Kevin Harvick 'couldn't be more excited' to see Richard Childress pace the field in his 2001 No. 29 car
The Closer is putting a close on his Atlanta Motor Speedway career. Kevin Harvick has his final start in the Peach State. When he won that race in 2001, Harvick won for Dale, won for Richard Childress Racing, and ultimately for NASCAR fans. Childress is set to drive that No. 29 car as the pace car ahead of the Quaker State 400.
Kevin Harvick has a lot of fond memories with RCR and the man himself, Richard Childress. While the two have gone their separate ways for about a decade, it all comes back together tonight in Atlanta.
Childress is going to pilot the No. 29 as the pace car. He is also the grand marshal for the race. That car was the same setup that Dale drove. It is the sister engine to the one that Harvick took to Victory Lane in that 2001 event.
Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports asked Harvick how he felt about his old boss taking his old ride for a drive around Atlanta Motor Speedway.
“I couldn’t be more excited about seeing it and seeing it lead the field to the green and I know how excited Richard is,” Harvick said. “I’m excited as well but Richard’s been super excited to drive it so that makes me happy too.”
Who would have seen this coming when Kevin Harvick won that race 22 years ago? In his own right, The Closer took up the mantle for The Intimidator and did his best to live up to that role. In another era, perhaps Harvick wins multiple championships. Still, even in the playoffs era, he has one to his name and has proven himself as one of the greatest in NASCAR history.
Kevin Harvick eased into Dale Earnhardt’s old setups
While talking about the pace car, Kevin Harvick touched on how he drove in that 2001 season. RCR didn’t really know how to move forward except to just run the car the same as if Dale was in the seat. Having won in 2000 at Atlanta, the team put the same setup on the car and it paid off.
That was pretty much the norm for Harvick in that year. It helped that he tested those same setups at almost every track on the circuit at the time.
“Well, I had been driving them for almost a year,” Harvick explained. “I did all of it [testing] except for Daytona and Indy, those were the two Dale would go to. So all of the development stuff and everything we did, I did all that. Those guys were – we were pretty accustomed to driving what he had in the car, what we’d come up with, what they’d implemented and just kinda made all that work.
“So, I had already been in the cars and they had kinda known the little nuances of things to do differently and likes and don’t likes and things like that. Obviously, they had a pretty good setup that would go around this place pretty good. A lot of that stuff, at that particular point pretty seamless because I had been in the car so much.”
A full-circle moment in Atlanta as Richard Childress takes the No. 29 for a ride around the track. Kevin Harvick starts P6 and will have a great shot at the win tonight.