LAS VEGAS -- If Kevin Harvick hasn't had time to shop for an anniversary present, wife DeLana might be satisfied with a victory in Sunday's Shelby American at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. After all, they were married in Las Vegas nine years ago this weekend.

Certainly that's in the realm of possibility, especially with the start Harvick has had in 2010 with his No. 29 Chevrolet. Harvick's runner-up finish to Jimmie Johnson last weekend at Fontana, coupled with a seventh in the Daytona 500, has him atop the Sprint Cup point standings after two races.

Crew members work on Harvick's car after Friday's practice session.

“

We pretty much started over and I guess the only thing you can attribute to the success of where everything is, is just the hard work.

”

-- KEVIN HARVICK

Then again, Harvick whacked the wall early in Friday's practice session, followed by a 34th-place effort in qualifying. And in Saturday's first of two practices, he was 25th of the 42 cars that turned laps. So Harvick would be the first one to tell you not to read too much into the standings just yet.

"Obviously it is really early in the season to get in to points but I think it could be worse," Harvick said. "It could be the opposite end of the spectrum. We'll take it week by week and keep plugging away at what we need to do on a weekly basis."

Harvick led nine laps and finished 12th here a year ago, then ran strongly at Atlanta. However, his season went into freefall soon after, and it took major changes -- including an entire new fleet of cars -- to turn the team's fortunes around for himself and his Richard Childress Racing teammates.

"From really Indy, where we took our newest stuff, and that is where we started the cycle, the new changes throughout our cars," Harvick said. "The biggest thing is now we have a fleet of them and we are able to race them every week where last year we had one this week and you didn't have one next week.

"But we had to build 40 of them, so it took a while to get everything turned around and get the chassis department and body department and everything on the right page. Indy was pretty much where it all started to turn around for us."

Harvick said the wholesale changes included everything but the engines.

"We pretty much started over and I guess the only thing you can attribute to the success of where everything is, is just the hard work," Harvick said. "That is really what it boils down to is that everybody had to basically build new fleets of cars for all three teams to start over with.

"There is just so many things that have changed, the structure of management has changed, the chassis have changed, the bodies have changed, bump stops, springs, I mean it just goes on and on and on. I think you started seeing a lot of management changes and the way that the structure of the company functioned as we got toward the end of last year and I think a lot of that has helped the processes."

During the Labor Day weekend, Harvick led 66 laps and finished second at Atlanta, which kicked off a stretch of six top-10 finishes in the final 12 races. And it appears the No. 29 team has picked up where they left off in November.

"The end of the year was a lot like the way the beginning of this year has been," Harvick said. "We weren't as consistent with all three cars but everybody was still searching a little bit but there was at least one if not two cars for the last five or six weeks of the season that were pretty much doing the same thing we are doing now."

And what that's done is helped put a smile on Harvick's face every time he comes through the infield tunnel.

"It is fun to come to the race track and know everything is going good," Harvick said. "We have a new car this week, so we will see how it goes. We ran well here last year and hopefully we can do the same this year."

At the same time, Harvick is leery about getting too comfortable with recent success, especially with NASCAR planning to ditch the rear wing for a spoiler sometime later this spring.

"You are going to get the first test at the first race we put the spoilers on, you are going to see where your engineering department stands," Harvick said. "Where your aero department stands because you literally can't take this car that we race with a wing on it and just put a spoiler on it. All the cars are going to be different.

"They are going to get tested pretty quick on what is right and what is wrong as far as whether we maintain the competitive level that we are at when the spoiler is on the car. I think every team in the garage is somewhat concerned whether they are hopefully making the right decisions going forward as to what kind of build you need with your cars with the spoiler on them."

Why say it with flowers when you can celebrate with champagne in Victory Lane?