“You Told Me Qualifying Didn’t Matter” – Kevin Harvick Once Taught his Son a Valuable Lesson in Overconfidence

At 47 years old, Kevin Harvick has a wealth of experience and has even begun passing down his knowledge. To be precise, he is encouraging his children, Keelan and Piper, to try their hand at racing. Safe to say, the older child has taken to it like a duck to water. However, Harvick Sr knew that there will be times when Keelan could get cocky, especially with the more success that he finds. In conversation with Corey LaJoie in his Stacking Pennies podcast, Harvick opened up with an amusing story.

He told LaJoie’s podcast, “We come in from qualifying one day at GoPro. Keelan, I think he qualified 4th or 5th or 6th. It was a race where I expected him to go qualify on pole, win the race. That was the expectation that day. As a kid, you can be a little bit cocky. He came off the scales, and we put the car on the stand. I’m like, ‘What was that? That was terrible’. He looked at me, and he said, he put the helmet on his seat and said, ‘Dad… It’s qualifying. It doesn’t matter’. I said, ‘Oh really? Okay.'”

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How did Kevin Harvick teach his son a lesson?

Of course, Harvick Sr. was going to make his son eat some humble pie. A diabolical plan soon formed in his head, and he executed it to perfection. The Stewart-Haas Racing driver said, “So I went to the race director, and I said, ‘Hey, can you disallow his time’. He said, ‘What do you mean, disallow his time?’. I said, ‘Give him no time. We are DQed. No time’. We get to the grid. He said, ‘Why are we starting in the back?’. I said, ‘You told me qualifying didn’t matter’.”

As a result of his plan, Keelan Harvick was forced to start at the back of the grid for the race. Unfortunately, it only got worse for the boy, because in the next race, he had to start at the back again. Keelan was a bit puzzled because he definitely did not finish the previous race last.

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However, his merciless father insisted that if qualifying didn’t matter, he just had to start in the back. He wanted his son to prove to him why qualifying did not matter. All that Keelan had to do was drive up toward the front and try to win. Safe to say, the boy learned his lesson.