FONTANA, Calif. – Kevin Harvick is a NASCAR Cup Series champion, a two-time NASCAR Xfinity Series champion, a Daytona 500 winner and a 60-time race winner in stock car racing’s highest level.
Before that, he was just a late-model driver from Bakersfield, Calif. As Harvick returns to Auto Club Speedway for NASCAR’s final laps at the current fan- and driver-favorite two-mile configuration, it feels like the end of an era in more ways than one.
Speaking to the press, including Frontstretch, as rain (and snow) battered the Inland Empire, Harvick reflected on the impact the track has had on his long and illustrious career.
“I don’t really have any bad memories [of Auto Club],” the 47-year-old said. “I think for me, probably going back to 2002, winning the IROC race and then driving home and running a late model race at my home track in Mesa Marin [Raceway]. … Back in 1998, winning the Winston West race was really what kicked off my career. … There’s been a lot of great things that have happened for me at this particular racetrack.”
Although Harvick’s native Southern California went without a Cup Series date in the eight years between the demise of Riverside International Raceway in 1989 and the debut of what is now Auto Club in 1997, that doesn’t mean there was no stock car racing in the region — far from it.
“One thing that California doesn’t get enough credit for is what a car culture it has,” Harvick said. “Racing falls into that car culture. … I was fortunate to grow up in Bakersfield … you [could] race anything you wanted to [there], and still pretty much can. … That’s a racing town that you could pick right up and put in Mooresville [N.C.], and it would fit right in.”
Harvick is just the most famous of his generation of SoCal short-trackers, a community strong enough to attract the Craftsman Truck Series to Mesa Marin nine times between its inaugural 1995 season and 2003. The October 1995 event even saw a hometown kid wheel a family-owned No. 72 Chevrolet to a 27th-place result in his NASCAR national series debut. His name? Kevin Harvick.
“I couldn’t be where I’m at [without] … the local support. … We have a group … that have supported me pretty much my whole life in everything I do, from racing to the foundations to just being your friends. So it’s always fun to go back to town.”
Before the NASCAR circus descended on Fontana this weekend, Harvick…
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