On Thursday at Media Day, Kevin Harvick, a father since July, shared some of his perspective on how fatherhood has ? and, for racing purposes, hasn't ? changed him.
"I think having my son has really helped keep a new balance on life that you didn't really understand until you had a child," he said. "For me, I become so emotional and so attached to what happens on the racetrack, if it's going good, if it's going bad. Now you have this way of coming home and letting all those things go for two or three days, then you come back to the track and you hadn't thought about it all week and you're really focused at being at the racetrack."
[Also: Matt Kenseth and Kurt Busch crash just minutes into Sprint Unlimited practice]
But when something new comes into an already-full life, something else has to go. For Harvick, the decision to shutter his truck team at the end of the 2011 season was a necessary move. "Couldn't be dad, team owner and driver on Sunday and be successful, probably at any of them," he said. "We had to eliminate one. That new balance adds to your life, lets you be more focused and hopefully more competitive on the weekends."
2012 was a disappointment for Harvick; while he made the Chase, he never got out of the lower-top-10 range, and his lone win came in the season's penultimate race in Phoenix. He's a lame duck this year at Richard Childress Racing as he prepares to move to Stewart-Haas Racing in 2014.
The odds on lame-duck drivers having success aren't good; everyone's got an eye on next year. But if Harvick does fall short this season, at least he won't be blaming his kid. That's good news.
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