NASCAR legend set to return to Evergreen Speedway

MONROE — The last time Kevin Harvick put rubber to road at Evergreen Speedway, Jon Kitna was gearing up for his first season as the full-time starting quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. Before you pull up Google, Harvick himself explained it in simple terms sitting outside the track on Friday.

“Last century,” Harvick said, drawing laughs from the crowd in attendance for the pre-race media day. Indeed, 1999 was the last time he raced at Evergreen, but he returns once again on Saturday — this time against his son, Keelan, who turns 13 on July 8 — in the Mark Galloway 150 Shootout, the next race in the Spears CARS Tour West schedule.

The former NASCAR Cup Series Champion first squared off against his son in his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif. on May 31, where the younger Harvick beat out his father and 18 other drivers, and the second “Harvick Showdown” will take place among a crowded field of over 30 cars in Monroe.

“This is quite a moment for West Coast racing to be able to showcase, really, to everybody in the whole country,” Kevin Harvick said. “To say, ‘Hey, we want to figure out how to make these races like what we have here today.’ … There’s nothing that frustrates me more than people saying, ‘West coast racing is dead,’ so now they can count the cars and understand it’s not.”

And that’s a big reason why the semi-retired racing legend returned to Evergreen: To restore the racing community out west to what it was like when Harvick, now 49, was coming up. According to Evergreen Speedway President/CEO Doug Hobbs, the economy is a factor that has led to the decline, but also a lack of cohesion among the different tracks and racing series in the area.

“If you’ve got 10 different race tracks with 10 different sets of rules, everybody’s kind of on an island,” Hobbs said. “What we’re trying to get to is more of a universal rule package that will work anywhere, and let people be able to come together like we’re doing here this weekend, blending NASCAR with the CARS Tour, with the Tri-State Series Tour. This is a pretty big deal that a lot of people are looking at around the nation.”

Kevin Harvick’s return to Evergreen Speedway coincides with a race that’s extra meaningful to Hobbs. When Hobbs and his wife, Traci, purchased Evergreen Speedway in 2011, one of their first moves was creating a race in the memory of one of Hobbs’ employees at Speedway Chevrolet, Mark Galloway. “A goodwill ambassador” for both racing and Evergreen Speedway, Galloway worked under Hobbs beginning at the age of 14, and quickly made his mark working in the racing circles until his untimely death in January 2008, when he died in car accident at the age of 20.

Now nearly 15 years since the Mark Galloway 150 Shootout’s inception, Hobbs anticipates this installment to be the biggest one yet, which excites the reigning champion, Haeden Pyblon.

“I’m glad we’re finally seeing these 30-plus car fields and having some great names come from all over the country and battle it out with us northwest drivers, and just have a bunch of fun,” Plybon said.

Although it’s been decades since Kevin Harvick raced at Evergreen Speedway, he remembers the intricate details that make the track unique. Namely, the abrasiveness of the surface, which requires focus on conserving the tires, as well as longer corners.

“It’s something that is a little bit unique to most places that you go,” Kevin Harvick said. “So that’s what makes it fun to try to show up and figure new places out.”

The elder Harvick said he enjoys not having to worry about the results at this point in his career and just focus on enjoying the atmosphere on the track, but that didn’t stop Keelan Harvick from dialing up the smack talk after winning the first Harvick Showdown. However, given the unique conditions at Evergreen Speedway, Kevin Harvick was quick to mention that his son’s rubber-burning ways will do him no favors on Saturday, going as far to say that he would lap him if he didn’t focus on tire conservation.

“Yeah, I’m not too good at that,” Keelan Harvick said. “But I guess I’m gonna try. But yeah, my dad has definitely helped me throughout the week of just watching videos and track maps, just to try not to do what I normally do and burn my tires up.”

Come Saturday, the fans at Evergreen Speedway will find out if Keelan Harvick can adjust to new conditions and double-up on his old man — and if Kevin Harvick decides to care a little bit more about results. Whatever happens, Hobbs is glad the father-son duo is bringing the battle to Monroe.

“Not only is (Kevin Harvick) a great driver, but he’s a great person,” Hobbs said. “He’s a great communicator, and (has a) passion to help people. … I’ve known him for a long, long time, and just a great person that wants to keep short track racing alive, because that’s where the excitement is. It’s door-to-door racing, it’s not single-file racing and stuff, and that’s what Kevin has wanted to regrow in the northwest, at some of the bigger tracks. I wanted to be on the ground floor of that, so here we are today.”