Kevin Harvick highlights the biggest challenge Helio Castroneves faces at Daytona 500

Helio Castroneves is ready for his foray into NASCAR this weekend during the Daytona 500, and Kevin Harvick is excited to see what the racing legend will bring to the table.

While other wheelmen have to worry about qualifying and the Daytona Duels, Castroneves is already in the race, due to the new open exemption provisional. Harvick believes that’ll be massive for the steep learning curve Castroneves will have this week, and he could ratchet his aggressiveness up to a whole new level.

“Yeah, I think the thing that stood out the most when I interviewed him and he said his biggest issue will be pit road. I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know. We’ll see.’ I guess that’s the first thing that he recognized was, in the Indy cars, they have the pit road limiter. You just hold the button down, you drive the thing down pit road. … So there are a lot of things that he’s going to learn, as he gets into the Daytona 500,” Harvick stated regarding Castroneves, via Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour. “It’s going to be interesting to watch him learn. He’s been around racing for a long time. I raced against him in IROC cars.

“He was always super aggressive in the IROC cars, because the first thing that happens with an Indy car guy typically is, they come to stock cars thinking, ‘Oh man, these guys beat and bang and run into each other,’ and the first thing they want to do is they think that they have to run into somebody, and they have to be aggressive by using the side of the car, the front of the car, and they’re very aggressive in how they put their car in the positions that they put their car in.

“So, I think a lot of the Indy car guys just don’t have that same stock car awareness, and it’s just a different style of racing from an Indy car to a stock car. I think, sometimes, they have a little bit of a learning curve, to be able to put all that into check. But he’s got a lot of experience.”

In the end, it’ll simply be about survival in the Daytona 500, as it usually is, and avoiding the giant wrecks that super-speedway racing can create. Harvick realizes that, and he’s hoping for Castroneves to have a solid performance this weekend in Florida.

“I think that being in the show takes a lot of pressure off for those duels, to be able to go out there and learn. I think he’ll be very aggressive. I don’t think that that is going to be an issue for Helio, to put his car in a position that he wants to put it in,” Harvick added. “But it’s going to be a pretty steep learning curve. But then again, this is a different car. You look back at Travis Pastrana. I think he finished P10 or P11 in the Daytona 500. So, sometimes it’s just about survival, and being able to race in this race.

“Everybody views this race a little bit skewed from a normal weekly race, and we’ve seen the super-speedway races take a lot of carnage through the years. It’s going to happen at some point. But the Daytona 500 always seems to be a little bit riskier, because it’s the Daytona 500, and everybody is willing to take a little bit more of a chance than they would normally.”

Regardless, it’s pretty awesome that Helio Castroneves is trying his hand at the Daytona 500, and he’ll certainly have the attention of Kevin Harvick and the rest of the NASCAR world this weekend. Count him out at your own risk. Perhaps he’ll pull an SVG and shock the world.