Harvick out to stop earliest playoff elimination of career
CONCORD, N.C. — This is it for Kevin Harvick, a winner of nine races just last year and now on the verge of his earliest career playoff knockout. The steadiest guy in the garage is winless this season — he’s on a 38-race losing streak — and needs a big day at Charlotte Motor Speedway to avoid playoff elimination.
Harvick has made it through the second round of the playoffs every year since the elimination format started in 2014, the year he won his only Cup title. Harvick is such a solid bet to be a contender because he’s always in the hunt, always among the leaders, and he’s advanced to the championship round in five of seven seasons.
And yet he heads to the Roval at Charlotte on Sunday ranked ninth in the standings, the first driver below the cutline. The field will be trimmed from 12 to eight after this race, and Harvick lags nine points below the final transfer position.
Harvick, the same guy who slammed his helmet in rage after on-track shenanigans with reigning champion Chase Elliott cost him a win last month, was surreally serene headed into the makeor-break race.
“I’m kind of a creature of habit, do the same things on a
weekly basis, and it’s just another race,” Harvick said. “I know that sounds cliche and boring and all the things that come with that, but you just have to go out there and do what you do, the best you can, and see where it falls.”
It’s been a bad year at Stewart-Haas Racing and Harvick and the No. 4 team are the biggest losers. They dominated all the way up until the third-round finale last season and this year have been fairly mediocre.
His eight top-fives and 21 top-10s are the lowest since 2012, but even in that uncharacteristically off year Harvick
still won one race. Harvick’s best shot was at Bristol in the first-round finale but Elliott, angry at Harvick over another on-track incident, intentionally slowed Harvick to help Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson catch Harvick and steal the win.
The second round has been OK — Harvick was ninth at Las Vegas, and he was running eighth on Monday when Talladega was called for rain — but that’s not good enough. Harvick, Christopher Bell of Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick teammates William Byron and Alex Bowman are all below the cutline going into the Roval, a hybrid track that uses both the road course and oval at Charlotte Motor Speedway.