way that the grandfather clock can't be in the house somewhere. So I lost that battle, but I had a small victory by keeping it in the garage. So have you picked a favorite... driver, is there somebody that you

like in the current NASCAR field? Who would be your favorite driver? Well, my favorite driver's retired. So I'm learning to like the new drivers because so many of the guys

I cheered for are retired and that happens. But you know, I like Denny Hamlin. You know, he's always in the mix no matter what. And that's exciting to me because that's a champion, a guy that's always in the mix. But there's so many good young drivers now that I just need to get to know.

You know, I didn't really have to root for anyone else because I used to root for Kevin Harvick all the time. But now I got to find a new love. Well, you know, I appreciated that. And I think it's, I tell, I tell fans all the time, there's a lot of great personalities. A lot of them haven't, haven't come out of their shell yet to, to show us all of their personalities. And I think that is, that is definitely something that, that, uh,

they all need to work on. But our pit road has been overrun with professional athletes of guys that didn't quite make the cut, whether it be in baseball or the NFL. And I think that is something that is pretty intriguing to me that gets overlooked. And maybe you don't have to become a fan of a driver. We're trying to get the pit crew guys more out there. but Denny Hamlin is, that's going to be, that's going to be an interesting clip that gets, that gets advertised on this show because Denny has a lot of very passionate fans that,

that root against him. So before I let you go, I need to know what was your first car? What did you drive and how did you stop driving it? Did you sell it, wreck it? How did it end? Okay. My first card was a Ford Red Temple that I bought myself. from a paper route and I had a German Shepherd that I bred and I raised money to buy a car so I could go out to the Cape Cod and play baseball and have it in college.

And then the next car I bought was part of my signing bonus. It was a Ford Bronco. So that was my first car, a red tempo. So are you still a Ford guy? No. I do like them, but my wife and I drive some nice Mercedes. Okay, good. Well, I'm glad to see that you moved on from all that.