A driver feud that bubbled up years ago at Pocono Raceway found a happy resolution in the same place Saturday, benefiting both goodwill in the NASCAR Cup Series garage and a pair of good causes.
Kevin Harvick presented Joey Logano with a $12,000 donation from one driver’s foundation to the other’s on Saturday. The gift came from T-shirt sales from Harvick’s merch store, with proceeds going to — it turns out — both charitable groups.
The shirts read: “I wear the fire suit in this family,” a play on Logano’s jab toward Harvick and his wife, DeLana, after the two drivers had an on-track run-in during the 2010 season at Pocono. At the time, DeLana Harvick was regularly seen atop her husband’s team’s pit box with a team fire suit, something that the 20-year-old Logano made light of in his remarks after a fiery post-race confrontation.
The Harvicks made T-shirts to mark the occasion back in 2010 and recently brought them back in recognition of memorable moments from Kevin Harvick’s career as he navigates his final Cup Series season. The two drivers have become Cup Series champions since then and have long since overcome their differences.
When Logano ran a Shell/Pennzoil throwback to a former Harvick paint scheme from that era, Logano’s wife, Brittany, wore a fire suit in the design’s reveal and on pit road at Darlington Raceway in 2019. Earlier this week, Harvick’s Stewart-Haas Racing team had its own take on the remembrance, putting the driver’s 5-year-old daughter, Piper, in charge of the No. 4 car at the team’s shop.
Both were able to again share a laugh in looking back on their dust-up Saturday while raising funds for their philanthropic efforts. Fittingly, the Logano family was decked out in matching shirts when Harvick made the presentation.
Sunday’s HighPoint.com 400 (2:30 p.m. ET, USA, NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) is set to be Harvick’s final Pocono start. Harvick is scheduled to start fourth in the No. 4 Mustang, with Logano sixth in the No. 22 Team Penske Ford.
Logano reflected on the gesture from Harvick and his foundation before his qualifying effort.
“Well, I’m glad we figured it all out,” Logano said, looking back to what was just his second full year of Cup Series competition. “So here’s the thing, you sometimes grow up in front of everybody. And yeah, Kevin wrecked me that day, and I was mad about it. I probably shouldn’t have brought his wife into the middle of it or made it that personal, but the fact that they made a joke out of it and Kevin and I get along really well now, and to see his kids all involved, they just came over to our bus and gave us a donation to our foundation, the Joey Logano Foundation, and he gave the kids all the ‘I wear the fire suit in the family’ T-shirts and all. So it’s become a fun joke between us now. I still regret saying it, but at least some good things came out of it. They raised a bunch of money for their foundation, and they paid it forward to us, so that’s pretty special. That’s cool.”
Said Harvick: “Joey and I have a good relationship. The thing that I like about Joey is he’s so involved in the sport, he’s all-in. Really since we’ve gotten to know each other over the past several years and having to work on a lot of the same things to help him improve the sport, and as we went down the list of races, that ‘I wear the firesuit’ moment obviously came up. And I talked to Joey before we did everything, and I said, ‘Hey, would you want to play along?’ and he’s always game for stuff like that. We just felt like it would be the right thing to do after all these years to make a nice donation to his foundation.
“He’s always, if there’s something going on, he’s gonna call me, and I’m gonna call him, and we’ll race each other hard, but I think as you look at that, it was just a good moment to look back on something that we all laugh at, and I think as we go forward, a good opportunity to donate to his foundation.”
NASCAR.com | By: Staff Report | July 22, 2023
