“Let Your Guard Down”: How Tony Stewart Shaped Kevin Harvick’s Final NASCAR Season

The final year of Kevin Harvick in NASCAR was full of several memorable tributes. The #4 driver received a curated tribute at almost every racetrack on the calendar. However, it wouldn’t have been as good as it was if not for one piece of advice by Tony Stewart.

Harvick recently revealed what Smoke told him or rather, what he advised him to do during his final year in the sport. “For me, I was fortunate to have a boss in Tony Stewart. He had some great advice on things that he liked and didn’t like about his last year of driving,” Harvick said during a recent interview.

“One of his biggest pieces of advice was, ‘Hey, let your guard down. Let the fans and the racetracks and the sport help you go back and tell the story and just enjoy it.’ I think for me that was not something I would typically do. But we took that advice and last November we sat down and said, ‘Okay, we want to tell a story about the past 30 years. We want to be able to let the tracks and the fans celebrate whatever moment it is, whether it’s a win or loss, whatever it was.'”

Harvick claimed that letting his guard down and celebrating the moments regardless of his memory of a racetrack, be it a win or a loss, was something that was “definitely worth it.” 

Kevin Harvick claims SHR did ‘a great job’ in curating his final year in NASCAR

Further speaking on this subject, Kevin Harvick claimed that fans enjoyed the special tributes that were there for him throughout the year. In fact, Harvick himself enjoyed the trip down memory lane with the pictures and different moments he’s had throughout his career.

The former SHR driver then took a moment to thank his team for everything they did in his last year in NASCAR. “Stewart Haas Racing did an amazing job with all the content and all the things that they were able to put out on social media, the helmets, and the paint schemes, everything told a story and every week it was a story that was thought out with a sponsor or a track or a moment,” he described.

Harvick emphasized that it was “a great job”, what SHR did in putting all the pieces together.