Kevin Harvick Inc., which will field cars and trucks for the final time this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway, has been a unique – and successful – part of the NASCAR landscape for more than 10 years. In that time, the team owned by Kevin and DeLana Harvick has fielded more than 700 cars and trucks, winning 43 Camping World Truck Series races and three owners championships along with 10 Nationwide Series races.
The team was started back in 2001, a product of the frustrations both Harvicks had experienced in their early days in the sport. Kevin had struggled with mediocre equipment early in his career and had never won a truck race at that time. He nearly won the first truck race he entered as driver/owner, finishing second at Richmond. Some time later, he drew up the initial plans for the KHI complex on a napkin as he and his wife sat in their motorhome at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
DeLana grew up going to the races with her father, the late John Paul Linville. He hauled his cars and equipment in a converted cube van with the race car on an open trailer while many of his competitors had fancy enclosed haulers.
"My dad built homes. He didn't have (a) full-time sponsor, and we always raced with what we could afford," she said during a 2005 interview as she sat in her second-story office at the 50,000-square-foot KHI building in her hometown of Kernersville, N.C. "I know what it's like to show up at the race track underfunded and with inferior equipment, and now I know what it's like to show up with good equipment and good guys.
"It's a totally different feeling. It makes you appreciate it a lot more."
DeLana’s area of responsibility was focused on business issues such as licensing and merchandising, but her passion was downstairs in the race shop and at the race track.
"If the toilet paper needs changing, I'll do it, or if the trash needs emptying I'll do it," she said. "Nobody's going to care as much about this place as we do. It's our baby, and it's probably a big reason why we don't have children.”
DeLana’s devotion and love of the race team was never more apparent than at Daytona in 2005, when Tony Stewart gave the Harvicks their first Nationwide win as car owners.
“"When Tony started moving up through the field, I totally forgot Kevin was on the race track," she said. "I got to Victory Lane, and I said, ‘My God, where did Kevin finish?'
"I had no idea he finished second."
But that all comes to an end this weekend at Homestead. When Saturday’s races is over, the Nationwide cars will be assimilated into the Welcome, N.C. shops of Richard Childress, who owns the Sprint Cup cars that Harvick drives. The trucks will be taken over by Eddie Sharp.
In a recent interview with SPEED TV, DeLana Harvick said she’s comfortable with the decision to shut down KHI, but the move wasn’t made without a lot of thought.
“It was a hard decision to make,” she said. “Kevin and I both felt that in order to have any resemblance of a normal life, and to the point the Nationwide cars had progressed and the competition level, we felt like this was the right time and the right thing to do.
“It has been all of our blood, sweat and tears for 10 years. It’s not just a five-day-a-week job. It’s a seven-day-a-week, 24-hour-a-day, 365-days-a-year job. That’s no joke.”
Kevin Harvick said in the same interview that he’s looking forward to a new chapter in his life.
“I think as we move forward, I really am excited about everything that’s going on because I think as a driver I get to do the same things I’ve been doing here at KHI, as the responsibility will be a lot less and allow me more time to focus and to do the things we want to do away from the race track,” he said.
He said he’s been somewhat frustrated because the demands of his Cup career don’t leave enough time to focus on KHI as much as he’d like.
“To be honest with you, the Cup stuff keeps you so busy with where the sponsorship of the world lays, the way the sport is and the way everything goes now, that you have to spend a lot of quality time making sure that the sponsors are getting everything they need,” he said. “I haven’t had a lot of time to spend doing the things I probably could have done at KHI….
“It didn’t become a burden, but if I’m going to do it, I want to be able to be around it more than I was able to over the last year or so.”
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