Harvick defines his role as a champion

Champions are those that have won races (although Ryan Newman certainly put that statement to the test this year), those who are seen as leaders among their teams as well as the sport in general.

Harvick says he’s given the task and the opportunity some thought. He’s seen how others have handled the expectations and requirements. And he knows how he will approach his newfound status.

“I think there’s a definite responsibility that comes with the championship,” he said Wednesday, “and doing the things that you need to do to help grown the sport.

“Obviously there will be a lot of people looking for your opinion, and you all know that I have opinions on how things should go and what is best. So I think for me, it’s very simple; you be honest, you do ‑‑ just like we would do on a personal level. We’ll try to do everything that we need to do to help grow the sport, grow our sponsors, and as always, always push everybody around us to try to do things that are unique and different from what they’ve done in the past to try to make things better.”

Harvick’s success has spanned all three of NASCAR’s national series. Since being ushered into duty in 2001 following the death of Dale Earnhardt, Harvick has accumulated 28 wins and now a championship in Sprint Cup, 44 wins and two titles (2001, ’06) in what will become the NASCAR XFINITY Series next season and 17 victories in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. As an owner, he won the Truck Series title in ’07 and ’09 with driver Ron Hornaday Jr.

He’s had brushes with fellow competitors that have been reported, and he’s done more than his share of good deeds that have been ignored.

A career that he says began “backwards” has now come full circle.

“It’s like you started with everything that happened to Dale, and you go through all those scenarios and you have crazy amounts of fans and attention and all the things that came with that situation,” he said.

Finding the right balance, on the track as well as away from it, wasn’t easy. But the journey taught him plenty.

The 2014 season “has been huge,” he said, “just in the fact that I’ve been so excited to go to work and be a part of building something and not having the race teams (ownership) … really getting our life where it had a great balance – whether it be personally, financially or professionally. Everything that you do affects everything else that you do.”

It’s something that he’ll no doubt keep in mind as he looks ahead to 2015, when his introductions will include the phrase “defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion.”

“I think as you look at the last couple of years in our sport and you look at the owners and the drivers and the communication between NASCAR and those groups, I think you have to see the results of everything that has come out of the meetings and things that have happened over the past few years,” he said. “I think the sport is in a better spot than it was. We will all have that constant communication, and I definitely, as champion, want to do my part and do it as well as possible.”

Better to be a leader than a follower, he said, and when the opportunity presents itself, “you want to try to seize those moments and do the best you can to take control and do it better than it has been done in the past.

“We’ll do the best that we can,” he said, “in trying to achieve that.”

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