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This weekend at Kansas Speedway doesn’t necessarily fit into the scenario of “must win or else” for Kevin Harvick, but as the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs cruise along, his tendency to thrive in those high-pressure situations remains a great back-pocket line of defense.
“We’ve definitely been in a few positions where it’s come down to the end of the race and we’ve been able to close the deal, and we’ve definitely been in position where we’ve lost a few,” Harvick said Wednesday from the NASCAR Hall of Fame studios. “I don’t know why we have this flair for having dramatic finishes, but we’ve definitely had a few through the years.”
After being involved in a pair of field-winnowing crashes last weekend at Talladega, Harvick and the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 Ford team would likely welcome a Kansas race with fewer climactic moments. He and the rest of the 11 remaining championship-eligible drivers will have their chance to move on in Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where four drivers will be eliminated before the Round of 8.
Should the push indeed come to shove in the remaining five postseason races, Harvick has a healthy portfolio of clutch performances at the most crucial of times: Phoenix, 2014; Dover, 2015; and New Hampshire and Kansas both, just last year. It’s why the nickname “The Closer” — one of a handful of sobriquets given to the 41-year-old driver in his career — seems to have stuck.
“I think those are the moments that you live for from a professional athlete’s standpoint,” Harvick says. “When you can succeed in those types of moments, there’s really no better thrill than being able to achieve something when you only have one way out. I think as we’ve in that position three or four times as a team, we’ve been able to accomplish that, win the race and move on, and in 2014, it won us the championship. So we’ve definitely got the experience of those types of situations.”
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Harvick is perched fourth among the remaining 12 drivers, 22 points above the precarious cut line for advancement. But even with that cushion, the potential for trouble in the fickle nature of three-race elimination phases, he says, never instills a full sense of comfort.
Should Harvick hold serve, the Round of 8 would hold the key to his hopes of reaching the Championship 4 fight at Homestead-Miami Speedway for the third time in four years. The round’s first two events — at Martinsville and Texas — have been solid venues for Harvick in the past, but the finale takes place at Phoenix Raceway, by far his best track on the circuit and home to eight of his 36 career wins.
While there would be understandable temptation to project the one-mile facility in the desert as a postseason insurance policy, Harvick balks at looking too far ahead.
“I’m a one-week-at-a-time type of guy this time of year because there’s really nothing more important than what you do this week because you just never know what’s going to happen this week,” Harvick said. “And whatever does happen this week, then you have to adapt and adjust for the week following. It’s a constant adjustment and as you move through each week, you kind of see where you are, what your strengths are, things that you did right, things that you did wrong.
“The details that you comb through this time of year is pretty significant, not only from my standpoint but from pretty much every guy on the team. The engineering team is going through things with a fine-toothed comb to make sure we don’t miss anything. It’s a stressful time of year, and for me, I compartmentalize things by taking it one week at a time.”
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Harvick and his wife, DeLana, are counting down the weeks in another sense, expecting their second child — a girl — in January 2018. While Kevin Harvick’s focus at the track is sharply on winning a second title, his home life is currently occupied with a two-pronged approach — house remodeling to accommodate the new arrival and keeping pace with his spirited 5-year-old son, Keelan.
There’s been a modest baby boom for the NASCAR driver roster of late, with Landon Cassill welcoming his second child this week, and the Loganos and Earnhardts also expecting. It’s life-changing stuff, to be sure — a major adjustment that also extends to their place in the sport.
“I think when you have kids, it definitely makes you look at things from a different perspective, but I think that the biggest thing it’s done is it’s made me look at things from a different perspective from a professional standpoint in how you analyze things and how you look at things and how you react to things,” Harvick said. “It definitely takes a lot of structure to try to be a dad and husband at home and involved in the things that he is doing and still give that high level of participation in your race team and the sponsors and everybody who makes your job go around on Sundays.
“So I feel like we have a good balance. I feel like we manage things very well, and you have to because if anything in that circle of life is out of balance, everything is not going to be achieved at the level that you want it to be.”
That level is on par with stock-car racing’s elite, with Harvick bidding for a chance at a second premier-series championship to match the one he secured in 2014 — at age 38, after 13 years of trying. Title No. 2 would place him among tip-top company, in a club that currently totals just six legendary drivers — all members of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
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The competition standing in the way of such a feat remains stout, but Harvick’s proximity to the season-long goal makes it easier to visualize. His ability to serve up mission-critical performances with a side of drama may come in handy yet.
“I don’t think there will ever be the urgency to win a championship like there was (with) the first one,” Harvick says, “but winning the first championship is very addicting because of the fact that you see how rewarding that accomplishment was to not only you, but your team, your sponsors and all the things that you do, and it gives you opportunities to do other things in life. So winning another championship is the goal.
“Eight weeks ago, I wouldn’t have told you that I feel like, sitting here today, like we had the opportunity that we do have today just because of the significant increase in performance that they’ve gained with the cars in a short amount of time has been drastic, so I feel like that opportunity is real and hopefully we can capitalize on that and see what happens if we can get to Homestead.”