Kevin Harvick predicts things are only going to get worse for Stewart-Haas Racing as the season winds down. On his Happy Hour podcast, Harvick talked about how the team is adjusting after announcing it will shut down at the end of the year.
“Since the announcement, it has gotten worse,” Harvick said. “The last couple of weeks hadn’t been good. Noah Gragson was running well, and they’ve kind of fallen off a fair amount as well.”
Harvick was then asked if he thought that would happen since it’s likely a distraction for everyone involved in Stewart-Haas. “I think that as Stewart-Haas Racing goes through the end of the year, it’ll progressively get harder and harder just to get to the racetrack,” he said.
“You can talk about loyalty and you can talk about everybody wanting to stay together, but in the end, everybody needs to take care of their families. You can try to pay them as much money as you want, but the people have to have jobs when they get to the end of the year. They don’t want to be last in line, so those people are going to say, ‘Okay, do I want my bonus or do I want my job for the next three years at another team?’
Kevin Harvick wants Stewart-Haas employees to take care of themselves
“I just don’t think that there’s enough money that you can pay some of those employees to keep them where they are. Even if you bring them in and say, ‘Hey, you have a contract you need to stay here.’ I would challenge that as I went through the end of the year if I had a situation that I could walk towards keeping my family where it needed to be and that consistent paycheck with a team that was going to be there for years to come.
Harvick knows Stewart-Haas Racing as he drove for the team from 2014 to 2023. He had a lot of success with Stewart-Haas, winning the Cup Series Championship in 2014 and finishing second the following year. Once he heard the news last month, Harvick shared his reaction.
“It’s unbelievable to me, really, that we went from forever, to forward, to for sale in six months,” Harvick said. “And it’s just, I don’t even know how you could possibly imagine sitting here today and thinking six months later that Stewart-Haas is going to announce that they’re basically folding.”
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