It’s coming a month and a half later than expected, but Keelan Harvick is finally going to make his highly-anticipated CARS Tour Pro Late Model debut this Saturday night at Cordele Motor Speedway in Cordele, Georgia. 

The 12-year-old driver and son of former NASCAR Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick was scheduled to make his CARS Tour debut and his Pro Late Model debut during the season opener at New River All-American Speedway in Jacksonville, North Carolina at the start of March. However, Harvick woke up extremely under the weather on race day and was forced to withdraw from the race, which postponed his CARS Tour debut to this weekend at the ⅜-mile Cordele Motor Speedway.

Harvick told FloRacing ahead of his planned debut at New River that he didn’t know what to expect out of the Pro Late Model. At the time, Harvick only had three full-bodied stock car starts under his belt. One was in a Street Stock, while the other two came in Limited Late Model competition at Florence Motor Speedway. Limited Late Models, much like their Late Model Stock Car counterparts, are “perimeter rail chassis” while Pro Late Models and Super Late Models are “straight rail chassis.” To put it more plainly, even though Harvick had run two Late Model races, the cars were very different from the Pro Late Model.

“I’m not really sure how different it will be until I get in it and drive it,” Harvick said back in February. “I think it will be similar, but different in its own ways. My confidence is definitely up, but you can just never let it get too high or it’ll come crashing right back down.”

He took to the Pro Late Model well in Friday open practice back at New River. Harvick was near the top of the charts all day long.

But now, Harvick has practice and race experience in the Pro Late Model ahead of this weekend’s race in Georgia. Harvick made his official Pro Late Model debut with the CARS Tour West at Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway in Bakersfield, California. 

Harvick even now has Late Model Stock Car experience as well, since he’s made a few starts in the senior level of perimeter rail race cars at Florence Motor Speedway in South Carolina the last few weeks.

Overall, the young driver has much more experience entering Saturday’s race at Cordele than he did a month and a half ago leading into New River. Which is good for Harvick, since the expected field at Cordele is both large and deep as drivers like Casey Roderick make up the 32 entries vying for 30 starting spots.

Race fans can watch Keelan Harvick make his CARS Tour Pro Late Model debut, as well as watch Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the rest of the CARS Tour stars live on Saturday, April 12 on FloRacing. Fans can subscribe to FloRacing by clicking here.