RELATED: Chase bubble heading into Loudon
One race into NASCAR’s 2016 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and the championship standings are thoroughly scrambled and causing double-takes.
Some favorites are shaking their heads and some long shots are thanking their lucky stars.
But as rough as stomaching a 20th-place finish in the Chicago opener was for the regular-season points leader Kevin Harvick, there is still every reason to believe it could just provide a more dramatic backdrop for another championship run.
Harvick finished 42nd in the Chicago race last year and still advanced to the final round of drivers competing for the big trophy at Miami.
In fact, the 2014 Sprint Cup champion Harvick is the only driver who has advanced to the final round in both seasons of the new Chase format.
Obviously, his Stewart-Haas Racing team feels urgency to get back on track this weekend in New Hampshire. Harvick is ranked 14th — a single point behind his team owner Tony Stewart in the 12th and final position to advance in two weeks.
But this group knows it can restore its title run, having crawled out of a deeper hole last fall and still finishing runner-up in the championship.
It’s a steely, forward-focus mindset that has served the intensely competitive Harvick well.
“It’s something we pride ourselves in,” Harvick said this week. “I think the pressure situations have been very good for us. As you look at the past two years — winning the championship and finishing second and getting to Homestead twice — it kind of shows the grit and backbone of our team and how well they’ve dealt with those situations.
“That experience definitely pays dividends every year when you go in. I think we were a little too ramped up, or at least I was, to start the Chase last year. There’s definitely a strategy to how you approach situations and how you approach the end. I think, having dealt with that in the past, that it’s a good thing for us.”
Harvick’s track record at New Hampshire is impressive, if not A-plus.
He won a race from the pole position in 2006, has led 698 total laps on the 1.058-mile track and never had a DNF. He’s had top-four finishes in three of the last four races in New Hampshire and was fourth there in July.
While some consider the track to be a unique wild card, Harvick insists it’s of equal challenge as the rest of the schedule.
“I don’t think Loudon is really any different than any other racetrack,” Harvick said. “It’s just circumstances that can crop up at really any racetrack throughout the Chase. … If you’re having a bad day, you know it can result in a bad day. You just have to overcome that and try to get yourself out of the hole.”
That is something Harvick has done well in the past, and it’s his overall standing in Sprint Cup competition that is more indicative of his potential than last week’s circumstantial disappointment.
He accumulated the most regular-season points of anyone. He leads the series in 11 different categories, including top fives (13), top 10s (21), driver rating (109.1) and average finish (8.9).
He has four runner-up finishes this season, including Charlotte and Kansas, where the series returns during the Chase.
Since 2014, Harvick and his crew chief Rodney Childers have a series-best 33 top-two finishes, 10 of those wins. That translates into 33.7 percent of all the races in that time frame.
The disappointing outcome at Chicago can be viewed as both an anomaly and a motivator.
There is no way Harvick’s competition is writing him off. In fact, they are probably more worried when he is more driven.
“You just have to be selfish,” Harvick said after the Richmond regular-season finale.
“You have to do what’s best for your team, worry about the consequences when all the dust settles, and you have to be narrow minded, not listen to anything, and do whatever it takes to figure out how to make the best performance on that particular day because every point matters.
“This is a minute-by-minute battle.”
And Harvick knows time is ticking for the 4-team.