“We went from 4Ever to 4Ward to 4Sale in 6 months” - Kevin Harvick critiques Tony Stewart’s SHR’s ‘unbelievable’ decision to cease operations

Kevin Harvick shared his thoughts after Stewart Haas Racing's recent announcement that they were going to cease operations at the end of the 2024 season. Hearing of Tony Stewart and Gene Haas' NASCAR organization's decision, Harvick was left in a melancholic state.

The former SHR driver described on his podcast Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour how he feels about SHR leaving NASCAR.

"It's unbelievable to me really that we went from 4Ever to 4Ward to 4Sale in six months and it's just, I don't even know how you could possibly imagine sitting here today and thinking six months later that Stewart Haas Racing is going to announce that they're basically - folding," Harvick said.

He revealed that when he joined SHR in 2014, it was "a brand new team" with a lot of enthusiasm from the owners who wanted to turn it into a championship winner, which it became as it grabbed leading race finishes along the way. Harvick mentioned that SHR had "a great group of people".

There was one section especially, according to Harvick, that kept the entire organization moving forward.

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Kevin Harvick claims that the #4 team held SHR together for almost the last 10 years

The group of people at Stewart Haas Racing which Kevin Harvick credited for keeping the entire organization together over the last decade is the #4 team.

"I think the people around the #4 car over the last 10 years are really what held that company together. I think that company was held together by the success of the #4 car - Rodney Childers and that group of people," Harvick said, via the aforementioned source.

The 2014 Cup champion claimed that once "that backbone" went away, holes began to emerge revealing what happens on the side of the upper management and everything that comes with running a race team. Harvick mentioned that running a race team is "a full-time job."

Having said that, he clarified that he wasn't taking any shots at his former bosses, but that there were some aspects of Gene Haas and Tony Stewart's ways of running a team that he thought were outdated.

"Gene and Tony were great to me but they're kind of hands-off owners and have people in place to do their jobs and I think in today's day and job you have to have people involved with the authority to do what they need to do with the people and the things inside the company to make it run properly," he explained.

In the end, Kevin Harvick added that what happened to SHR is tough to take for him. He noted that there are a lot of people who have put a lot of time and effort in that place.

As for what could've been done at SHR for its fate to not have come to this, Kevin Harvick claimed it wasn't "a hard fix." He believes the structure, organization and management needed work to push forward and make things right.