“It’s a Constant Evaluation”: Kevin Harvick Shares How He’s Setting Up Son Keelan for Success Post Snowflake 125 Breakthrough

Keelan Harvick is steadily positioning himself for a remarkable NASCAR career in the next few years. The 13-year-old boy won the Snowflake 125 at the Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida, on Sunday to become the Pro Late Model event’s youngest winner ever. As any father would be, Kevin Harvick was beyond proud of the feat of his son.

He said in a post-race interview, “It’s pretty awesome. For me, I look at things a little bit differently. When you look at the progression of him going through traffic, the distance that he kept between cars when he was trying to set somebody up to pass him, all those things are the types of things I liked about tonight.”

Starting the race from 15th place, Keelan took the lead with 50 laps to go, fell to fourth place on a restart, and reclaimed his lead soon after from Tristan McKee and Kaden Honeycutt. The race had originally been scheduled to begin on Saturday night. But showers from the sky resulted in it being pushed to the early hours of Sunday.

Harvick continued to explain how his guidance for his son during races will be minimal. He doesn’t want to assume the position of a coach just because he is one of the greatest NASCAR drivers ever. He said, “We’re father and son, so the coaching piece of it is much better coached through the coach. Me in there on him all the time, it’s not going to work.”

That’s an interesting approach, for sure. He continued, “It’s a constant evaluation behind the scenes of making sure that you have the right people and you have the right races. I guess I’m somewhat of a gatekeeper of how things get set up and then watch and make sure that the details of how we would expect things to go are happening.”

En route to his prestigious victory, Keelan displayed many characteristics that his dad does on the race track. Interestingly, Harvick had passed him a note during the halfway break of the race. When asked about it, the boy told the media with a grin that he couldn’t understand what had been written since the handwriting was bad.

It says a lot that he was able to go and win the race even without that bit of advice from his old man. One of the many who were most proud of what he’d achieved was Rodney Childers. The iconic crew chief wrote on X, “So incredibly proud of this kiddo… They did it, in the first try.. Snowflake winners!”

The success has proved without question that little Harvick carries the skill that made his father a Cup Series champion. Perhaps someday soon, he will get there as well.