{"id":477876,"date":"2026-02-16T05:05:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T05:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/477876\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T05:05:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T05:05:13","slug":"kevin-harvick-predicts-breakout-driver-for-2026-nascar-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/477876\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Harvick predicts breakout driver for 2026 NASCAR season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Harvick is confident that a young NASCAR Cup Series driver will do big things in 2026. On Kevin Harvick\u2019s Happy Hour<\/a>, Harvick revealed the driver that he believes will have a breakout 2026 season.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s Ty Gibbs,\u201d Kevin Harvick said ahead of Sunday\u2019s Daytona 500. \u201cJust because he\u2019s been so fast, and he\u2019s got the speed in the race car to keep himself in contention, qualifies well, does a lot of things well. It\u2019s just about getting over that hump to get to victory lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that they have the capability, the stability within the team now. I think that they could have a breakout year if they can get to victory lane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ty Gibbs is in his fourth year as a full-time driver for Joe Gibbs Racing. In the Daytona 500<\/a> on Sunday, Gibbs earned a P23 finish. Gibbs is looking for his first win as a Cup Series driver, but he won NASCAR\u2019s first In-Season Challenge last year. He outlasted 32 drivers to win the $1 million grand prize.<\/p>\n

Will Kevin Harvick be right about Ty Gibbs? <\/p>\n

\u201cSuper cool. Very honored to be in this position,\u201d Gibbs said<\/a> after winning the challenge in July. \u201cThank you to all of NASCAR and TNT Sports for allowing us to be able to do this. It\u2019s awesome to win this and super cool to be in this position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ty Gibbs is the grandson of Joe Gibbs, the founder of Joe Gibbs Racing and a three-time Super Bowl champion head coach. After Ty Gibbs fell short of winning at Bristol last fall, Joe Gibbs spoke to reporters about the message he has sent to his grandson. <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, this sport is really hard,\u201d said Joe Gibbs in the winner\u2019s press conference in September, per Nick DeGroot of Motorsport. <\/a>\u201cI keep telling him [Ty], honestly, I use the word \u2018patience,\u2019 and two races ago we were talking after the race, and he said, \u2018Coach, will you quit using the word patience? I don\u2019t want you to use it ever again.\u2019 So patience is out the window. We\u2019re trying to win here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just think he knows this is what he\u2019s wanted to do his entire life, and so he\u2019s after it. I admire, like I said, our entire 54 team. To be truthful, they\u2019re young, but the pit crew, everybody, they just keep fighting, so it\u2019s really great.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Harvick is confident that a young NASCAR Cup Series driver will do big things in 2026. On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,25423,634,82,47148],"class_list":["post-477876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-kevin-harvick","tag-nascar","tag-sports","tag-ty-gibbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}