Kevin Harvick, Bob Pockrass predict 2025 NASCAR Cup Championship winner

The NASCAR season is set to begin and, with it, several long months of competition for the Cup Series crown. Before the year begins, a trio of insiders in the sport joined forces on the Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast to pick their presumed champions.

Host Kaitlyn Vincie picked Kyle Larson to win it all after a season in which he won six races.

That prompted an immediate rebuttal from Kevin Harvick, who chose a driver fast becoming Larson’s rival on the track.

“I’m going with his rival, Christopher Bell,” Harvick said. “I think Bell has been close. He’s just got that hunger to go out and figure out how to make it happen. And as you go through season after season after season, that maturity that goes with everything has been very visible to me.”

There’s a big change in store for Joe Gibbs Racing that Harvick also believes could make a big difference on the NASCAR circuit this year.

That’s Chris Gabeheart moving from the crew chief for Denny Hamlin to a more executive role as the JGR director of competition.

“I think that Chris Gabehart in that organizational role is going to make a big impact on that team being able to have the expectation of being a winner all the way through, not on just one team at the 11 team, but to keep pushing the envelope from the experience that he has from the crew chief side to help bleed that into Chris Gayle and all the other crew chiefs around that organization is something that they had, but adding another element to that right off the race track and help them search for those details to go through all the way to the end of the year,” Harvick said. “I just think with Bell and his situation with being consistent, they have a real shot of doing that.”

So on to the other pick from a NASCAR insider. That was FOX Sports’ Bob Pockrass, who relayed his pick on Harvick’s podcast.

“I’m going to go with Ryan Blaney, because, as Kevin mentioned earlier, he consistently gets a lot of speed out of that car,” Pockrass said. “And at Phoenix, that’s the thing, you think about who’s good and who’s not, but when you talk about the championship, you talk about who’s good at Phoenix. And I think Ryan Blaney will be the one there.”