MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- History tells us the first five races in the Chase wouldn't statistically favor Kevin Harvick.

Thus, it's no surprise that Harvick, on the eve of Sunday's Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway -- the sixth race of 10 in the Chase -- is pretty thrilled to be only 77 points behind leader and four-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson and 36 behind second-place Denny Hamlin.

"If you look at average finishes and you look at the things that have happened in the past, we've been way above average over the first five races for us," Harvick said.

Despite Hamlin and Johnson combining to win the past eight races at Martinsville, Harvick is undeterred.

"It's a decent race track for us," Harvick said Friday. "Obviously those guys have got the results to back it up, but we've gone from the beginning of the Chase and overachieved on everything that we've done. This has just been a good year for us and we're not going to do anything different.

"If we hit a home run this weekend, we hit a home run. If we don't, there is no reason to worry about trying to force anything. And we just keep plugging away. I feel like we need to win a race in the next five to make it happen, but when you start forcing things to happen, you'll wind up with a 35th [place finish] and then you'll be done.

"To be in the game, you have to be close enough to be a part of the game. And we'll just keep racing."

Questions from the media Friday appeared to aggravate Harvick, who was asked if he had a goal of where he wanted to be coming out of Martinsville.

"I just told you what I wanted to do this weekend," Harvick said. "I want to do what we've been doing. I want to go out and race as fast as our car will go and race my own race."

And while Harvick will obviously concentrate on driving his own race car, when he hits pit road, there will be a big change. Team owner Richard Childress -- reacting to pit-road woes that have affected Harvick in both the Nationwide Series, where he works with his own Kevin Harvick Inc. crew as well as in Cup -- swapped Harvick's over-the-wall crew with teammate Clint Bowyer's.

"Those issues have been addressed and I believe everything will be fine this week," Harvick said. "Richard made some huge changes this week."

Bowyer, out of Chase contention in 12th, offered additional insight.

"There's no question that my team is arguably the best team at RCR -- they've been together the longest -- [and] with us being out of the championship deal, Kevin is the last shot at RCR at basically bringing a championship home," Bowyer said. "We owe it to everybody involved -- all the employees -- to try to bring that championship back home. Certainly I'm going to miss them, but I think we can win with [Harvick's] pit crew as well.

"There is certainly no slouch with what he had, and if he needed my crew to be better I was going to give it to him. I owe it to him as a teammate. We'll see [if it's a permanent switch]. Obviously if [Harvick] is out of the championship contention then I'll get them back, but as long as he's in that thing and he can win a championship for RCR, why not?" (Continued)