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Kevin Harvick led 22 percent of all laps run in 2015, a total of 2,294 laps out 10,425 for the entire Sprint Cup Series season. The 2014 Sprint Cup Series champ was the only driver to top 2,000 laps led, yet he still finished the season second to a driver who missed 11 races due to an injury.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver knows that consistency — even consistent excellence — wasn’t going to score him a second title.
It’s all about Homestead.
“(2015) was probably the best year I had personally in my career,” Harvick said during the Charlotte Media Tour. “I think last year was probably better statistically than 2014 was in a lot of ways. … I think with this new format, for us, we just missed it a little bit at Homestead. The 18 car hit it, and we beat the other two cars. So that seems to be the new norm, you’re going to have to go down there with a car capable of winning the race.
With two years of the new Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series format under his belt — one ending as champion — Harvick has come to understand that perfection at Homestead is what truly matters once you’ve jumped through the hoops and accomplished what it takes to be a member of the Championship 4.
“I think this is a very, very intense format,” Harvick said. “… You better be on your game and have a car that’s capable of winning that race because the last two years, you’ve had to win that race. But to get in the Chase, you’ve had to have had a pretty good 26 weeks. If you lucked up and won a race, usually it shows up in the first round.”
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Rodney Childers, Harvick’s crew chief, has built a strategy for the No. 4 team that has proven strong for them. With three wins, 23 top-five and 28 top-10 finishes in 2015, Harvick and his team know what success looks like in NASCAR’s elite series.
“The strategy is still the same, ” Harvick said. “Rodney (Childers) instills that into our brain when we first started, and that’s to go out, try to win practice, try to sit on the pole and lead laps and win the race.”
It seems simple. But even with the accomplishments the No. 4 team has experienced, Childers still looks back on that one weekend in Homestead in 2015 when things might have been different.
“We just have to go and do the best job we can,” Childers said. “That particular weekend in Homestead we didn’t do a good job. We didn’t have a good car in the race. We didn’t make the right adjustments before the race. It’s disappointing for sure to finish second, but on the other hand, we’re pretty lucky to do what we do and run as well as we do with the group of people that we have.”
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