Racing deep into the night in Pensacola, Florida, 13-year-old Keelan Harvick became the youngest winner in the history of the Snowflake 125. He won the prestigious Pro Lade Model race in his first-ever attempt as well.
The event didn’t go green until around 1:30am local time, with Luke Baldwin starting the race from pole position. Keelan, the son of 2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick, started down in 15th, but steadily marched through the field.
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He was inside the top five by Lap 40, but Kaden Honeycutt (the defending winner of the Snowball Derby that follows the Snowflake 125) was in control until the Lap 75 race break.
Harvick completed an outside pass on Honeycutt on a later restart, but fell back to fourth on the following restart. Undeterred, he quickly regained the lost ground and put his No. 62 car back in contention. He later explained that the slow restart was due to him accidentally bumping the car into second gear, bogging the car down.
With just 25 laps left in the race, 15-year-old Tristan McKee (who won an ARCA race on debut earlier this year) was leading the way when Harvick got under him, and snatched the lead away once more. This time, he never relinquished it, hanging on through a late-race restart to capture the checkered flag around 4:30am local time on Sunday morning.
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“It’s really cool,” the younger Harvick told Flo Racing. “They brought me a really fast car. Not much practice. We didn’t come down here and test. I had school, but we came down here and made it work.”
On what the victory means to him, Harvick added: “It’s just big on earning respect from all of the veterans that are in the field. There’s a lot of them that come to that race. Pretty much all of them. It’s just really cool that I get to earn their respect, racing clean, actually passing and not just running over people.”
During the halfway break, Keelan’s father and NASCAR legend Kevin passed him a note in the car. He was asked what message his father had for him, and Keelan replied with a grin: “I’m honestly not sure. His handwriting is pretty bad and all the ink just smeared together. I think it was something about partial throttle, but his handwriting is not that good so I’m not sure.”
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McKee finished second in the Snowflake 125 behind Harvick with Honeycutt third, Isaac Kitzmiller fourth, and Luke Baldwin fifth. Luke Yarborough, Jimmy Renfrew Jr, Gabe Brown, Evan Szotko, and Conner Jones filled out the remainder of the top ten.
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