Harvick chases third straight win
Driver always has run well in Phoenix, winning 8 times on 1-mile track
Kevin Harvick has won 39 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races. He won the 2014 Cup championship, the Daytona 500 in 2007 and owns two Xfinity Series titles.
Something Harvick hasn’t done in his decorated career? Win three consecutive Cup races.
That void could be filled this weekend and, if so, few will be surprised.
After dominating the past two races (at Atlanta and Las Vegas), Harvick will be the favorite when the tour moves on to ISM Raceway near Phoenix for Sunday’s TicketGuardian 500.
Harvick typically is a prohibitive favorite at Phoenix. He has won a record eight times on the one-mile track.
A win Sunday would make Harvick the first Cup driver to win three in a row since Joey Logano in 2015. A victory also would remove some of the smudge that last week’s win at Las Vegas carries after the No. 4 team was penalized for two infractions.
The failure of a rear-window brace left the Ford with a bowed window for part of the race, an infraction. And the car’s right-side rocker panel extension was not aluminum, as rules require.
Harvick lost seven playoff points and
20 regular-season points, and crew chief Rodney Childers was fined
$50,000. Car chief Robert Smith was suspended for two races.
The team has not announced if it will appeal the penalties.
Harvick will carry early-season power into Phoenix. He led 395 of 592 total laps at Atlanta and Las Vegas, a crazy sum considering some teams are still trying to get their legs under them as the season rolls through its early weeks.
“When things are like this, you want to capitalize on them, and you want to capitalize on your cars and your people and your enthusiasm and the momentum and all the things that come with that, so you're almost scared to even really step back and say, we did this or we did that, and your name is on the list here,” Harvick said.
Trouble after the Vegas win no doubt will provide some fire for Harvick and his team this weekend.
A win Sunday would make Harvick only the second active driver to log nine wins at one track. Jimmie Johnson has nine wins at Martinsville Speedway and 11 wins at Dover International Speedway.
Of the current top-10 drivers in points, Harvick is the only one with multiple Cup wins at Phoenix. He also has won four times in the Truck series and once in the Xfinity series there.
Sunday’s race will be the last Cup event in the speedway’s current configuration. As part of a $178 million renovation project, the track’s start-finish line will be moved from the front straightaway to near turn two, placing it in front of a 45,000-seat grandstand that is under construction. The new design will be used when NASCAR teams return to the track in November.