It wasn’t easy but Kevin Harvick advanced to the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver will have the opportunity to run for a second career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship after his fifth-place finish in Sunday’s Can-Am 500 at ISM Raceway.
But that doesn’t tell the entire story.
Harvick’s L1 penalty after last week’s AAA Texas 500 victory stripped him of 40 points and disqualified the victory as an automatic berth in the title race. Harvick came to Phoenix a nine-time Cup winner and determined to overcome what had transpired earlier in the week.
He promptly went out and won the pole and at the drop of the green flag he jumped out to lead the first 77 laps on Sunday. Until he suffered a flat tire that sent him to pit road and dropped Harvick deep in the field.
Undaunted he was able to work his way back through a series of pit strategies and restarts to eventually take the checkered flag in fifth and move on to the chance to run for the crown.
“I just thought about my main job was to try to get it back to the pits without crashing into the wall or having a tire blow out and rip the fenders off,” Harvick said of the tire issue. “I felt it go down going into Turn 1 and just kind of tried to nurse it into Turn 3 and back around. I couldn’t get down over there, and I just drug everything all the way around.
“I drug the splitter off. It never really handled as good after that, but we made some adjustments to our car and got ourselves back in contention there in the second stage staying out, and it worked out okay.”
Harvick was without his regular crew chief Rodney Childers who was suspended for the final two races of the season as part of the Texas penalties. Veteran Tony Gibson is the fill-in and Harvick is comfortable his team won’t miss a beat with the change in personnel.
“Really the biggest thing that Tony brings is just a ton of experience,” he said. “Obviously a familiar face to the NASCAR officials, and he’s been with Stewart Haas for a long time and worked with all those guys and worked with everybody in the shop. He’s very calm sitting up on the pit box, unless he’s winning the Daytona 500. Then he gives us something that we all remember.
“But for the most part on the radio, he was just dead calm all weekend and just pretty laid back with everything, and everybody just did their jobs.”
However Harvick did not deny the impact Childers and the entire SHR organization will have in the quest for his second title.
“The thing you’ve got to remember is those guys have all been together for five years, and there’s the internet works well from Phoenix to North Carolina, as well, too,” Harvick cracked.
