The most pressure Kevin Harvick said he ever felt as a NASCAR driver was at Rockingham Speedway in February 2001, the week after Dale Earnhardt Sr. was killed in a wreck on the last lap of the Daytona 500.
It was ‘the most people, the most pressure, the most everything that I ever had to experience,” Harvick said Thursday during the live edition of “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour” at Daytona International Speedway.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Earnhardt’s tragic death, after which Harvick replaced the NASCAR legend behind the wheel of the Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet and made his Cup Series debut. Honoring the anniversary, FOX Sports and NASCAR Studios will air the documentary “We’ve Lost Dale Earnhardt: 25 Years Later” on Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on FS1, following the 2026 Daytona 500 qualifying duels.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years, and, obviously, I lived that situation pretty closely, getting in the car the next week,” Harvick continued, speaking on stage with FOX Sports’ Kaitlyn Vincie and Mamba Smith.
“They called and said, ‘Hey, you need to come over.’ And that’s when I knew that something was not right,” Harvick continued. “So you’re sitting there waiting, trying to understand what’s going on. And then it’s all the questions, right? What’s going to happen with RCR? Who’s going to drive the car? How’s the sport going to go on?
“And 25 years later, the sport is still going on, but it’s just missing a big piece of what was so important to NASCAR racing with Dale. And he had such a massive influence on everything that happened: The image of who we were and such a strong leader of the sport. So it was a pretty crazy time to be able to adapt to what was going on, getting the car to drive.”
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Impacts of Earnhardt’s accident embrace increased safety for drivers and teams. NASCAR stays a harmful sport, however Harvick praised the governing physique is constantly looking for enhanced security measures consequently.
“Our sport has advanced due to that accident. From a security standpoint, NASCAR instantly began the security side of attempting to get forward of issues and sustain with issues and do issues in a greater means. And we do that each one the best way up till immediately.
“They’re always taking a look at each wreck, every bit of apparatus that the driving force has on, the race tracks, the tender partitions. You consider the influence that that one accident had on the security of this sport, and it will by no means be matched. And NASCAR has performed an incredible job of constant that proper to this second.”
“We have Misplaced Dale Earnhardt: 25 Years Later” will air on Thursday, Feb. 12 at 10 p.m. ET on FS1. The 2026 Daytona 500 is about for Sunday at 2:30 p.m. ET on FOX.
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