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Rising KHI Doesn't Have Sprint Cup Aspirations

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By TONY FABRIZIO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 10, 2008

Stir the alphabet soup of NASCAR and you'll see RCR, DEI, HMS and JGR, just to name a few teams known merely by their initials.

Now, another set of letters is gaining recognition: KHI.

KHI is Kevin Harvick Inc., and given the team's recent success in the Nationwide and Craftsman Truck series, the obvious question for co-owners Kevin and DeLana Harvick is when they will move up to Sprint Cup.

The answer: They aren't.

"I don't have any long-range plans to go Cup racing," Kevin Harvick said during preseason testing at Daytona. "I like to be at the shop and around the race cars. To me, it's almost like playing a game to try to put all the people in the right places."

The Harvicks started KHI in 2001, building a truck in driver Ed Berrier's garage. Tony Stewart put the organization on the map by winning the Nationwide opener at Daytona in 2005, and repeating in 2006. Ron Hornaday Jr. gave KHI its first championship last year, capturing his third truck title.

KHI now operates out of a modern, 70,000 square-foot facility that houses two full-time truck series teams and a Nationwide team.

Harvick, the defending Daytona 500 champion, drives for Richard Childress Racing in the Sprint Cup Series and has won two Nationwide championships for RCR. This year, he'll drive his own No. 33 Chevy, sharing it with 22-year-old Cale Gale and Hornaday.

"I'm a person that has to have challenges, so I wanted to drive my own Nationwide car, and to be able to do that week-in and week-out is something that I'm really looking forward to," Harvick said.

The truck series is where KHI will compete for a championship.

The team not only brings back Hornaday, but has added a second Chevy truck for Hornaday's one-time arch-nemesis Jack Sprague. The veterans have a combined six truck championships, as Sprague won three with Hendrick Motorsports from 1997-2001.

For longtime followers of the truck series, seeing Sprague and Hornaday matched as teammates is as unexpected as the Sprint Cup-pairing of Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Hendrick Motorsports.

Hornaday and Sprague had several run-ins in the mid-'90s when Hornaday drove for Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Sprague for Hendrick, each determined to make it to the Cup level. Sprague once wrecked Hornaday at Indianapolis Raceway Park, and Hornaday, in retaliation, "ran into the side of him" every chance he got.

"Finally Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Mr. Hendrick said 'enough is enough, guys; we have to work on these trucks,' " Hornaday said.

Sprague, who won the truck series opener at Daytona last year in a Toyota, points out the two are now older and "not trying to get anywhere," so they are less aggressive. The two, Sprague said, have been good friends for many years.

"Don't get me wrong, Hornaday and I have had three or four incidents that we didn't talk for a month or so," Sprague said. "But that has been in a span of 12 years, so that isn't bad."

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