Harvick's hex? Monkey skull had No. 4 at Dover

Harvick led 223 of 400 laps last Sunday before his car slowed with a sparking, flat left-front tire. The official diagnosis was a broken valve stem that caused the failure. The unofficial diagnosis: Black magic?

"Last week, we had a Dale Jr. fan with a monkey skull with some kind of witchcraft standing behind our car," Harvick said Wednesday during Contender Round media day at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. "So there's some weird things happening. The skull had a 2 and a 4 on it, so I guess that was meant for myself and (Brad) Keselowski, so I guess she got us last week at Dover. I don't know that she'll be able to show up for every race, but ...

"Look, I've been a part of this before where you think that the waking dogs are against you and then the next thing you know, you can't do anything wrong and you're winning races and doing things that you feel like you probably should've done on that particular day. It all comes full circle in this sport."

Harvick -- in his first year with Stewart-Haas Racing -- has two victories this season, but mechanical failures early in the year and nagging issues with pit stops kept him from multiplying his total in the win column. As a result, he has five runner-up finishes -- six, if you count his second-place run in the non-points NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race.

Still, Harvick maintains that "the problems that we've had are a lot better than the problems that we could have," referring to the fact that he'd rather have a fast, competitive car and erratic luck than having all the luck in the world and shoddy performance. The setbacks haven't upset the team's morale, Harvick said; unloading a speedy No. 4 Chevrolet each week has worked wonders in that department.

"That's been the easiest part has been to keep everybody together and keep everybody positive because we know the capability is there to win every week on any style racetrack, and you just have to have those circumstances go right," Harvick said. "Now, look: I'm not going tell you that at the beginning of the year, we didn't make a lot of mistakes and we didn't have car failures, but we haven't had that at the end of the year. We just hadn't been on the right side of the circumstance train to capitalize on some of the days that we've had.

"If you continue leading laps and qualifying well, you're going to win your fair share of races."

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