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Near the end of Kevin Harvick's first news conference as the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup champion, he motioned for his wife, DeLana, to bring their 2-year old-son, Keelan, up to the podium that he shared with crew chief Rodney Childers and Stewart-Haas Racing owners Tony Stewart and Gene Haas. Harvick was ultimately unable to coax Keelan into saying "We won!" for the assembled media. But the gesture was typical of the family- and team-first mentality that stock car racing's latest champion favors these days.  It wasn't always that way for Harvick, whose Cup series baptism back in 2001 came in the most difficult of circumstances when he was called in to replace Dale Earnhardt at Richard Childress Racing after Earnhardt was killed at the season-opening Daytona 500. Then just 25 years old, Harvick responded brilliantly, edging Jeff Gordon for a photo-finish victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway in just his third Cup series start. He added another win at Chicagoland Speedway and finished ninth in the Cup point standings to claim Rookie of the Year honors, all while winning what is now known as the Nationwide Series championship in the same year. The initial success brought pressure, and a sophomore slump certainly didn't help. Harvick picked up the nickname "Happy," though it was used in jest due to his occasional emotional outbursts. The relationship with the RCR organization strained over the years, boiling over during their final season in 2013 when Harvick called Richard Childress' grandsons Austin and Ty Dillon "punk-ass kids who have had everything handed to them with a silver spoon" after a racing incident with Ty in a Camping World Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway. By then, tired of the inconsistency at RCR that saw six top-5 finishes in the Cup series championship offset by four finishes of 14th or lower, Harvick had already made the decision to accept his friend Stewart's offer to join Stewart-Haas Racing. It proved to be the best decision of Harvick's career, because he won five races and his first Cup championship in his first year at SHR. By doing so in his 14th year in the Cup series, Harvick was a bit of a stat-buster, because in the modern era, drivers who haven't won a title by their ninth season generally never do. Dale Jarrett, who won the 1999 Cup crown in his 13th year, was the last veteran with that much experience to accomplish the feat. Now 38, Harvick believes the best is yet to come. Pardon the expression, but the man they call Happy is finally happy. "I don't think I've ever been happier in my whole life than I have been this year from a personal standpoint and from a professional standpoint," he said. "You see all the things that you have around you, and you're lucky. I'm pretty lucky to be able to do what I used to pay to do for a hobby. You show up and you're having fun doing it, and it's like a hobby, honestly. "I have no idea how much money I make or what I do," continued the champion. "I love showing up to work. I love coming to the racetrack and love what I do. And it's been a long, long time since I can sit up here and honestly tell you that I love the experience of everything that's been around me, and it just makes it fun." There's an element of risk anytime a veteran driver leaves the comfortable surroundings of a team he has been with for many years. But Harvick's move, unlike others, wasn't driven by money. It was driven by his desire to win a championship -- a prospect that he felt was increasingly unlikely with the Childress team. The move, along with the hiring of crew chief Childers (then with Michael Waltrip Racing), was announced nearly a year in advance. In that time, Harvick and Childers communicated frequently, and when the No. 4 team hit the track for the first time in testing at Charlotte Motor Speedway in late 2013, they knew they had something special. They were fast from the start, and that speed never went away. Harvick dominated the laps-led category in 2014, and at the end of the season won the races that he needed to win -- three Chase races, including the final two at Phoenix and Homestead. Yet it was a team effort in the finale, keyed by Childers' risky call to take four tires during a yellow-flag pit stop with 18 laps remaining. "It was a gutsy call by Rodney to stick to his guns and do what they had been doing, but it also shows the depth and how good Kevin Harvick is at digging his heels in in those moments -- just like Charlotte and just like Phoenix," remarked team boss (and three-time Cup champion) Stewart. "When it comes to the bottom of the ninth and you've got to make something happen, [Harvick] is the guy I want in my corner and that's the guy that Gene and I want behind the wheel of our cars." The other key part of Harvick's maturation into a champion comes from the family side. He married DeLana in February 2001, just two weeks prior to that historic and emotional first Cup victory at Atlanta. The daughter of a racer (John Paul Linville, whom Harvick competed against in what was then called the Busch Series in the late 1990s), DeLana played an important role in setting up Kevin Harvick Inc., which ran race-winning entries in the Nationwide Series and Camping World Truck Series.  Their priorities began to change a few years ago. Wanting to focus on winning a Cup championship, Harvick shut down KHI's racing operations. At the same time, the Harvicks started a family, with Keelan arriving in July 2012 -- right about when Stewart began making overtures for Kevin to join SHR. Keelan has had a positive effect on his father, with Harvick crediting becoming a parent for helping him remain more patient with others and understanding of situations. Harvick is still feisty -- witness his shove of Brad Keselowski into Jeff Gordon after the recent Phoenix race, setting off a brief melee between pit crews. But he said that looking back on his role in that incident through a father's eyes made him uncomfortable with his actions. In short, Harvick, who was pretty much a "punk-ass kid" himself when he burst onto the NASCAR scene, has become a polished elder statesman. Not to mention a champion. "There's a lot that led to this, and I always tell people that my Cup career really started backwards," Harvick said. "For me, personally, I think this year has been huge, just in the fact that I've been so excited to go to work and be a part of building something, and not having the race teams and really getting our life where it had a great balance, whether it be personally, financially or professionally. "Everything that you do affects everything else that you do," he added. "I think finding that right mix and really having a good balance on where things are in general in life has kind of rejuvenated me." He'll have additional pressures and duties moving forward as a Sprint Cup champion, but it's a role he relishes. "I think there's a definite responsibility that comes with the champion and doing the things that you need to do to help grow the sport," Harvick said. "You know, it's always better to lead than follow, so if there's a possibility of being that leader and being the one that everybody looks to, you want to try to seize those moments and do the best you can to take control and do it better than it has been done in the past. "We'll do the best that we can in trying to achieve that."
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