Kevin Harvick knows the situation this weekend at the Darlington Raceway is something that we’ve never seen. The NASCAR world joined the rest of the world back in March when they had to come to a halt due to concerns over COVID-19. The NASCAR Cup Series just got going for their 2020 season and was coming off of a three race west coast swing that came after the season opener at Daytona prior.

Then, just when the teams were all set to head to Atlanta for the fifth race of the season, they got word to stop immediately. The season was put on hold. While a lot of uncertainty ensued, one thing that didn’t was a return to normal. We weren’t going to be racing any time soon and the teams and drivers just had to settle in for what was going to be a long break.

Well, NASCAR has adapted and put together a four race string of races over the course of 10 days in the interim. The races that will run, well they will look like nothing that we’ve seen before. They’ll all take place behind closed doors, with one-day shows and ton of safety protocols in place to keep everyone safe.

More: NASCAR Races Will Look Vastly Different Than Before

In turn, the first laps that Harvick and 39 of his closest friends will take since March 8 will be on Sunday afternoon in Darlington. That’s a span of 70 days. For reference, the offseason between 2019 and 2020 lasted 83 days. Then, they’ll have to do so in the heat of the day without much real racing training. Harvick, noted that he and everyone else will certainly be sore after Sunday’s 400 mile race and that it will be noticeable as a result.

So, without any practice or qualifying, do you just bring to Darlington what you brought to the South Carolina race track last September?

“You obviously don’t know what condition you’re really kind of facing just because of the fact that Darlington last year went into the night,” Harvick said on Thursday morning. “This time it will be a relatively warm day in the sun most of the day, so Darlington is a very sensitive temperature track, so I think you kind of have to evolve as the race evolves.

“You look at last year’s stuff, you look at the evolution of the cars as we’ve gone through the off-season and the first part of the season knowing that you at least get to race on the same tire that you had last year, so you take those common trends, you take the things that we needed to do differently from the last race and try to blend all those things together, and then just know that most likely you’re not going to hit that target of making the car drive perfectly and being able to have adjustments in either direction.”

Harvick, did note that the toughest part is going to be the beginning of the race due to the lack of rubber on the 1.3-mile racing surface.

“It will be a little bit tricky adjusting on your car at the beginning of the race just because of the lack of rubber on the race track. It’s a race track that really evolves as the rubber gets on the race track and last year it was tough to drive on top of the rubber, so you really had to find different spots on the race track to move around.”

His former Stewart-Haas Racing teammate of Kurt Busch agreed saying that Darlington usually has some rubber on it before they race in the past. They have the luxury of having multiple rounds of practice for not just the Cup Series, but the Xfinity Series as well. Then, throw in qualifying for both and an NXS race and you get plenty of data for grip levels.

This Sunday, we have no data, no rubber and no way of knowing how the car is going to feel early on.

“I think the biggest goal in this instance is to just not be in right field, try to get yourself in the ballpark and be able to adjust on it so you don’t have to have a rebuild and a reboot,” Harvick continued. “A few days later you can do that, but you can’t do that during the race, so we’re trying to be solid through these first several races so you don’t shoot yourself in the foot and have to try to reboot in the middle of a race because that will be tough, but you’re definitely gonna have to make changes and evolve with the race track as it changes.”

All of this comes with a different way of getting going as well. See, drivers are a creature of habit. They all have superstitions and routines. Now, that’s drastically altered as they can’t show up to the race track until Sunday morning. From there, they have to go quarantine by themselves in their motorhomes until getting the call to head to pit road 10 minutes before racing. No friends or family members can be with them either.

“The routine is different. It’s not as different as Darlington as it’s going to be when we actually do start traveling further than somewhere we can drive because it is a race that we drove to, for the most part, back and forth each day and it is a race that is typically hot, it’s a unique race track, so there are a lot of things that aren’t completely outside of the box, but the people and your interaction with people is just a lot different, has been a lot different – not being able to go to the shop, not being able to have meetings face-to-face is just not normal, and part of the thing that I think we’ve all learned through all this is just your interaction with people is something that you just kind of took for granted and I think as you look at in now that’s the part that you’re missing the most. So there’s a number of things that are different, but that’s the part that is different for me because we talk through so many things so well as a group, and you won’t have that.”