NASCAR
Bob Pockrass, NASCAR 6y

Kevin Harvick moonlights as short-track racer at Bakersfield track

NASCAR

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- Bill McAnally owns three NASCAR K&N West Series teams with top-level talent and also promotes some of the races on the regional racing circuit.

As he stood in the garage Thursday night before the series opener at Kern County Raceway, he didn't mince words about the importance of having Kevin Harvick, the hottest driver in the NASCAR Cup series riding a three-race winning streak into Auto Club (California) Speedway on Sunday (3:30 p.m. ET, Fox), moonlight in the event.

"I know NAPA bought 200 tickets here locally for a Thursday night race," McAnally said.

Wait, NAPA is McAnally's sponsor. Shouldn't it have bought tickets to see his drivers?

"Hopefully [they're] for me," he said. "But Kevin Harvick had a lot to do with it."

Even the guy who is synonymous with the series knows that sometimes it takes something bigger than the series itself to make a splash. On Thursday night it was Harvick, the 1998 West Series champ who grew up in Bakersfield. He had about 100 friends come to the race and sponsored the late-model race before the main 175-lap event.

Kern County Raceway opened in 2014, giving Bakersfield a race track after Mesa Marin Raceway closed in 2005. Harvick raced Mesa Marin growing up and again in its final season. It was important to him to go back to his roots and hope he can help this track make it at a time when half-mile asphalt tracks can have trouble surviving.

The track, with a nice, wide racing surface, is for sale. It seats between 4,000 and 5,000 and has an impressive 21 suites. But these tracks that run weekly are designed to be a community gathering place for fun for locals, an option instead of going to the movies or the bowling alley on a Friday or Saturday night.

It is at these places where young racers hone their skills and old racers feed their hunger for competition amid the love of race cars.

"This is a beautiful facility that needs the lifeblood pushed back in it," Harvick said. "This is a racing town. We had a big gap from '05 to 2013, when Mesa Marin shut down. I think people have forgotten there is actually another race track or don't even know there is another race track sitting out here.

"It's important to introduce people who haven't been to the races in a long time and they want to come watch because they're here. There's so many things that tonight can affect in a good way."

The crowd showed up Thursday. It wasn't a sellout but about 80-90 percent full -- and full of energy.

"Momentum for the local facility and the series -- that's really the only goal," Harvick said before the race.

Harvick didn't change his mind afterward. He led 132 laps before racing three-wide with Cole Rouse on the inside and Derek Kraus in the middle when the 16-year-old Kraus got into Harvick, who was on the outside. Harvick fell to ninth and could only rally to fourth.

Kraus fell to third and ended up winning the race.

"You can't get miffed at an event like this," Harvick said with a smile. "They just wrecked me up there. That's OK. You remember those names as you go forward, right?"

Kraus said he tried not to think about it being Harvick, although he couldn't help but think about it under caution.

"I didn't really mean to get into him," Kraus said. "I kind of entered a little higher than what I normally would with a guy inside me. But, man, I hate it for him. But that's short-track racing."

Harvick committed to running this short-track race after winning the series race at Sonoma Raceway in June. It's the one time when the West drivers are on the same track the weekend of the NASCAR Cup drivers.

In that race, Will Rodgers could have wrecked Harvick for the win, but raced him clean. Harvick was so impressed, he has tried to help Rodgers find sponsorship.

"Racing at Sonoma last year kind of woke me up to seeing that these series need some attention," Harvick said. "The easy way is to turn your back on it. ... It's going to be rocking and guys are going to be having a good time in front of a good crowd.

"That gives them a good event to bring their sponsors to. These regional series are what we need to have strong in order to feed them [potential drivers] to the trucks. Nothing against ARCA, but NASCAR needs to have their own series be their own streams."

While he is a Cup driver, Harvick doesn't race in this series with his own equipment. He drives for owner Jerry Pitts, and he only brought in two people to help -- his Xfinity Series crew chief, Richard Boswell, and his spotter, Tim Fedewa.

He brought sponsorship from Fields, a company he partnered with last year, helping them the contract for the artificial turf on the Charlotte Motor Speedway frontstretch. The sponsorship supports a team that competes in the series week in and week out.

"They get some financial income that allows them to run four cars so they don't have to charge those guys [who do race all year] so much," Harvick said. "With a team that is part of a series from the west coast and a west-coast racetrack, you try to infuse some life into every piece of it."

McAnally said the series has some life, including getting a boost this year with a combination West-East race at the 1.25-mile Gateway Motorsports Park and a dirt race at Las Vegas. Car counts worry McAnally -- the 23 entries Thursday was considered a solid car count. Having Harvick there certainly didn't hurt in attracting drivers and attention.

"If you had any Cup driver out here who had just won three races in a row, [he] would be phenomenal and be a huge draw," McAnally said. "But he's from here and has a background in this series."

Harvick said he likely will run a West race at another location next year, spreading the love around. But he wanted to do his hometown track first.

"You always want to win," Harvick said. "This is really about those guys and the things they need to do to get the series better. There's thousands of people that probably haven't been to a race that were here tonight.

"It was a lot of fun."

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