Harvick rolls along
SHR driver notches fifth Cup win
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – As he accumulates Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victories at a modern era-record pace, Kevin Harvick became introspective in describing a surreal season. Winning, he said, is addicting. “You want to see how many races you can win, you want to see how many laps you can lead,” Harvick said after storming down the final 10 laps and winning Saturday night’s KC Masterpiece 400 at Kansas Speedway.
“We know that we’re riding a momentum wave that is hard to come by, and you need to capitalize on it as many times as you can because it may never come again.”
The win at Kansas was Harvick’s second in a row and fifth in 12 races this season. That puts him on a pace for 15 victories in 36 starts, which would break the single-season, modern-era record of 13 in 33 starts set by Jeff Gordon when he won the 1998 championship. NASCAR’s modern era is considered to have started in 1972, a year after Richard Petty won 21 races in 46 starts.
The last driver to win double-figure races was Jimmie Johnson, who won 10 in his 2007 championship season.
Harvick, who matched his careerbest five victories achieved in 2006 and when he won the 2014 championship, admits he’s on a whole different level now driving the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 Ford.
“I’ve never had it in my career, and I’ve been doing this for 18 years,” Harvick, 42, said of this hot stretch. “These moments are not something that happens very often, and now you need to go put every detail into a car like you’re racing for a championship race at Homestead every week because it just has that special feel to it.
“It’s just a good time to be at SHR. They’re doing a great job of putting fast race cars on the track, but I think when you look at a night like tonight, it really shows the experience of the team, because I feel like this is the kind of cars that we had in 2014 but we had a lot of parts failures. We were all new. We made a lot of mistakes and just didn’t really know how to deal with it like we do now, but yeah, it’s addicting. Now it’s a game.”
The win was the 42nd of Harvick’s Cup career, which ranks 18th all time, and crew chief Rodney Childers understands the No. 4 team is carving a special place in history.
“If it’s eight races you win, if it’s 10 races you win, if it’s 12 races you win,” Childers said, “the reason that we all are here is because of watching people like Jeff Gordon and Ray Evernham win 12 races a year, and that’s what your goal should be no matter what race team you are.”
Harvick ran down defending Kansas champion Martin Truex Jr. in the last 10 laps on Saturday night for the win, leaving the 2017 Cup champion grasping for answers on how to beat Harvick.
“Well, we’re going to have to find something,” said Truex, driver of the No. 78 Toyota, “We’re going to have to find some speed, and I think our cars are capable. We’ve had good speed throughout the season at points. We just haven’t been as consistent as last year in finding it.
“And it’s pretty evident that the Fords have an unfair advantage this year, so I’ll just throw that out there,” Truex added, half joking.
Truex, who has a win at California, and Joey Logano, who won at Talladega, can take comfort in the fact they are virtually assured of joining Harvick in the postseason playoffs. But what kind of answer will they have for Harvick?
“Oh, man, I’m still chasing a car that’s way faster than me,” said Logano, who finished third Saturday in the Team Penske No. 22 Ford. “It used to be the 78, now it’s the 4 at this point. The good news is we’re closer than we were last year, so we are consistent, we’re knocking off top-fives, top-10s, getting stage points every time.
“There’s not a real bright, shiny tool that you can just use and say, ‘There it is, that’s what it is.’ But it’s just a bunch of little things, and they’re doing a really good job right now. They’re executing races well and they’ve got a ton of speed. They’re qualifying fast and they’re winning races.”
They’re winning poles and races at such a pace that it can be demoralizing as well as motivating to other drivers.
“It’s no joke that he’s head and shoulders better than everyone else right now,” said Ryan Blaney, who led 51 laps before crashing Saturday, “and that whole organization is really great, but that 4 car is super-strong, and it almost makes you kind of fight harder not only as a driver, but as a team as well, and especially since they’re the same manufacturer as you.
“I think all of the Fords are great right now, but they’re a little bit ahead of everybody. That has definitely made everyone hungry to try to get to where he is and personally as a driver you want to kind of try to get better and better to get to where he’s at as well.”