Everybody saw the slogan on the back end of Harvick’s car for 224 of the 312 laps Sunday at Phoenix. In winning in dominant style, Harvick and his team showed that the offseason move they made to Stewart-Haas Racing really paid off.

There are crew members on that team, for some of them that’s probably their first Sprint Cup win as a team member. Some came over with crew chief Rodney Childers; some came from within. Either way, it’s really exciting for that group to jell this early and win a Sprint Cup Series race.

Rodney Childers comes from an old-school background, and he’s definitely a people person who’s put the right personnel in place around Kevin. Harvick, I’d say, is probably one of the hardest drivers to work for because he’s very demanding. He wants to lead every lap and be up front every race. Rodney Childers is just as hungry and should make a great fit.

At this level, it’s hard to win anytime, but it’s especially difficult to win this early on in the season. It just shows the commitment Stewart-Haas has to making his team competitive but also to winning.

No one could really touch Kevin Harvick today, but Dale Earnhardt Jr. coming off his Daytona 500 win last week really showed he’s going to be a contender to the end. So far, we’ve had a 2.5-mile track and a mile track, and he ran great at both places. Steve Letarte, with this being his last year as a crew chief, has one goal and that’s to get Dale Jr. his first of what may be many championships.

Behind him, the Penske cars qualifying 1-2 and finishing 3-4 really shows the improvement and work over the winter that those guys have put in. Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano feed off each other and know how to make each other better over the season.

Keselowski was without his regular crew chief Paul Wolfe, but Greg Erwin did a great job on the pit box as a replacement. There wasn’t anything that Paul Wolfe could’ve done differently than Greg did to beat either Harvick or Dale Jr. today. We know Paul is happy to become a father after the birth of Caden Paul Wolfe this weekend. I think Paul will also be really happy with the third-place finish that they gave him. 

Thanks to how pit strategy shook out, a good run by Ryan Newman in seventh place in one of his first runs for Richard Childress Racing. I’m sure Luke Lambert is very happy with the results he got today. With Newman stepping into the shoes of being the most experienced driver that Childress has, I’m sure you’ll see him at the top of their list. Ryan has something to prove after his exit from Stewart-Haas last year. 

Surprisingly, Joe Gibbs Racing never really had a car that could get into the top five Sunday. Kyle Busch was the best of that group, and we saw occasional flashes from Matt Kenseth, but nothing Sunday that showed he was the second-place driver in the series last year. I’m sure they’ll go home and do their homework on the flat tracks and come back very strong, but it just wasn’t the weekend that they’d hoped for.

Looking ahead, the championship is going to be a battle every year. With the new format for qualifying for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Kevin Harvick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. don’t have to worry about wins any more. You don’t have to wonder about if you’re championship-caliber because they’re already pretty much in. For their crew chiefs, now they can play with setups; for drivers, there’s not nearly as much pressure there now.

Not only was Harvick’s win freaky fast, it also was a play off the race name. Definitely a profit for Tony Stewart to hire Kevin Harvick. He’s going to make a profit off it for sure.

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Having shown his speed by pacing both Saturday practice sessions, before the rain came, Harvick led 224 of the 312 laps at the one-mile track, including the final 24, leaving Earnhardt to battle with front row starters Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, who finished third and fourth, respectively, for Team Penske. 

The victory was a record fifth for Harvick at Phoenix; he also won the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at the one-mile track in November. The 38-year-old driver from Bakersfield, Calif., won for the 24th time in 468 career starts. 

"Man, this just solidifies so many things and so many decisions," said Harvick, who left Richard Childress Racing after 13 seasons to make the move to Stewart-Haas. "It’s been so much work with all the time and effort that these guys (the crew) have put in — but what a race car."

In Harvick’s view, the victory vindicated his decision to change teams. 

"Rodney Childers has just done a phenomenal job of putting this team together," Harvick said. "These guys all want to win. That’s why they came here. That’s why I came here, too. 

"I’ve just got to thank (owners) Gene (Haas) and Tony (Stewart), and (Stewart’s business manager) Eddie Jarvis. In 2012 I told (Jarvis) it would be fun to have Tony and I on the same team, and here we are in Victory Lane."

Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson finished fifth and sixth, with Ryan Newman, Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch and Jamie McMurray completing the top 10.

Even though Earnhardt had his best speed of the day on his last set of tires, Harvick was able to keep him at bay through four cautions and subsequent restarts in the last 65 laps of the race.

