Kevin Harvick picks NASCAR winner at COTA, drivers to watch

Kevin Harvick has named his winner for NASCAR’s trip to COTA this weekend, along with some wheelmen he’s keeping an eye on.

On Sunday, the Cup Series will run its first road course of 2024. It should be an awesome event, per usual in Austin, and on the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, the former NASCAR champion revealed he’s riding with Tyler Reddick this weekend.

“Well, my pick was pretty good last week. I’m going with [Tyler] Reddick,” Harvick stated. “I just think that, they’ve been close. I think he knows that that he can win. He’s shown the speed. I think it’s Reddick.”

That’s a solid pick from Harvick, who was right with his prediction of Denny Hamlin last Sunday at Bristol. Continuing, Harvick elaborated on why he believes Reddick will be the driver to beat in Austin this weekend.

“So when I when I go back and look at this, and we’re gonna have Tyler Reddick on in our interview, and he made some interesting comments during that interview, about how terrible he was at road racing. And apparently, he ran into the back of me one day at the Roval, because he didn’t know what he was doing, is the way that he would describe it. And he said, ‘After that race, I realized I was embarrassing myself. I finished like P33,’ and he did all these different things to get himself prepared,” Harvick explained. “We showed up at COTA, that first year when he went, and the first year he won with RCR, and he absolutely annihilated everybody right out of the box. In practice, in qualifying. And won the race.

“And I think, you’ll hear his willingness, and just how eager he is to win every week, because he feels like he’s in a position to win races. He’s got everything that he wants and ask for. The way he presents himself is just different. But I look at that, going into COTA. I think he expects to go win the race this weekend. They were obviously very good last year, to get that first COTA win last year. So I’m a believer that Tyler Reddick will be in the mix.”

Alas, Reddick isn’t the only wheelman Harvick will have his eyes on. Par for the course, road course racing brings a different element to the sport, so Harvick’s attention will be focused on some other names you don’t hear as often.

“I think Ty Gibbs will be in the mix. You know, we’ve got SVG (Shane van Gisbergen) and [AJ] Allmendinger. So I think it’s going to be an interesting race,” Harvick added. “We’ve got some different sections of the racetrack that they have repaved, to take out some of the swells and bumps in light of the MotoGP guys. They thought that the bumps were too big, so they redid the track. Nothing to do with NASCAR, they redid it for the motorcycles actually.

“So going on, you know, through turn ten onto the back stretch, they’re gonna carry a lot more speed. So I predict you know, a little bit more speed down the backstretch into into that next corner. So it’ll be an interesting weekend, but definitely some some good road racers in the field.”

Time will tell if Kevin Harvick’s prediction is right again this weekend, but Tyler Reddick is the betting favorite, so we’ll see if he can defend his crown in Austin on Sunday.