Stewart-Haas’ transition to Ford gets top results
Harvick starts from pole after teammate won Daytona 500.
So much for HAMPTON, GA. — a transition period at Stewart-Haas Racing.
The NASCAR team hasn’t slowed since switching from Chevrolet to Ford. Kurt Busch captured the season-opening Daytona 500, and Kevin Harvick followed up by earning the pole for today’s Monster Energy Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
“Hopefully this is the start of something great,” Harvick said.
There was plenty of speculation about how the change would go, especially for Harvick, who had a long relationship with Chevrolet.
Turns out, he had no trouble getting back up to speed.
“It’s fun to open Pandora’s box,” Harvick said. “You have to turn every leaf over and look at everything in your company. Everything is different from top to bottom. But one thing that stayed consistent was very good people. It’s been fun to see a group of people come together and try to make things better. It’s a major undertaking to do what we did.”
Busch is still savoring the high from his Daytona victory.
It may take a while to come down.
“You take it all in, you absorb it,” Busch said. “Years ago, when I won the (2004) championship, you look at it and you think, ‘Aww, man, this is a lot that goes along with it.’ And maybe I didn’t soak it all in. This time around, my phone is still 400 texts deep. I can’t get caught up.”
Although Stewart-Haas won the opener, don’t forget about seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who drives a Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports.
He’s the two-time defending race winner in Atlanta.
“It’s been a great track for me,” Johnson said. “The last two races we won here, we didn’t really get ourselves situated until late in the going. But able to come out on top. Just because you have a slow Friday or a slow start to the race, I don’t think you can count anybody out. We have a lot of chances to work on the car and make big stuff happen here, which is really neat.”
Here are some other things to watch for today on the 1.54-mile tri-oval:
Newman’s progress: Ryan Newman showed signs of bouncing back from a disappointing 2016 season, qualifying on the outside of the front row.
Newman said the No. 31 Chevrolet team for Richard Childress Racing still had a long way to go, but his fast lap was a huge boost for the crew’s morale.
Last season, he failed to qualify for the championship Chase. He opened this season with a 21st at Daytona.
“It’s a baby step,” Newman said. “But it’s huge. You can see the emotions of the guys in the garage. That’s something I didn’t see for a while last year. Even Daytona, we were not anyone that people were talking about. We were there. We had a competitive car. But we were never on anyone’s one hand of who was going to win the race.”
Stage racing: This will be the second test of the three-stage format that is designed to add more drama and excitement to the racing.
The first two stages are 85 laps apiece, while the final stage will cover 155 laps if the race goes the scheduled 325-lap distance.
The new format didn’t have much impact in the crash-filled Daytona 500. Contenders such as Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were wiped out by wrecks, and there were lengthy red-flag delays that slowed the action in the restrictor-plate event.
This could be the first true test of how well the new system works.