Kevin Harvick hopes to have a much better second race of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs than last week’s opener in Las Vegas.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver’s quest for a second Cup title got off to a rocky start to say the least. A tire problem near the race’s halfway point put Harvick into the wall and his car received further damage when Erik Jones crashed into the No. 4 Ford. The end result was a 39th-place finish and a very unhappy Harvick.
The good news is Harvick started the playoffs with 50 bonus points and his early exit last week in Vegas didn’t completely eliminate him from the championship picture. He enters Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond Raceway fourth in the series standings.
There’s more good news for Harvick in that his Richmond record is stellar. In 35 Cup Series starts at the Virginia short track, Harvick owns three victories, 13 top-five finishes and 10 top 10s. He has an average Richmond finish of 10.3 with 99.2 percent of laps completed.
Richmond Race Winners | Standings
So despite the sour start to the playoffs Harvick comes to Richmond with a business as usual approach.
“For us, it’s really the same as any other race,” he said. “You want to go there and prepare the best you can. Being a short track, it’s just one of those places where sometimes you have to move somebody out of the way and sometimes that doesn’t go over well.
“Any time you have short-track racing, there are going to be things that happen and that should be interesting in the second week of the playoffs.”
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The nature of racing at the .75-mile track under the lights has created some emotional moments at Richmond over the years. Harvick has been involved in more than a few of those situations.
But the veteran driver understands the importance of remaining focused and to not let outside forces impact the job he has to do behind the wheel.
“I think, emotionally, you can get yourself in trouble,” Harvick explained. “Especially for me, to have those emotions under control opens the door for less noise. I can deal with the noise, but I don’t like the noise and disruption that comes with that noise for my team because they have to start answering questions and looking at things on the Internet to take their focus off of what is most important.
“It’s most important for them to focus on the details of the car. Having a good mental mindset is something I’ve been working on over the past month and a half to make sure that mentally I was ready to be relaxed and focused.”
