RELATED: See what happened to Harvick last fall
LOUDON, N.H. -- During the past two years, Kevin Harvick has led more laps at New Hampshire Motor Speedway than any other NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver.
Yet in each of those four starts, the Stewart-Haas Racing driver failed to come away with the victory.
Harvick, the 2014 series champion, has led 379 of 1,209 laps at the 1.058-mile venue located in Loudon, New Hampshire. He led 216 at NHMS last year in the fall race, the second of 10 that made up Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoff.
But his No. 4 Chevrolet ran out of fuel with less than three laps remaining, and after pitting, Harvick finished 21st. His two previous starts at NHMS had resulted in third-place finishes after leading 59 laps in the July race of '15 and 104 the race the previous fall.
"That's one I want to win really bad because I feel like we've given so many away there," Rodney Childers, Harvick's crew chief, said earlier this week. "Last fall we had a stinking good car, didn't get it full on the last stop, didn't realize it wasn't full. We ran probably the whole last run still leading the race and still ran out."
Harvick has one win this year, at Phoenix, and has been the series points leader for much of the season. His return as one of 16 Chase competitors for this year is all but guaranteed. Only one of his 32 career wins have come at the "Magic Mile" however, and that took place nearly a decade ago.
While Harvick has done nearly everything but win at Loudon in recent years, the victories have gone to others. Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch swept the two races last season and Team Penske teammates Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski were in Victory Lane in '14.
Keselowski is the only other competitor in the same vicinity as Harvick when it comes to laps led at NHMS, with 321 to his credit. He's the series' most recent winner, claiming back-to-back victories at Daytona and Kentucky.
Childers has one New Hampshire victory, guiding Brian Vickers to the win in 2013. It was the final win for the now-defunct Michael Waltrip Racing organization.
Helping put Harvick back there would be big. Coming off a ninth-place run at Kentucky was a nice rebound after finishing 39th at Daytona a week earlier.
"Every time we've been (to New Hampshire) we've been really good so hopefully we can go up there and be good again," Childers said. "I think having that good run last week at Kentucky gave everybody a little bit of confidence back. It's time to start ramping things up and get ready for the Chase."
On Friday, Harvick qualified eighth in the 40-car field. He was 21st in Friday's opening practice and fourth in Saturday's two sessions.
The New Hampshire 301 is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. ET (NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).