KEVIN HARVICK
Las Vegas Advance
No. 4 GEARWRENCH® Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing
Event Overview
● Event: South Point 400 (Round 33 of 36)
● Time/Date: 2:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 16
● Location: Las Vegas Motor Speedway
● Layout: 1.5-mile oval
● Laps/Miles: 267 laps/400.5 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 80 laps / Stage 2: 85 laps / Final Stage: 102 laps
● TV/Radio: NBC / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Notes of Interest
● Since joining Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) in 2014, Kevin Harvick has finished among the top-10 in eight of the 13 NASCAR Cup Series races contested at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. In that span, the driver of the No. 4 GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang has led 621 laps and won twice – March 2015 and March 2018. Harvick finished 12th in the series’ most recent race at the 1.5-mile oval in March.
● Harvick has led a total of 679 laps at Las Vegas, the most of any NASCAR Cup Series driver in the history of the track. Next best in this category is seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson with 595 laps led. All but 58 of Harvick’s laps led at Las Vegas have come in his nine years with SHR. The 2022 season is Harvick’s 22nd year in Cup.
● Harvick’s win at Las Vegas in March 2018 was his 100th career victory across NASCAR’s top-three national touring series – Cup, Xfinity and Camping World Truck. He has since scored 21 more Cup wins to bring his record to 121 total victories – 60 in Cup, 47 in Xfinity and 14 in Truck. Only three other drivers in NASCAR history have surpassed 100 wins across NASCAR’s top-three series: Kyle Busch (224 wins), Richard Petty (200 wins) and David Pearson (106 wins).
● Harvick has a total of 13 top-10s at Las Vegas, tied with Kyle Busch for the most among active NASCAR Cup Series drivers.
● There have been 29 NASCAR Cup Series races contested at Las Vegas, including its inaugural race on March 1, 1998. Harvick has started 26 of those races, the most of any driver, past or present.
● Harvick has made 11 starts in the Xfinity Series at Las Vegas. He has two wins, six top-fives and seven top-10s. His first Xfinity Series win came in 2004 when he started 11th and led 14 laps. His second triumph came in 2010 when he started second and led 82 laps.
● Harvick has made three Truck Series starts at Las Vegas, earning two top-10s with a best finish of eighth in 1997.
● GEARWRENCH®, a premier hand tool brand from Apex Tool Group, joined Harvick and the No. 4 team as a primary partner in 2022. GEARWRENCH is the No. 1 worldwide professional-grade mechanics’ hand tool brand, offering products that are designed and manufactured to meet the requirements of pros, mechanics and auto techs who make a living with their tools. GEARWRENCH understands the problems mechanics face every day and provides tools that increase productivity through speed, strength and access. Since the launch of the original five-degree ratcheting wrench, the GEARWRENCH brand has led the industry with breakthroughs in pass-thru ratchets, sockets, screw/nut drivers, pliers, extraction tools and specialty tools. Learn more at GEARWRENCH.com.
● Featured on the decklid of Harvick’s No. 4 GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang during the South Point 400 are GEARWRENCH PITBULL™ pliers, which provide unstoppable gripping and cutting performance thanks to a range of technology. GEARWRENCH PITBULL Auto Bite™ pliers feature one-handed, automatic gripping action, so they’re perfect for tough work in tight spaces. GEARWRENCH PITBULL Tongue and Groove pliers have a K9™ jaw that bites hard to grip strong, even when attacking at an angle. And when it comes to superior cutting, GEARWRENCH PITBULL cutting pliers deliver with 35 percent less force needed to cut and a 50 percent longer blade life. Learn more about the entire range of GEARWRENCH PITBULL pliers HERE.
Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4 GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang
What are your expectations as you return to Las Vegas since last competing at the track nearly seven months ago?
“I honestly can’t even tell you what happened in the first race, it’s been so long. We’ve just been through so many tests and so many simulator sessions and so many different forms of setups and things with the car, and the evolutions of the setups and the tires, and the understanding of the vehicle is just in a massively different spot than where we were at the beginning of the year. That progression of the sport that naturally comes year after year after year is just much more rapid this year because of the new car, so it’ll be interesting to see how Las Vegas is this weekend with our GEARWRENCH Ford Mustang. A lot of it depends on just how hot it is. We’re expecting hot, but I think the falloff will be dictated by that, and which tire we bring with which stagger, will also be a little bit of a difference than we had the first time.”
Was there a point this season where you felt like you finally had a handle on the NextGen car?
