NASCAR: Kevin Harvick reveals who he believes NASCAR’s next megastar is
By Asher Fair
In a press conference at Kansas Speedway for Saturday night’s KC Masterpiece 400, Kevin Harvick revealed the driver he believes is NASCAR’s next megastar.
In a press conference on Friday evening, Kevin Harvick, the 2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion and the polesitter for tomorrow night’s KC Masterpiece 400 at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas, offered his thoughts on which driver he believes can be the sport’s next megastar.
Back in October after Chase Elliott was passed for the race lead by Kyle Busch with just over one lap to go in the round of 16 playoff race at Dover International Raceway, forcing him to settle for yet another second place finish, Harvick voiced his support for him.
Harvick stated that he wanted Elliott to win a race, as he believed it would be good for the sport of NASCAR since Elliott is by far and away the top candidate to replace 15-time reigning Most Popular Driver Award winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. as the most popular driver in the sport.
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These comments came under two months after Harvick stated that Earnhardt Jr.’s lack of success in NASCAR despite the fact that he was the sport’s most popular driver for a decade and a half, especially his lack of championships and his lack of a lot of victories during his tenure driving for Hendrick Motorsports, stunted the sport’s growth.
As a result of these claims, it was not surprising to hear Harvick say that he wants Elliott to do well, as in his mind, that would inherently prevent the stunted growth he believed happened as a result of Earnhardt Jr.’s lack of success.
Now Harvick has gone one step further in regard to his support for the 22-year-old Elliott, who is still searching for his first victory in his third season as a full-time Cup Series driver. Harvick believes that Elliott will be the sport’s next megastar.
Here is what Harvick had to say about the matter during this press conference.
"“The bottom line is, when you look at our sport, there’s only a few guys that come through this sport that have the name, the history, the heritage of that NASCAR family and carry that through their career, and Chase is one of those guys, and he’s done a great job of carrying himself and being competitive and doing all the things that he does, but he is the NASCAR tie to the beginning of the sport, or however far back you want to look at it.“But he has that family name and that history and the heritage of the hard core NASCAR fan, who are going to be the people who vote that and his dad won a few times in the Most Popular Driver, and he’s the next Dale Jr. He’s the next guy that, is he going to win enough to be the ‘megastar’? At some point.“He’s a star right now, but winning takes you to that next level of being a bigger star, and Chase Elliott winning is better for our sport, and he’s going to be the guy that wins the Most Popular Driver, in my opinion, for the next several years. There is nobody else that has that tie to our sport like Chase does. I can win 20 races a year and I’m never going to have that tie to the sport like Chase does.”"
Here is a video of Harvick discussing the matter.
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Will Chase Elliott turn out to be NASCAR’s next megastar like Kevin Harvick believes he will? When will he finally get the monkey off of his back and win his first career race in the Cup Series? Tune in to the live broadcast of the 2018 KC Masterpiece 400 at Kansas Speedway tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1 to see if he can finally get to victory lane.