NASCAR: Kevin Harvick praises Stewart-Haas Racing’s latest move

Kevin Harvick praised Stewart-Haas Racing’s addition of Chase Briscoe for the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season and holds Briscoe in high regard.

Stewart-Haas Racing confirmed that Xfinity Series driver Chase Briscoe is set to replace Clint Bowyer behind the wheel of the #14 Ford for the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season after Bowyer announced that the 2020 season would be his final season as a full-time driver and that he would be moving to the Fox broadcast booth next year.

This marks the fifth straight season that Stewart-Haas Racing are set to enter with a different driver lineup than the previous year.

The lone constant during those five years is 2014 champion, Kevin Harvick, who is currently in his seventh season with the team, and he had nothing but praise for the 25-year-old Mitchell, Indiana native, who has won a series-high nine races in the 2020 Xfinity Series season thus far driving the #98 Ford.

More from NASCAR Cup Series

• NASCAR Cup Series: New team set to compete in 2024
• NASCAR: Surprising name continuously linked to new seat
• NASCAR driver at risk of missing the Daytona 500?
• NASCAR set for rare appearance last seen 13 years ago
• NASCAR team adds third car, names driver for 2024 Daytona 500

“As you talk about people, and people have asked a lot about Chase, the best thing about Chase Briscoe is not that he can drive a race car, it’s that he’s a great person,” Harvick told Beyond the Flag. “And I think that’s the part that has attracted people to him through his career.

“I think as you go through the ups and downs of your career, as you’re in those downs, you have to have something that people gravitate towards, and the way he approaches the things that he says and the things that he does and how he presents himself are very important to the progression that he’s had in his career. And then he goes out and gets it done on the race track.

“So I think as you look at Chase for the long-term and the long haul of Stewart-Haas Racing, he’s a winner. He’s still learning and has a lot to learn, but he learns fast, and he applies that to the race track. So he’s just a great kid, and I think I’m old enough to call him a kid, and I think as you look at this year and the things that he’s proven throughout his racing career, he’s going to be great for Stewart-Haas Racing for a long time.”

Harvick also addressed the fact that Stewart-Haas Racing haven’t kept the same driver lineup from one year to the next since between the 2015 and 2016 seasons.

After 2016, Tony Stewart retired and Bowyer replaced him behind the wheel of the #14 Chevrolet-turned Ford. After 2017, Danica Patrick retired and Aric Almirola replaced her behind the wheel of the #10 Ford. Kurt Busch left after the 2018 season and Daniel Suarez replaced him behind the wheel of the #41 Ford. Suarez was replaced by Cole Custer after the 2019 season.

“The one thing I can tell you that’s been pretty steady are the people working on the race cars,” he said. “Mike [Bugarewicz], the crew chief of Almirola’s car, was an engineer on our car. Johnny [Klausmeier], the crew chief on the #14 car, has been at Stewart-Haas Racing for a long time.

“So you have this continuity of people who are working in the race shop, and obviously each driver wants something a little bit different in the way that he drives the car, so it is a little bit of an adjustment as you go through the things that people are talking about and how they present themselves in the meetings with the information that they have.

“So you have to kind of sit back and listen and learn whether those similarities are good or bad for you. As we’ve gone through this, there’s really no bad teammate just because of the fact that they drive differently than you or want something different in the car.

“It’s just the fact that you have to know if that’s something that you need to hone in on and say ‘this is going to help me’ or if this is something that you have to mark down as something that they said and know that the driving characteristics are much different from your side of things. We always see that progress but I think it will be a good dynamic with the group of guys that we have.”

Before Briscoe gets to the Cup Series, Harvick is backing him to win this year’s Xfinity Series championship in the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway on Saturday, November 7.

“We’re rooting for Chase to win the championship on the Xfinity side and we’ll do anything we can to help those guys achieve that goal,” he said.

Harvick also praised Mobil 1, the Stewart-Haas Racing partner that is giving fans the chance to win exclusive prizes they won’t be able to get anywhere else throughout the remainder of the playoffs by going to http://officialmotoroilofnascar.com/. Keeping Briscoe within the Mobil 1 family of drivers is also going to be huge.

“That’s the great thing about Mobil 1, is it’s a family of the Stewart-Haas drivers and the things that you have access to, whether it’s Cole [Custer] or Tony or myself or Aric [Almirola], whoever it is, Mobil is participating on everybody’s vehicle at Stewart-Haas Racing,” he noted.

“For us as a team, it’s great to have a partner like Mobil 1 because they’re so involved in the performance of our race car and the things that we do on the race track and always trying to push the limits with our engine department and create new things. So it’s quite an honor to have a group like Mobil 1 a part of Stewart-Haas Racing.”