Kevin Harvick reveals how his Hendrick Motorsports opportunity came into existence

Kevin Harvick recently opened up on how the situation of him filling in for Kyle Larson in the #5 car came about. Harvick, who had only retired from full-time Cup racing at the end of last year, was announced to be Larson's fill-in while the 2021 Cup champion put in laps at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the buildup of the NASCAR All-Star race.

In an interview with NASCAR on Friday, the 2014 Cup champion, who brought down the curtain on his full-time career as a driver last year, was asked how his running in the #5 car came about.

The interviewer asked the former #4 driver if it was as simple as Rick Hendrick picking up the phone and him automatically saying yes, to which Kevin Harvick agreed, revealing that there are not many people he would've done this for and that Mr. H is "one of those people."

"Rick called me one morning and he said, 'Hey I need a favor', and I said, 'Okay', before he asked me what the question was. I didn't even know what he was going to ask because he would do that for you and he's always been very good to me in the interactions that I've ever had with him," he said [at 00:47].

He mentioned how he loves being around people and hearing how different people go about their work in different ways.

Harvick remarked that it is "obviously a pretty unique situation" with Larson attempting to run the Double as well as the All-Star race as he hoped to have helped HMS by filling in for Larson.

What are the differences Kevin Harvick found in HMS compared to his previous workplaces?

As he put in his first laps in the #5 car of Hendrick Motorsports, Kevin Harvick observed the differences HMS has and the aspects that stuck out to him about Rick Hendrick's team. The former SHR driver found the race shop, structure, and the way everybody approaches their work differently to be "interesting."

As quoted by NBC Sports, Harvick said,

"There’s a million different ways you can do things, but I think the thing that sticks out to me about Hendrick Motorsports in general is it’s truly run like a business that is a part of an actual structure of how things flow and who you talk to. There’s just a depth of the business side and racing side. It’s deep."

This was something that the former #4 driver deemed "pretty eye-opening" from a structural perspective. He admitted that he liked HMS's structure. Harvick even claimed that while he had a lot of success at SHR, the culture at Tony Stewart's team is "vastly different" from that in Rick Hendrick's team.