Oh, What a Fill-In

Never before Kevin Harvick was called on to step into the racing shoes of Dale Earnhardt, stock car racing’s greatest icon, had anyone in the history of motor sports been asked to do what was asked of the smiling 25-year-old from Bakersfield.

Since that day, Feb. 19, the Monday after Earnhardt’s shocking death on the last turn of the last lap of the Daytona 500, Harvick has been the surprise of the 2001 Winston Cup season.

No one before Harvick ever won a Winston Cup race as quickly--his third race, March 11, at Atlanta.

No one in modern NASCAR history has tried to compete in every Winston Cup and Busch Grand National series race in the same season--69 events from February to November.

Sunday, on the hilly Sears Point Raceway two-mile road course where he won a Winston West race in 1998, Harvick will make his 32nd start for Richard Childress Racing, the team for which Earnhardt drove for 20 years and won six of his seven Winston Cup championships. He will be in the same Monte Carlo that Earnhardt drove to sixth place here last year.

“I’m lucky there’s no Busch race anywhere this weekend,” Harvick said after qualifying 12th Friday at 92.295 mph for Sunday’s Dodge/Save Mart 350. “It’s going to be a busy summer from here on.”

Jeff Gordon, going for his third consecutive Sears Point win, qualified for the pole at 93.699 mph.

When Harvick took over Earnhardt’s Winston Cup ride--No. 29 instead of No. 3, white instead of black, but otherwise the same car--it was expected he would race the remainder of the Winston Cup schedule and miss a few Busch races when there was a date conflict.

Harvick, with the confidence and energy of youth, insisted he could do both. He talked Childress into it.

“I knew the guys on the Busch team would understand if I missed a race here and there, but I knew we had prepared for a run at the championship and the more I thought about it, the more I felt we could do it,” Harvick said. “Of course, Richard [Childress] had to be convinced because RCR would have to line up planes, helicopters and police escorts. After we checked the calendar, we decided to go for it.”

A look at last week’s logistics, where Harvick won a Busch race at Kentucky Speedway on Saturday night and drove in a Cup race Sunday at Pocono, 600 miles away, highlights some of the problems.

On Friday, he attended a rookie driver’s meeting at Pocono, practiced and qualified for the 500, then took a helicopter to the airport in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Pa., then flew in an RCR-chartered Lear jet to Cincinnati for another chopper ride to Kentucky Speedway. After Busch qualifying, he did a helicopter-jet-helicopter return trip to Pocono and his infield motor home.

Thursday and Saturday were much the same.

There are five more split weekends ahead this summer, including one when he races Saturday at Pikes Peak Raceway in Colorado and Sunday back at Pocono.

Already this year, Harvick has completed more than 9,100 miles of high-speed competition--and that doesn’t begin to figure in how many air miles he has logged from race to race. And he’s doing it with quality performances.

Last year’s Busch rookie of the year, Harvick is leading this year’s standings and despite missing the Daytona 500, he is ninth in Winston Cup points and is the leading rookie-of-the-year candidate.

“There’s no doubt, this season has gone better than anyone could ever have planned,” Harvick said. “I’ve got to credit the race teams, both of them. . . . And all the guys have helped me mature, not only on the track but off it too.

“And DeLana’s been so supportive, she’s done so much for me.”

DeLana and Kevin were married Feb. 28 in Las Vegas, in the frenetic week between Rockingham, N.C., where Harvick drove for the first time in Earnhardt’s seat, and a two-race weekend in Las Vegas.

DeLana has been around racing as long, maybe longer, than Harvick.

Her father, John Paul Neville, drove in NASCAR’s Late Model Sportsman division before there was a Busch series.

“I was brought up around racing,” she said. “I spotted for my dad, and I’d love to spot for Kevin, but the team’s already in place. I still critique his races. I’m trying to get him to improve on his restarts. I wear earphones during the races and listen to what’s being said, but I can’t talk to him. Maybe it’s better that I can’t.”

Harvick first drove a go-kart at age 5 around his home in Bakersfield, where his competitors included Clint and Casey Mears.

DeLana is also a racer. She drove in late model races last year at Southern National Speedway in Kenly, N.C.

“We used to run Saturday nights and Kevin and I did the work on the car ourselves, but this year with his schedule I had to give it up,” DeLana said. “So we bought a Legends car and I race Tuesday nights at Lowe’s Speedway in Charlotte. They have a small oval inside the big track, where we race.

“Once in a while they have match races and I’m trying to get Kevin to line up against me. I think it would be a blast.”

What if she beat him?

“Now that would really be a blast!” she said, laughing.

Kevin’s reaction: “First, let’s see if she can beat up on a bunch of 12-year-olds.”

When they met two years ago at a race in Michigan, DeLana was a public relations representative working with Jeff Gordon and Busch champion Randy LaJoie.

“She’s really helped me working with the media,” Kevin said. “That’s the biggest change I’ve had to deal with.”

Before the Atlanta win in his third race, Mark Donohue had been the quickest winner, taking the checkered flag in his fifth start, in 1973 at Riverside.

To win, the rookie had to make a three-wide pass--reminiscent of Earnhardt’s Intimidator style--to beat Gordon by about the width of his bumper, 0.006 second to be exact.

“I don’t think anything I do in my career will ever surpass the feeling I had when I won my first Winston Cup race. I wish I could explain exactly how I felt, but I just can’t. It was too unbelievable.

“That was the best medicine the doctor could have prescribed, not only for me and the RCR team, but for the whole sport.”