Kevin Harvick Inc. "will no longer field racing vehicles of any kind, its shop is for sale and most of its employees are looking for work starting next year," according to Bob Pockrass of SCENEDAILY.com. KHI co-Owner and NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick said that the company will "handle his personal business but he and his wife, DeLana, are getting out from the day-to-day operations of a race team." Richard Childress Racing will absorb KHI's Nationwide Series operations "while the truck teams’ future home will be announced in the coming weeks." KHI owns an 80,000-square-foot facility in Kernersville, N.C., and it "had shut down its manufacturing side in the last month." KHI has raced since '01, but Harvick told his 140 employees that "they need jobs for next year." He said, "There will be no trucks that run out of KHI. As far as what happens with the truck teams, that will come in the weeks to come. … It’s a tough model business-wise. We’ve scrimped and scraped and got the sponsorship and things that you need." More Harvick: "GM has been a great supporter of everything that we’ve done. But from a business standpoint, sometimes you just have to make the decisions of what you want to do. For us, it just didn’t make sense" (SCENEDAILY.com, 9/9). Harvick made the announcement to KHI employees last Wednesday (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 9/10).
WEIGHT OFF HIS SHOULDERS: Harvick enters the Chase for the Sprint Cup tied for first place, and ESPN’s Ricky Craven said the merger between KHI and RCR will “eliminate extreme pressure” on Harvick. The announcement comes at a "strategic" time for Harvick, despite the fact it "probably won’t have a great affect until 2012 physically." Craven: "Mentally, what it tells his team, ‘Look, I’m all in. I’m all about winning this Spring Cup Series championship’” (“NASCAR Now,” ESPN2, 9/9).
