Kevin Harvick relates early exit from NASCAR Playoffs to high school wrestling

Despite being out of the NASCAR Playoffs after the Round of 16, Kevin Harvick is still going to go out there and try to get a win before he retires. It is his final season and he’s had some good speed. He just hasn’t had what it takes to finish races in the end.

Being the veteran that he is, Kevin Harvick has a good head about the early exit. Things didn’t work out how they wanted them to, they were a little off pace all season long, and it ended where it likely should have.

Ahead of Texas Motor Speedway, the driver is thinking back to his high school wrestling days.

“[Staying motivated is] just something from when I wrestled in high school and race our Late Models, it was always pounded into my head that it’s OK to not be good, but it’s not OK to quit,” Harvick explained via Stewart-Haas Racing. “It’s never OK to not give it 100 percent. It’s never OK to quit grinding away fro every single second of whatever it is you’re doing because you’re letting yourself down. And in this deal, you’re not only letting yourself down, you’re letting your whole team down, and I think that’s contagious because nobody ever lets down.

We can be off and struggling in a race but we can keep ourselves on the lead lap and have a good pit stop and all of a sudden show up and finish fourth or fifth at the end of a race just because five or six of them [other drivers] have crashed and we’ve ground away all day at the little things and made our car a little bit better and hung in there and all of a sudden here we are.”

Kevin Harvick has great history at Texas

If Kevin Harvick were going to win a race in the postseason, Texas wouldn’t be a bad one to pick. Over the course of his Stewart-Haas Racing career, Harvick has been good here. Texas has been very kind to the No. 4 team.

Since 2014, Harvick has won three pole awards as well as three races at the track. In November of 2019, he won the pole and the race. This year, the race is dialed back to 400 miles, but Harvick is still determined to compete. Even if recent history hasn’t been on his side.

In the last five starts at Texas, Harvick has managed just a single top-5, in October 2021. He has only made the top-10 in qualifying once as well. That was his last pole award at the track back in October 2020. This is a team that isn’t going to quit and they aren’t going to just go away quietly into retirement.

Kevin Harvick has a few more chances to end his season with a win. He’s not in the playoff picture, but that doesn’t change a thing. Rodney Childers and Harvick are going to get this car set up for Texas. They will hope they hit the right combination of adjustments to put them in contention for a checkered flag.