Kevin Harvick saw a sudden turbulence in his life in 2014 when he left his comfortable seat at Richard Childress Racing after 13 seasons. Slated to join Stewart-Haas Racing, the racer had to completely start anew, uprooting his settled and easygoing life.

In hindsight, it was a great decision, but at the time, it was a call filled with worry, doubt, and some controversy.

After winning 23 races with the team that once housed greats like Dale Earnhardt, Harvick was moving to a team barely five years old. Discussing what went through his mind back then, the retired driver recently sat down with his former crew chief Rodney Childers to talk about the sacrifices he made in the process.

Kevin Harvick’s experience of moving to SHR wasn’t very smooth

Did you know Tony Stewart was once Kevin Harvick’s best friend in the NASCAR circuit? So when a best friend called, it wasn’t long before the then-RCR driver found his loyalties changing. Seeing how Stewart won his career-third Sprint Cup Championship just two years after joining SHR, Harvick, still vying for his first, was left impressed.

In Episode 46 of the Happy Hour podcast, Kevin Harvick revealed, “Yeah, and I think when you look at that time in the beginning, I think we all had something to prove at that particular point. I didn’t want to leave RCR and not be successful.” But the job was easier said than done.

Big shifts call for big changes, and so was the case with Harvick, who continued, “I sold my house, I closed my business, we moved to Charlotte, we got a new crew chief, we got a new team, we had new sponsors—everything was new.” Notably, the RCR headquarters are located in Welcome, North Carolina, which is roughly 40 miles from Kannapolis, house of SHR, and 64.2 miles from Charlotte. However, it was a lucrative move for the driver, as his new team owners were adamant about making him feel comfortable.

“When we went there, Gene and Tony were basically like, ‘Just do whatever you want, okay?’ And not once did they talk about costs. We never talked about money. It was always about just build me something that could win,” he further explained. And, what do you know, just in their first season with the team, the newly formed duo of Kevin Harvick and Rodney Childers picked up their career-first Cup Series Championship!

Notably, his relationship with his new team was turning out to be quite different from his former one. Sharing a fun moment from 2014, just after the #14 team won their first race of the season in Phoenix, the retired veteran shared: “We all spent a week together in Las Vegas, half drunk for the week. But that was NASCAR’s best victory celebration.”

Kevin Harvick created a legacy for himself after he took a seat at Stewart Haas Racing. He took a leap of faith; a blind gamble. And boy, did this gamble pay off for him, albeit with some hard words being exchanged with RCR!

When Harvick called out the nepotism culture

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As Kevin Harvick was making his way out of Richard Childress’ garage a decade ago, it was nothing out of the ordinary. However, as both parties remained silent in typical NASCAR fashion, with occasionally PR-generated updates, the growing animosity soon came to light in 2013 at Martinsville.

The drama unfolded when Ty Dillon tried to out-muscle Kevin Harvick for second place at the Kroger 200 Truck Series race, but bumped him instead. As both spun out, Dillon tried the same tactic again after the caution, but failed. Later, Harvick, driving for a different team, retorted on pit road as he parked in Dillon’s box to avoid Childress’ grandson from entering his pit stall. The move garnered a physical altercation between the two driver’s pit crew members, too. But this was the beginning.

Later, in a post-race interview, the #4 driver launched a massive tirade, criticizing his Cup team and even accused them of favoritism! “(Dillon) just dumped me. Exactly the reason why I’m leaving RCR because you’ve got those kids coming up, and they’ve got no respect for what they do in this sport and they’ve had everything fed to them with a spoon. It’s a shame you’ve got to get taken out by some rich kid like that,” he said in a conversation with USA Today.

Dillon, on the other hand, had his own accusations to make: “To tear a truck up and act like a punk on pit road—and stopping by my pit stall when my guys are coming out—that was pretty ridiculous.”

The 2014 Cup Series champion did apologize later. But can words really be taken back? The admission, whether said in the heat of the moment or not, did put light on an aspect that’s often been talked about.

As for Richard Childress, he was more upset about his driver’s words than the clash that took his grandson out. Talking about a conversation he had with Harvick in the aftermath of the spat, he revealed, “I’m committed to him for four more races. I shook his hand when he said he was leaving and said I’d give him 100%, and I’m going to do it. But I ain’t going to be backed in a corner.”

So, what do you think? Were Harvick’s accusations true, or just an anger-induced rant? Let us know in the comments below!