Kevin Harvick is one of only 10 drivers in NASCAR Cup Series history to make 800 or more starts. His 60 Cup victories ranks 10th all-time. This year’s oldest full-time Cup driver at 47, Harvick is a regular-season series title winner, a playoff champion and a member of an elite foursome — joining Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and the late, great Dale Earnhardt — who have taken the checkered flag at all four crown-jewel events, the Daytona 500, the Coca-Cola 600, the Brickyard 400 and the Southern 500.
The point is, if anyone should be able to enlighten us in regard to what NASCAR’s upcoming Chicago Street Race will be like, it’s the seen-it-all Harvick, who is fifth in the 2023 points standings in his final season before he’ll retire from full-time racing and jump into the FOX Sports television booth as an analyst.
So, what the heck are he — and we — in for with the Grant Park 220 on July 2, a day after NASCAR’s shorter Xfinity Series race on the same yet-to-be-constructed downtown street course?
Will it be wild-and-crazy action, with cars pinballing off one another as drivers fight for position on a course with seven 90-degree turns and some unusually narrow stretches? Or might it be at the other end of the spectrum — in other words, kind of slow and boring — because it’s simply too difficult for drivers to make passes?
“Who knows?” Harvick said by phone this week. “It’s all just pure speculation.”
Well, shoot. If he doesn’t know, we Chicagoans who aren’t exactly fluent in the sport — the NASCAR illiterati, if you will — are left with no choice but to remain clueless.
“I learned a long time ago that you just can’t predict these things,” Harvick said. “This race could be the greatest race that you’ve ever seen or it could be the worst one you’ve ever watched. I don’t think anybody really knows, but I think that’s the intrigue about the event.”
Cup drivers aren’t entirely thrilled about this Chicago race, mainly because what to expect is such a fuzzy matter. They can spend a bunch of hours — and some of them already have — on iRacing simulators in preparation for the action on and around the Outer Drive and Michigan Ave., but until they put rubber on the road and experience realities including the varying surfaces from street to street, they’re doing a good bit of guessing.
A general rule of life: The less you have to guess at when exceeding 100 mph, the better.
Harvick will zip around our neck of the woods in the No. 4 Busch Light Ford Mustang just the same, and his feelings toward the race probably can be described as down the middle. Isn’t part of him psyched that he’s still active for NASCAR’s maiden voyage to Chicago? Does he ever say to himself, “If only I’d retired last year, I wouldn’t have to do this”?
“Probably both,” he admitted. “But from a driving standpoint, we all have this terrible, terrible habit of just going directly toward what could go wrong. But then we figure it all out and everything’s fine. We have a lot of great drivers that drive these cars that could basically drive [anywhere] because they’re that good.
“For me, there’s always a little bit of anxiety as you lead into these types of events just because of the fact there are so many unknowns. But I think that’s also what makes these types of events usually great.”
Harvick is having another strong year, with four top-five finishes, seven top-10s and an overall points ranking of fifth. He’s still seeking Cup win No. 61, though. Maybe the guy known as “The Closer” will get to burn some Victory Lane rubber on Columbus Dr. in front of Buckingham Fountain.
Harvick is an old driver, but he isn’t ancient. Jimmie Johnson, a few months older than Harvick, still is racing a partial Cup schedule. Matt Kenseth drove full-time at 48 in 2020. Mark Martin did it at 54 and Dave Blaney at 50 in 2013. The oldest of ’em all was Dick Trickle, who ran 30 races in 1998 at the age 56.
But for the record, Harvick says no chance he pulls a Tom Brady on the racing world.
“I’m not the type of guy that’s going to tell you I’m going to retire and then not retire,” he said.
Wait a second, “The Closer”? Don’t we have at least one baseball team around here that’s in need of one of those?
“Just go find one and overpay him,” Harvick joked, “and you’ll be right back on track.”
Are we out of things to talk about? Did we mention we’re part of the NASCAR illiterati?
“That’s OK,” Harvick said. “Your position is really the reason that we’re going up there. Once we get you in person there, we won’t lose you. …
“Let [Chicago] see the cars, let them hear the cars, let them see the excitement of a race and the event and everything that comes with that. Don’t feel bad, because that’s why we’re going to drive through the streets of Chicago and put NASCAR on display.”
