Could Harvick be the sleeper of the Chase field?

[Schwartz Fan]

Could Harvick be the sleeper of the Chase field?
Special to FOXSports.com

Updated: September 10, 2008, 12:14 PM EST

In July, Kevin Harvick scoffed somewhat at the notion that his Richard Childress Racing team was on the bubble and could miss NASCAR's Chase for the Sprint Cup. It wasn't that he necessarily viewed it as an impossibility; he just thought it was too early to get caught up in that talk.
Perhaps that was because he knew what was ahead for the team.


Harvick never seemed concerned about being one of the 12 drivers to make the championship-determining field. Pelted with questions about it as he rode in the 10th through 13th spots in the driver standings for most of a 10-race stretch, Harvick never bought into either worrying about making the field or considering the possibility that he might not. He most likely knew he controlled his destiny; he had faith in himself and his Todd Berrier-led team and knew that better finishes were going to come.

He never made predictions, just publicly said he'd do his best and watch how things worked out.

It turns out, they worked out great. His lone setback in the last eight races was a 37th-place finish at Indianapolis. Outside of that, he scored seven top-10 finishes in the eight-race stretch, a run that included four results of fourth or better. That makes his one of the hottest teams in the sport right now, but one that also isn't generating a lot of talk.

Obviously getting into the Chase is a big accomplishment, and now he's hoping to see his momentum continue.


"We've run well the last few months and have to keep that up and pick it up a notch and make something happen," he said.

Aiding that endeavor will be his RCR teammates. Both Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer also made the Chase, giving RCR three teams contending for the title once more.

"It's a credit to our whole organization," team owner Richard Childress said of that mark. "Everybody dug deep and made it work. It's been a good deal."

Now it's on to the championship. Burton opened the season as the most consistent in the group, finishing in the top 15 in the opening 17 races. His team tried some new things with the car, and he says he feels more competitive now, even though some of the results haven't shown it.

Harvick and crew chief Berrier, meanwhile, have steadily improved. While they haven't led a bunch of laps or seemed to be controlling any races, Harvick has been in the mix week to week and running with the frontrunners by race's end.

"I like to lead laps, but I haven't been a big lap leader," Harvick said. "I seem to lead a few laps at the end — if we win, it's not like we are really dominant. That's just kind of our M.O. and how we function. For whatever reason, that's the way it is, and (I'm) just glad that the cars are running good and just have to pick it up a notch."


As he looks over his organization, Harvick sees improvement in some key areas, particularly the performance on the 1.5-mile tracks.

"I felt like our mile-and-a-half program is very good right now," he said. "For whatever reason, that's been our weakness before, and right now that's our strength. So hopefully that continues, and we can keep that going forward on the big tracks, because that's where you're going to have to be good, because there's so many of them."

If there is a type of track where a driver would like to dominate, this would be it. The 10-race Chase features five events on 1.5-mile ovals, and a solid performance on those tracks could obviously provide a big boost in the hunt for the championship.

Harvick says that his team has clearly run well in the last three months, and he believes they have had a top-five car at 90 percent of those races. The team has made significant changes as it learned about NASCAR's new Cup model — alterations Harvick says are simply too numerous to name.

"It would be easier to tell you what wasn't changed than what has changed," he says. "At Chicago (in July), we started all over (and changed) everything, from the bump-stops to the chassis to the body and everything in between. Everything is just different. We found a really good car that we feel really comfortable with and have made a lot of ground with that car and have since built three more, and hopefully they are as good."

He says the changes have made the car more comfortable for him — and the results show it.

This season has clearly shown that a team can hit on something and get on a roll. Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch has won eight races on all kinds of tracks. Roush Fenway Racing's Carl Edwards won two in a row early and then three of four in a recent stretch. Gillett Evernham Motorsports' Kasey Kahne won two of three in an early-summer run — but fell short of a Chase birth — and now Hendrick Motorsports' Jimmie Johnson has won two in a row.

It doesn't take much for a team to get an edge. Harvick certainly know that and knows that this would be the perfect time to get on a run like that.

"I think everything has gone so well in the past few months, with a few circumstances here or there, that everything falls into place," he said when asked if he could win races in the Chase. "We've just got to keep that going and not make any mistakes and see what happens."



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