RELATED: JGR has look of Chase favorite
CHICAGO — Speed isn’t everything, Kevin Harvick said, and the defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion doesn’t take kindly to having his team described as being “behind” the Joe Gibbs Racing organization.
Whether a bit of gamesmanship or a gut feeling, Harvick said he believed his Stewart-Haas Racing team would “pound them into the ground” when asked about the four-team JGR stable during Thursday’s Chase Media Day at The Murphy in downtown Chicago.
“I wouldn’t consider us behind the Gibbs cars,” Harvick, 39, said. “I’ve raced against the Gibbs cars. I think we’re going to pound them into the ground, that’s what I think. Hopefully they can beat themselves.”
JGR drivers Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin won 11 of this year’s 26 races leading into the Chase, which begins this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. They have won eight of the last 11, and Kenseth dominated last week’s Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond International Raceway.
Harvick’s SHR organization, which also fields four teams, has four wins (two for Harvick; two for teammate Kurt Busch). But while Harvick hasn’t won as often as Kyle Busch or Kenseth this season, his No. 4 team has been incredibly consistent, with 10 runner-up finishes and 18 top fives.
Harvick acknowledges what JGR has been able to accomplish, but said speed is only part of the equation when it comes to the 10-race Chase and surviving through three rounds of eliminations to get to the final, championship-determining race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“I don’t know that we’re better than them,” he said. “I think for us it’s all about having the experience. It’s really not about having the fastest car at this point. It’s about having experience to be able to go out and handle the emotions of 10 weeks.
“As you go into these 10 weeks, you have to put it all together and there’s a lot more than racing to handle.”
JGR drivers took Harvick’s comments in stride. A Toyota-branded team has yet to win a Sprint Cup title, although Kenseth finished second two years ago, Clint Bowyer (Michael Waltrip Racing) was second in ’12 and Hamlin finished in the third spot last season.
“That’s talk,” Edwards, who joined JGR prior to the start of this season, said when told of Harvick’s comment. “We’ll go race and we’ll see how it turns out, but I think statistics and our performance lately speaks for itself.
“We’re pretty fast and that’s that.”
“I though that was supposed to be with media day before Homestead, not media day before the Chase starts,” Busch said of Harvick’s remark. “He’s moving it up. …
“I’d really hate to see him blow a motor here this first week; that would be really, really bad.”
MORE: Who is your Chase driver? Take our quiz
Kenseth, who won the Sprint Cup title in 2003 before the debut of the Chase format, admitted Harvick has something of an advantage as the only driver to win under the current elimination format.
“The only way he was going to make it to Homestead was to win Phoenix and … he was able to win Phoenix; then the only way to assure himself a championships was to win Homestead and he did that, too,” Kenseth said.
“To be able to do that in this format, to be behind and step up to the plate, absolutely, I think that gives him an advantage.”
Harvick and his team, led by crew chief Rodney Childers, spent Wednesday at Kansas Speedway testing prior to heading for Chicago to begin preparations for Sunday’s myAFibRisk.com 400 (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR).
“I feel like we’ve got good cars sitting at the shop ready to go,” Childers said following the test. “And I feel like we’re more prepared than what we were last year.
“Last year we did have a little bit of a motor advantage, that kind of thing, and now we don’t. It’s going to be harder. But we’ve got a good race team. We’re going to have to race hard, just like we did last year.
“During the Chase last year the Penske cars (of ’12 champion Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano) were as fast or probably faster at a lot of places and that’s who we had to contend with. Now I think they’ll have good speed and the Gibbs cars will have good speed. It’s going to be exciting.”
Chase games: Chase Battle Grid | Perfect Grid Challenge