Former teammates Burton, Harvick cherish a shared Hall of Fame moment

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick were in two very different places when they received the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s call.

Harvick landed on the Hall’s ballot this year as a near-certain lock for induction, and 46 of the 50 voters agreed on their ballots. Harvick said later, however, that he felt it would be presumptuous to be inside the shrine’s Great Hall to watch Tuesday’s announcement in person. The anticipation, though, kept him close by. He waited in a pickup truck in a nearby parking lot when the notification came in.

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Burton was out on the golf course on a steamy Tuesday afternoon, participating with a group of friends as part of an annual engagement of roughly six tournaments. “This is the third one, and I play the worst golf of my life when I play in these tournaments for some reason,” he said. “So I was doing it again.” He’d taken previous Voting Day disappointments to heart, but said in time that he’d learned to let it go. This year’s call gave him cause to leave the links behind, saving him from more shanks and yips.

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From divergent locations, Burton and Harvick came together to embrace under the same roof Tuesday to celebrate their enshrinement alongside stock-car racing’s greats. The two former teammates were chosen from the Modern Era Ballot and will be honored in January alongside Pioneer Ballot selection Larry Phillips and Landmark Award recipient Lesa France Kennedy during the Hall’s Class of 2027 ceremonies.

Though their stat lines vary, Burton and Harvick carved out long careers at the sport’s highest level by climbing the local and regional ladders — Harvick in his native California and around the Southwest, Burton from his home state of Virginia and throughout the Southeast. Their paths met again in the same building in 2004, this time at Richard Childress Racing, establishing a long-running connection as teammates for nearly 10 seasons.

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Their overlapping tenures were marked by prosperous years and some lean ones, but their contrasting styles gave RCR a measure of balance on their driver roster, with Burton’s steady approach acting as a counterweight to Harvick’s fire.

“I went to RCR at a point where they were struggling a little bit, and we got our hands dirty and all of us went to work,” Burton said, “and it took us a few years, but there for a while we put a lot of cars in the postseason for a lot of years in a row, and those were really, really fun years. Kevin pushed me hard, and I want to think that I pushed him. But what’s fun about Kevin is our personalities are so different that when the doors are shut, there’s a lot of stuff that happens, and when the doors are shut and you’re trying to fix problems, and Kevin, he just is willing to put everything in a blender and put it on high, and whatever flies out flies out. I mean, he gets super-aggressive, and so I’m more diplomatic than that. I mean, we had some really interesting meetings coming in completely different ways, and there were times I wasn’t being forceful enough, so Kevin would, and there were times that Kevin would be forceful enough where I’d have to go clean it up. It really was a fun time.”

Diplomacy became one of Burton’s trademarks, during his driving days and in his more recent years as a trusted broadcaster. In both of those career phases, Burton often served as an intermediary who advocated for drivers and bridged the communications with NASCAR officials.

It’s a leadership role that Harvick has also emulated in his transition to the broadcast booth and as a mover in the industry, staying involved at all levels of the sport — from grassroots to the majors. Burton was key in setting that example.

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“Well, you don’t get the nickname ‘The Mayor’ for no reason,” Harvick said. “Jeff has been an ambassador of the sport, been a part of the sport, his family’s been a part of the sport, and he’s been a good friend of mine for a long, long time and helped through those middle years at RCR to keep it all together, and we learned a lot about each other. It’s kind of going back to the respect part, right? You have a reputation, and you hope that your reputation is respected from your credentials and the results that you have, not only in the race car but out of the race car, and Jeff’s 100% that guy. In and out of the race car, he had the respect of the whole sport.”

For both former RCR stablemates, the Hall’s recognition was humbling. Though both enjoyed sustaining careers of 20-plus years in NASCAR’s top division, the sport’s whirlwind pace doesn’t always allow much time for reflection. Harvick found a dose of that in his final Cup Series season in 2023, when his then-team owner Tony Stewart mandated it.

“I mean, even though you’re expecting the call, it’s still somewhat weird to get the call, because you just … when this all started, I was just a kid out in the middle of a field racing go-karts, right?” Harvick said. “And then you go through the years of just ‘what’s next week, what’s next week, what can we do? OK, where can we go? How do we make our cars faster?’ It’s always been look forward, look forward, grind, grind, grind, grind, and you never really stop and think to look around, and so I was fortunate to do that. Tony made me do that my last year. I didn’t want to do it, and he had to sit me down and say, ‘You’re going to do this because I’m telling you it’s the right thing to do to enjoy it every single week.’ This feels very similar to me. I don’t really know what it’ll feel like when we get to January, but to be amongst the best that have ever done it in our sport, it’s pretty, pretty rewarding.”

The two will share those rewards next offseason.

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“I have so much respect for this sport, and I have a passion for it, the same as I did 20 years ago, 30 years ago. I feel the same way,” Burton said. “My role is different, but the fact that I have a role, for me, is really special, because I want to be part of this community. I love this community, it’s full of great people. This sport is … it’s hard, it’s grueling, it’s difficult, it’s challenging, which is what makes it great, and when you can, those few moments when you can have success, it’s nothing like it because you know how hard it is. To me, what makes it so special is being part of something that so many people that I look up to and have respect for were part of before me, because without all them, there is no opportunity for me or Kevin or the next class. The generations before us made this happen.”