Kevin Harvick may have already won three times in 2018 but the Stewart-Haas Racing driver doesn’t plan on taking his foot off the accelerator.
Harvick enters Sunday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 having won half of the six races run this Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season. His SHR teammate Clint Bowyer won last week at Martinsville and Aric Almirola and Kurt Busch are also running well with the organization. It makes Harvick both proud and optimistic about what lies ahead.
“Yeah, everything has gone fine and it all started or a lot of it started right here in the fall last year winning here for the first time and being able to get to victory lane and do the things that we did at the end of the year. It is fun to be able to ride that momentum,” Harvick said of last November’s TMS victory.
“You never know when it is going to shift the other way. The whole company is doing a great job. Clint (Bowyer) winning last week and Aric (Almirola) and Kurt (Busch) doing well. It has been a great start to the season for Stewart-Haas Racing and we have been fortunate to win a few of those races and hopefully we can do the same this weekend.”
However, even though Harvick is firmly in the playoffs and knows the importance of running well at Texas when the series returns in the fall, he doesn’t plan on using Sunday’s race as anything more than another chance to win.
“You can’t really do things like that anymore,” he said when asked if the team may experiment some this weekend. “You have to try to win and gain every bonus point you can. That is the goal. Try to win every race that you can possibly put yourself in position to win and try to take every stage point you can possibly take. You saw Martin do that last year and they were so dominant on gaining points and it basically got them in a position to lock themselves into the playoffs and kept running good and won the championship and were the dominant car all year. They earned every point that they got. They are still going to be the car to contend with.
“The 18 (Kyle Busch) will be a car to contend with. I think both of those guys have the same mentality while you are hot, to try to take as many points as you can to build as big a cushion as you can to get through race 26. The experimenting days, all you are doing is burning points. If you don’t have those points – then you have the regular season points that seed you to get those points that are paid out at the regular season. You can’t afford to take a week off and experiment. You have to experiment some but you can’t sacrifice performance and points to get that done.”
