The kid who nearly stopped Sprint Cup practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway

Keelan Harvick has spent much of his in the social media spotlight, but the 4-year-old son of Kevin Harvick recently came close to being the focus of a news media headline.

During a Sprint Cup practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in July, Keelan Harvick wanted to play baseball, so DeLana Harvick took her son to a parking lot on the backstretch.

“He’s crushing the baseball and it comes this close to going over the wall on the track, and I’m freaking out,’ DeLana Harvick said with a laugh on the NASCAR on NBC podcast episode released Wednesday. “Oh my God, if they have a caution because Keelan hit a ball on the track, it’s going to be bad.”

A NASCAR official retrieved the ball, which had landed against the wall.

Crisis averted.

“They gave it back to him and said, ‘Good hit buddy!’ And I’m like, Oh God, I can imagine telling Kevin, ‘That was me. That was your son. We caused a caution,’” DeLana said. “But it doesn’t matter what’s going on. If Keelan wants to go do something, we’re going to go do it.”

In the podcast, she explains how the couple decided that because Keelan was the center of their lives, their son naturally would appear in the public sides of their existence that appears on social media.

“I didn’t know how much we’d share,” she said. “I always saw those people with kids posting all their pictures and thought, ‘Good Lord, I don’t want to see any more pictures of your kids.’ And then you have a child, and something clicks in your brain. Of course every parent thinks their kid is the cutest and funniest kid in the world but because our families don’t live with us anymore, that’s a way they can see it. You never know exactly how much you’re going to share.”

DeLana said she and Kevin might be inclined to set more boundaries with sharing their personal lives with Keelan as he gets older and more self-conscious.

“He’s already getting to the point now,” she said. “At Michigan, a camera came up and he walked behind us. He’s starting to become uncomfortable with it.

“People will come ask Keelan to sign an autograph. I tell him if you’d like to sign this, it’s OK. I never force him to do anything, take a picture or talk to anyone. It’s a little different. It’s a hard balance.”

Other topics discussed by Harvick on the podcast:

–The growth of KHI Management into a multifaceted agency representing a varied clientele;

–The transition from being focused solely on running race teams into raising a child;

–How her husband’s professional live is called by his personal life.

To listen to the full podcast, you can click below or download the episode by subscribing to it on iTunes by clicking here. The free subscription will provide automatic downloads of new episodes to your smartphone or tablet.

The podcast also is available on Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and a host of other smartphone apps.