Season Review: Kevin Harvick

Entering his 18th season in the Monster Energy Cup Series, Kevin Harvick was once again the conversation of title contender in 2018.

This season, Harvick tied Kyle Busch for the series lead in wins (8) and led all drivers in top fives (23), top 10s (29) and laps led (1,990), but finished third in the final standings.

“I don’t think it’s been the best year performance wise,” Harvick said. “I feel like 2014 we had the fastest cars that I’ve ever driven in my career, but we were so new to everything, so young, we made so many mistakes, had so many things break, we just didn’t capitalize on it that year.”

2018 Statistics

To start the 2018 campaign, Harvick, the 2007 Daytona 500 winner, was knocked out of contention to capture a second after he was involved in a huge pileup and finished in 31st. Even after the disastrous start to the year, rolling into Atlanta the No. 4 team was looking to bounce back. The ball was in the court during the cloudy weekend and Harvick got his first win of 2018 after leading 181 laps.

As the track had the nickname “Hotlanta” the heat picked up for the No. 4 team for another two races when they capitalized on two more wins at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and ISM Raceway where he led a combined 252 laps in both races.

Moving along to the summer portion of the season, Harvick notched two more wins (Dover International Speedway and Kansas Speedway) before the official halfway mark of the season. As the summer rolled on, Harvick continued to solidify his position in the “Big Three” after grabbing two more wins before the playoffs began.

Once the playoffs rolled around, many predicted each of the members of the dominate trio had a legitimate chance at winning the championship. Harvick entered the playoffs with seven wins and easily was favorite to win the 2018 Monster Energy Cup Series championship.

Harvick and his team comfortably advanced to both the Round of 16 and 12, but came across one of its biggest obstacles in the Round of 8. After leading 177 laps to win at Texas Motor Speedway, his win and Championship 4 berth was stripped after an L1-level penalty for an illegal spoiler. Harvick would then go on to squeeze his way into the Championship 4 after a fifth-place finish at ISM Raceway.

After a frantic two weeks, it finally came down to the Championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway against Joey Logano, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. In the first stage of the race he found his way to the front after passing Denny Hamlin for the lead on Lap 43 and won Stage 1.

Harvick spent the day in and out of the top five but never had the same amount of dominance that he was used to having all season long. While not winning the race at Homestead, he finished the season with a third-place finish to close 2018.

“I think with the way our championship is now it’s one race,” said Harvick. “It’s one night, it’s one moment and when you look at the amount of race wins we had a great year. Won more races than we’ve won more than any other year in a stock car. I think as you look at the results, it’s pretty hard to complain about the results that we had. We didn’t put the whole night together, but we put the whole day together at Homestead. We didn’t put the night piece of it together and wound up not winning.”

Heading into 2019, Harvick like many drivers, have been vocal about how they view the new rules package and what it may bring into the new season.

“Well ya know as I look at the situation I think everyone knows where I stand on it,” Harvick said. “I think that at this particular point there is nothing that my opinions or my thoughts or things that come with package are really going to change the outcome of what we’re going to race. I’ve put those thoughts behind me to get in the car and be a part of the team and put the fastest cars on the race track. If you can’t change something, it’s no need to waste your thoughts and energy on how you feel about it.”

2018 Season Reviews – Monster Energy Cup Series Playoff Drivers