WELCOME, N.C.—Team owner Richard Childress confirmed what had been widely reported last year, that driver Kevin Harvick would be leaving Richard Childress Racing at the end of the 2013 season to drive for Stewart-Haas Racing.
Both Childress and Harvick, however, vowed to make the best of the current season despite their strong personalities and sometimes contentious history.
“We’ve both committed to each other that we’re going to make this a positive year and a positive end,” Childress said Monday night at his race shop during the Sprint Media Tour hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway. “We’ve had a great career together, and we want to make this last year a great ending. We’ll get along fine.
“Kevin and I have had our disagreements. I’ve had that with a lot of drivers, but we’ll get through this year just fine.”
Harvick doesn’t want to tarnish the relationship he has built with Childress since succeeding the late Dale Earnhardt in the RCR ride in 2001. Harvick ran his first race a week after Earnhardt was killed in a last-lap crash in the 2001 Daytona 500. Harvick won at Atlanta in his third start in the RCR Cup car.
“I have a lot of respect for Richard and the organization,” Harvick said. “You don’t want to leave a black mark on that as you leave. You want to do it with as much class and everything that comes with being classy about it as you can.
“We’re going to race. We’re all racers, and we don’t care whether we’re driving for whoever or driving here, there or everywhere, in a go-kart race or whatever it may be. You want to go out and you want to win, and nobody’s going to do anything less than work as hard as they can to achieve those goals.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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