Kevin Harvick may not have won the argument, the physical altercation or whatever you want to call Sunday’s post-race confrontation — a jab, a punch, a push, a shove — with Jimmie Johnson. What he could win — either of the next two races — holds the key to his repeat championship bid.
With his next-to-last place finish in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup opener at Chicagoland Speedway receding in the rear-view, Harvick’s quest for advancement turns to the next two events, starting with New Hampshire Motor Speedway this weekend and ending at Dover International Speedway in two weeks. He can take any math out of the elimination equation by winning and sealing an automatic berth in the Contender Round.
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It’s a task Harvick is well-suited for, based on his history of clutch moments in the march to his first Sprint Cup title last season and on his ability, as crew chief Rodney Childers suggests, to find an extra level of focus when it matters.
“Yeah, we can win anywhere,” Harvick said Sunday on Chicagoland’s pit road. “I mean, we could’ve won today. It’s just a matter of putting a couple days together and being able to come back to Victory Lane. So, same thing as last year.”
The sense of déjà vu for Harvick stems from his method of reaching the championship race in 2014. After a crash-related 33rd-place finish in the Eliminator Round opener at Martinsville, the Stewart-Haas Racing driver converted on a must-win in the round’s finale at Phoenix. He summoned the same sort of crucial performance the following week, winning the race and his first premier-series crown at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The task this year is similar, but comes much earlier in the postseason process. His on-track scrape over racing room with Johnson during a midrace restart Sunday left Harvick spinning into the wall just a handful of laps later and left him fuming in the drivers’ motorcoach lot post-race.
If any resentment and hard feelings linger after Harvick’s subpar finish, channeling them into increased determination could help lift the No. 4 team into the Contender Round.
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“Honestly, Kevin’s got a second gear to him and even this race team,” Childers said. “It’s bad to say this, but we haven’t really pushed that hard since we won at Phoenix in the spring. We wanted to save everything we had for the Chase, and I think everybody saw that this weekend with how fast we were. It didn’t work out, though. We’ll have good speed in the next two weeks and just have to go try win one of those.”
The next two tracks — 1.058-mile New Hampshire and 1-mile Dover — haven’t historically been strongholds for Harvick, who has just one win collectively at both venues. But more recent history holds optimism for the SHR No. 4 Chevrolet camp, which has led laps in bunches at both tracks since 2014.
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“I feel like the last two races at Loudon, we had the best car and hadn’t quite closed the deal,” Childers said. “The last three at Dover, we’ve had everybody killed. If we hadn’t knocked off valve stems and crazy (expletive), and Jimmie got us on that last restart at Dover last time, but we’ve had great race cars there every time we’ve been. Definitely feel like we can go there and win.”