Earnhardt worked his way clear of the Penske cars after the final restart on Lap 304 but ran out of time in his pursuit of the race winner, who arrived at the finish line .489 seconds ahead of the No. 88 Chevrolet.

"We got running side-by-side there for second and just let Kevin get out there a little too far," Earnhardt said of the final restart. "I thought we were running him down those last few laps, but we were just too far away.

"It was a great job by Kevin and his whole team. They did a great job all weekend. They were fast. We worked on our car. We got a little help from our teammates, and it was a lot of hard work to get better and better. I ended up where I thought we should have finished.

"We were a little faster at the end, but they were stellar — impressive as heck all weekend. I hope everybody enjoyed the race. We were really working our butts off there and giving it everything we had."

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"I’d love to have won the race and I’m a little disappointed (we didn’t)," Earnhardt said after finishing second to race-winner Kevin Harvick. "To come that close, our team is performing so well. We’ve got a lot of great chemistry and good communication going back and forth and everybody’s confidence is very high and everybody’s mood and morale is very high, so hopefully we can maintain that and not have any bad luck or make any mistakes and continue to keep working toward winning some more races. If we run second enough, we’re bound to at least trip into one or two (wins)."

So clearly, the first thing on Earnhardt’s mind is still finishing the race ahead of the other 42 cars on the track. On a day when Harvick’s No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet had the rest of the field in a vice grip — taking the lead on Lap 74 and holding it the rest of the way save for a quick pit stop — Earnhardt nearly came within reach of winning back-to-back races for the first time in his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career.

Earnhardt said if only he’d had "10 more laps," he thought his 88 car would have caught the No. 4 Chevy, which had been the class of the field practically since they unloaded the haulers.

"Those guys were two-tenths faster than everybody all weekend in practice," said Earnhardt, who topped the charts in the first practice before ceding to Harvick for the next two. "They were just phenomenal. To be able to run with (Harvick), as we did all day, was a big confidence builder for us. Even at the end of the race, I thought our laps we put together coming up to the checkered (flag) were faster than him."

Earnhardt’s excellent run at Phoenix — a track where his only two wins came in back-to-back years a decade ago (2003-04) — continues his reign atop the points standings, as he opens the season with consecutive top-five finishes for just the third time in his career (2004, ’13).

Despite running so well in last year’s Chase, the fact that Earnhardt has opened 2014 so strong is a bit of a surprise to even Earnhardt himself.

"I was wondering if we were going to carry on the momentum from last year. We were running so good in the Chase. And also with the rules — the new height rules — I was wondering where we were going to fall in comparison in performance with the competition. What did people learn over the offseason? Who was going to stand out — like the 4 car did today and all weekend? It seems like we aren’t behind. We aren’t where the 4 car is, but we’re definitely close and hopefully we can learn what we need to learn rapidly in the next several weeks and get up to par so we can win some races.

"There’s a couple teams out there that are behind or not quite onto the new package and the new rules, and I’m glad we’re doing pretty well and the performance is there for us. Hopefully we can maintain it as we go to a completely different track at Vegas."

If Earnhardt and co. are able to maintain the full-steam-ahead momentum that they built at the tail end of last year in 2014 and carry that into another solid run at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, it will be a true measure of the team’s consistency and will clearly establish that the team is for real. Earnhardt hasn’t historically fared well at the 1.5-mile tri-oval, notching just a pair of top-fives in 14 Cup starts.

Still, knowing he’s the current chip leader playing at the high-roller table because of his Daytona win, there’s a certain relaxed nature to Earnhardt right now that hasn’t been as evident in the past. It came into play at Phoenix when it appeared that fuel mileage was going to decide the outcome.

"We probably would’ve gone with the same strategy (had we not won at Daytona) but it was less nerve-racking today. Normally you’re just biting your fingernails when (crew chief Steve Letarte) says, ‘We’re two laps short, we’ve got to find two laps somewhere,’ and the cautions are coming out and you think you’re saving (gas) but you don’t know exactly how much you’re saving and it’s just really, really nerve-racking. So today when he said that, I was like ‘All right, if we run out, we run out. No big deal.’ We can gamble and gamble with a better conscience."

Everything is falling into place in all the right ways for Earnhardt right now. The only better result at Phoenix would have been if Harvick had slipped up on one of several late restarts, but that’s just splitting hairs. With a win in his pocket and his Chase ticket all but punched, some might treat their driver’s seat as a La-Z-Boy recliner and kick back until September, but good luck convincing Earnhardt to do that.

"I feel good," he said. "I feel like we’re really coming around the corner and peaking at the right time this season to try to run for the championship."

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