“It has depended on the racetrack, especially as we go to some of these racetracks for the second time – Richmond being one of those. For me, it’s been a relief just because you could look back and say, ‘OK, the car felt like this, this is what my notes say, this is what the team said.’ You can watch the videos and all the data that comes with everything we do in today’s world, and say, ‘OK, this is where I let off, this is how I drove the car last time.’ That part has happened a lot as we go to some of these races for a second time, and that gives me a comfort level to know that you can do this with the car and that with the car. But it’s still a learning process because our garage never quits learning. The teams are always learning, and it’s a constant progression of setups and evolution of driving and styles and things that you can and can’t do. You’re still trying to find those limits to where you can race, and how you can race, and what you can do on, really, everything. It’s not as fast as it was at the beginning of the year, but it’s still a pretty rapid evolution. But that’s pretty constant in our garage, because we have so many smart people and engineers working on these cars.”
What’s different about the NextGen car?
“It’s just different in every aspect of everything you do. Other than the fact that you’re in a race, everything inside the car just feels different. The steering is different, where we went from just an old-style steering box to now rack-and-pinion steering, so if you touch the wheel just a little bit, the steering immediately reacts. The pedals are all different and the way that they feel is different. You have an extra gear inside the car. It’s a sequential straight-up, straight-down sequential shifting mechanism that goes inside the car. So, there’s just so many things that are different that we’ve had to learn and, really, had to relearn some of the things that you have to do within the car, whether it’s how you use the throttle, how you steer the car, use the braking, which have different tendencies than the old car. It’s nothing outside the box, but it’s so drastically different that you’ve had to almost retrain yourself to do some things and the style of things that you’ve learned the car likes over the season. That part has been fun and difficult all at the same time and, for us, we’ve been very fortunate to spend a lot of time in the simulator and have it be somewhat relevant to the racetrack to try to create that muscle memory and thought process of things that you have to do that are different.”
What’s it been like racing with the NextGen car?
“There are definitely more accidents, and I think a lot of that comes with the aggression of knowing you’re not going to cave a fender in, and you have to be able to do what you need to do on the restarts to try to gain spots. So when you look at that, there have been more DNFs, there have been more accidents, there have been less top-10s, less top-fives, more spread out as far as the win column goes with the 19 different winners so far. It’s been much different as everybody’s learning about the car and trying to understand it. It’s kind of spread things out throughout the field. You’ll have something torn up, you’ll have races where you don’t get torn up and you don’t run well, but you can still salvage a top-10 because that attrition rate has been higher.”
Why is the attrition rate higher?
“The racing is closer and the cars are more durable, so people are more aggressive, especially on the restarts. Pit road has been different with the loose wheels and the speed of the pit stops and the margin of error is just less. I think the aggression level is up. Some places are more difficult to pass than they’ve been in the past and you have to take your opportunities as you can. You’ve seen a lot more people spin out this year, and you’re just seeing a lot of things happen that haven’t happened in years past.”
Las Vegas has become quite the sports town. What are some of the sports you might’ve played if you weren’t a NASCAR driver?
“I’m not the most athletic person, but I have a little bit of grit and determination, which is the only thing that got me through my four years of wresting in high school. I don’t know what I would’ve done. I went to the local junior college and knew I wanted to race and never pursued the wrestling piece of it. I would’ve definitely had to do some things a little bit differently. I was a little guy in high school. I think that worked out OK now, being 46 years old, but I always wanted to race and I have no clue what I would’ve done if I wasn’t driving cars. I started driving go-karts when I was 5 and raced cars when I was 16 and started traveling all over, racing cars or working on the trucks for Wayne and Connie Spears as a mechanic. Racing is all that I’ve known. I have no clue in which direction it would’ve gone if it wasn’t for racing.”
No. 4 GEARWRENCH Team Roster
Primary Team Members
Driver: Kevin Harvick
Hometown: Bakersfield, California
Interim Crew Chief: Stephen Doran
Hometown: Butler, Pennsylvania
Car Chief: Robert “Cheddar” Smith
Hometown: Whitewater, Wisconsin
Engineer: Dax Gerringer
Hometown: Gibsonville, North Carolina
Spotter: Tim Fedewa
Hometown: Holt, Michigan
Over-The-Wall Members
Front Tire Changer: Daniel Coffey
Hometown: Granite Falls, North Carolina
Rear Tire Changer: Daniel Smith
Hometown: Concord, North Carolina
Tire Carrier: Jeremy Howard
Hometown: Delhart, Texas
Jack Man: Brandon Banks
Hometown: High Point, North Carolina
Fuel Man: Evan Marchal
Hometown: Westfield, Indiana
Road Crew Members
Mechanic: Richie Bean
Hometown: Bradford, Vermont
Mechanic: Nick DeFazio
Hometown: Orange, California
Tire Specialist: Jamie Turski
Hometown: Trumbull, Connecticut
Engine Tuner: Robert Brandt
Hometown: Mobile, Alabama
Transporter Co-Driver: Rick Hodges
Hometown: Raleigh, North Carolina
Transporter Co-Driver: Stephen Mitchell
Hometown: Woodville, Ohio
