Kevin Harvick Ferdinand Magellan

We’re on to the Round of 8 of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, and Kevin Harvick, driver of the No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), knows what he has to do.

 

Win and he’s in – the Championship 4.

 

Harvick has a 45-point lead over the final four cutoff, but in 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2019, he won a Round of 8 race to automatically advance his team to the winner-take-all season finale.

 

And in an election year like 2020, maybe he could find victory the way our past United States Presidents have done – traveling by train, or specifically on the Ferdinand Magellan train car. That’s because, pre-airplanes, that’s how folks traveled. The Ferdinand Magellan was used by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1940s and 1950s. Ronald Reagan took it out of storage in 1984 for a trip though Ohio.

 

Harvick could start out at the train station in downtown Charlotte and ride the Ferdinand Magellan north on the Crescent Line to Charlottesville, Virginia, then switch to the Cardinal Route, which would take him through Cincinnati, Indianapolis and then to Union Station in Chicago. From there, he would switch to the Southwest Chief and hit Kansas City Union Station in preparation for this weekend’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City.

 

After Kansas, he could take the Missouri River Runner to Gateway Station in St. Louis, and then the Texas Eagle into Fort Worth Central Station for the 500-mile race at Texas Motor Speedway. After a brief stop in Fort Worth, he would continue on the Texas Eagle to San Antonio and then pick up the Sunset Limited to New Orleans, where the Crescent Line would then take him to Danville, Virginia, which is a short drive to Martinsville for the final race of the Round of 8.

 

With all that travel, let’s hope he has a Jimmy John’s sandwich or two to snack on.

 

Harvick enters Sunday’s race at Kansas with five poles, three wins, three second-place finishes, eight top-threes, 16 top-10s and has led a total of 864 laps in his 29 career NASCAR Cup Series starts at the 1.5-mile oval. He’s one of only three drivers who have participated in all 29 Cup Series races held there. The others are Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman.

 

Harvick is hoping the Round of 8 starts well – and gets him closer to the Championship 4.

 

TSC PR