France: Harvick hit 'grand slam in ninth inning'

After nine races that included two segments with walk-off winners in Brad Keselowski at Talladega Superspeedway and Harvick at Phoenix International Raceway, France predicted the same would be true in Sunday's Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

"…as Kevin Harvick said last week, he thought he had to win the race to get it done," France said on Friday. "That would probably be what you'd be expecting on Sunday."

France was right as Harvick won a second consecutive elimination race and third in the Chase, and he characterized the clutch performance in World Series terms on Monday.

"It might have been a grand slam in the ninth inning," France said on "The Morning Drive" on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

"It was amazing. The amount of excitement and drama watching -- even for longtime fans like myself -- that gets you on the edge of your seat. Who's going to win this thing? That's the beauty of the format. As we go down the road, that's going to be the case.

"If you go back through the Chase, there were plenty of big moments where teams stepped up to move on: Keselowski and what he had to do at Talladega as an example. The teams like that environment. I know it's stressful for them, but at the end of the day, they get excited about elevating themselves."

While fans, like the sport's chairman, thought the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion would have to win the final race to take the title, the drivers themselves believed they would have to win, which ratcheted up the intensity.

"They certainly thought they had to win," France said. "At one point, we had the top three -- with eight or nine laps to go -- were the Chase guys with the exception of Logano who had the problem in the pits. We've never had that kind of thing possible, and the teams are the real stars of the show with how they've elevated their performance."

The star of Sunday night's show was the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing team, with crew chief Rodney Childers calling for four tires while the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team had Denny Hamlin stay out and the No. 31 Richard Childress Racing team bolted on two tires for Ryan Newman. And Harvick did his part, climbing from seventh place with 12 laps to go. He turned two of the eight fastest laps run during the entire race in the final eight circuits, including Lap 260 when he took the lead for good from Hamlin and the next-to-last lap of the season.

"It's amazing when you think about what Kevin Harvick did," France said. "He had to win in Phoenix a week ago, and winning, anybody will tell you, in NASCAR is very hard to do once in a while. But when you've got to do it back-to-back and then he came from behind in the last five races, making a pretty gutsy call with four tires and so on, that's as good as it gets. That's a pretty worthy champion in Kevin Harvick."

The idea of a winner-take-all final race and eliminations in the Chase became a reality during last offseason at NASCAR's annual management team meetings. Nearly 70 years after his grandfather held NASCAR's organizational meeting in Daytona Beach, Florida, France described the groundbreaking discussions that took place in Orlando, down the road from company headquarters. Whether the change was the right thing to do wasn't the issue. The concern was timing.

"It wasn't a question of would this be something great for the sport," France said. "It was when do we think we want to do this.

"Naturally, there are (questions): Is it too dramatic? Auto racing doesn't have anything like this. Is it fair to take it down to one race? And what we always got back to was under any format, it usually does come down to one race. It almost always does. Was this fair? Would it bring out the best in our teams? And would it be exciting for our fans and make racing better? You've got a check on all those boxes and off we went."

NASCAR leaders will meet again this offseason to review the format, but France doesn't expect the same results as last year's landmark sessions.

"If we make any changes, they won't even be noticeable," France said. "We're very pleased with the format, and I hear a lot of people (say) 'Don't do anything.' Well, we don't want to do anything so that's easy for us to get.

"We're not behind the curtains all the time, trying to figure out every inch of things. Naturally, it needs to happen, and it is."

Just as NASCAR analyzes the first year of the Chase format, so too will the teams. France expects "there will be new strategies that come in and make it even a little bit more unpredictable."

As NASCAR Chairman and CEO and as a fan, France looks forward to more surprises heart-stopping moments like Sunday night's finish.

"No one wants to look ahead after such an exciting weekend and conclusion to this season, but as we get into 2015 and beyond, the memories we're going to make, and the drivers most importantly (will get) a chance to shine on a bigger stage, doing things they never dreamed possible. That's a cool thing in big-time sports that we all get to be part of for a long time."

MORE: