Getting in tune: a not-so-happy sophomore season has Kevin Harvick working to expunge distressing tendencies and to restore the luster to his promising career

Sporting News, The, Oct 28, 2002 by Mark McCarter

Kevin Harvick is driving down the Jersey Shore, the wind in his hair.

He is in a Corvette convertible. This is "Happy" Harvick, as his nickname suggests, the carefree charismatic Harvick. Not the Harvick who has been a lightning rod for controversy in the NASCAR world. Sun shining, pretty girl at his side, loud rock music with a contagious backbeat providing the up-tempo Muzak that makes you do your own drum solo on the steering wheel. Happy.

It is not a traditional road trip. It is the backdrop for a VH1 special. The music video network is ranking "The Top 10 Greatest Driving Songs of All Time." Riding shotgun is a video vixen named Rachel Perry. They make stops along the way, at some of Springsteen's old haunts, for instance.

"The gig," Harvick says later, "was pretty cool."

Pretty cool exposure for Harvick, who typically has avoided the limelight this season and remains something of a mystery. Just who is he?

A reckless youth, as dangerous as a 16-year-old in dad's new wheels on prom night? Or a driver as calculatingly aggressive as Dale Earnhardt, whom he succeeded in the GM Goodwrench Chevrolet? ("There was only one Dale Earnhardt, and no one will ever replace him," Harvick has said. "I just drive the way I drive.")

The most gifted of the twenty somethings who have turned NASCAR upside down? Or a driver destined to settle in the tire tracks of the youngsters who have learned to say and do all the right things in front of all the right people?

A meteor who blazed across the heavens? Or a bright star settling into a prominent spot in the firmament?

Maybe all of the questions can't be answered. But maybe Harvick's story can be told in song titles, right from his VH1 countdown.

Born To Be Wild

Well, after all, he used to play in a crib in a garage while his dad, Mike, worked on racecars. He got a go-kart when he graduated from kindergarten, for crying out loud. "I don't know if destined is the right word," Harvick says. But it seems that way.

And now, he's a fender-banging driver with a grin that goes so quickly from charming to sinister, with a personality so enigmatic it reminds you of the last man to sit behind the wheel of the very same Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

Harvick has earned the wrath of critics and at times the admiration of fans starved for more machismo in the sport during his 17 mercurial months of Winston Cup racing. He has angered other drivers with reckless--or wreck-inducing--driving. He is not a youngster who has gotten high marks in the "works and plays well with others" category. He has spent more than his share of the time in NASCAR's red trailer, that portable principal's office in the garage area where recalcitrant drivers frequently find themselves being lectured by Mike Helton, the NASCAR president, or other stern Pooh-Bahs.

All this, though, is having a positive impact. At least that's what Richard Childress, Harvick's car owner, maintains.

"I think he's going to end up making a better race driver and a better spokesman for NASCAR and sponsors," Childress says, leaning on a set of tires outside of the No. 29's hauler.

"I've seen changes in him," says broadcaster Benny Parsons, a former Winston Cup champion.

I Can't Drive 55

Harvick won the pole for the Pepsi 400 in July at Daytona and was an integral part of the story line the next week as the defending winner at Chicagoland Speedway. He did interviews. He did an affable NASCAR.com chat. He did his VH1 gig. Happy days were here again.

Then, for the second time in as many Winston Cup races at Chicagoland, Harvick went out and won the darned thing, ending his winless string at 34 races. A gutsy, fingers-crossed decision by crew chief Gil Martin to eschew a late fuel stop was the determining factor. In fact, Harvick didn't have enough gas after his victory lap to plow doughnuts in the grass. Harvick left the No. 29 parked on the track like it was some exhausted '84 Buick deserted on the shoulder of a freeway and walked to victory lane.

On lap 197 of 267, Harvick dived daringly low on the front stretch to pass Kurt Busch. As Harvick did, he lost control. He skidded, smoking, across the apron. Harvick emerged from the mishap with little damage, but cars in his wake piled up as they hit the brakes. One of the victims was Jimmy Spencer. In a comment some NASCAR observers filed under "Kettle, Pot Calling It Black," Spencer growled, "He still drives like an idiot."

It was a comment from Jeff Gordon that got Harvick's dander up, though. Gordon had termed the move "pretty stupid," Harvick told reporters: "He thinks it was a stupid move, and I thought it was pretty cool," Harvick added: "If he'd have been a little bit braver, he might have won."

The last time anybody looked, Gordon had more Winston Cup championships than Harvick has Winston Cup wins. Harvick, as Childress says, still is "going through the learning curve."

Highway To Hell

Harvick has been reluctant to talk because invariably, even as this story must, the subject turns to a speckled past. "When I go out and do something right, they (the media) are still going to write something that I did wrong," he says. Yet any emergence into this "better race driver and a better spokesman" about which Childress speaks requires the speckled past to fully appreciate the present and future.