|
 Then he led 355 of 400 laps to win - the only way he could advance
to the Contender round that begins at Charlotte Motor Speedway on
Saturday.
"All in all, it was business as usual," said Harvick after his first
Dover victory with Stewart-Haas Racing . "I think when you look at
the first three Dover races that we've had here, it was definitely
right in line with the things that we had done here before, just
didn't have any problems today."
The first two rounds of the Chase were not exactly flawless. Contact
with Jimmie Johnson and a cut tire sent Harvick into the wall in
Chicago. After either not getting 22 gallons of fuel into the car --
or after 22 gallons was not enough -- Harvick was leading when he
ran out of gas in New Hampshire. But after Dover, it was six-time
champion Johnson who was knocked out of the Chase due to a
mechanical issue and it was Harvick who emerged as a favorite to
repeat as champion.
Last year, Harvick scored two do-or-die victories to win the title.
But he says that even the races at Phoenix and Homestead, Fla. last
year weren't as much pressure as he faced his rookie year when he
was advanced to the Sprint Cup as the replacement at Richard
Childress Racing following Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s fatal accident in
the opening round of the 2001 season.
"There will never be anything close to that one," said Harvick of
the pressure of following the seven-time champion. "I think that
that'll supercede any of these situations by a long ways. When you
look at the sport's biggest hero gone, you look at millions of race
fans that are depending upon somebody to drive that car and you have
350 people that have jobs and families and you're their guy, never
done it before, but good luck. Know what I mean? That's a lot of
pressure."
Harvick rose to that occasion as well, taking a victory by a scant
foot over Jeff Gordon in Atlanta in just his third Sprint Cup start
and winning the rookie title - just like Earnhardt Sr. did. But
Harvick could never get the next championship the RCR team so
coveted and left for SHR once he decided the grandsons of team owner
Richard Childress, Austin and Ty Dillon, would get preferential
treatment.
With an eye on the ever elusive championship, Harvick also left his
volatile temper and some often acidic remarks behind as well. He got
out of the team ownership business, too, which often found him
dressing down his crew over the radio during Craftsman Truck Series
and Xfinity Series races. Once at Stewart-Haas, he's taken more of a
Zen approach, concentrating on the job at hand to the extent that he
doesn't even know which car crew chief Rodney Childers has put under
him.
The laser-like focus includes keeping his trophies in storage and
not paying attention to what he calls "chirping" in the media or
what other teams are doing. When asked about the demise of Johnson -
with whom he's been at odds since the Chicago incident - Harvick
claimed innocence.
"You know, I don't even know who's been eliminated, so we're so
narrow-minded in the approach that we take to things, it's really --
you try to stay in your garage stall," he said. "You don't really
look at the times on the board. You just try to focus on the things
that concern you. You know, we're just happy to be able to make it
to the next round and be able to keep racing for a championship."
When Harvick poked Johnson in the chest in the motor home parking
lot after the Chicago race, it was a rare flashback to the days he
sought post-race fights. Perhaps it was a well chosen moment to
remind a rival, his team and others there was still plenty of fight
left in the defending champ despite his even-keeled behavior in and
out of the car the last two seasons.
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Prior to the Chicago race, there was another flashback, this one of
the highly quotable Harvick, when he said his team was going to
"pound Joe Gibbs Racing into the ground" during the Chase. After
getting taken out of the Chicago race while in contention, the
Bakersfield, Calif. driver has led a combined 571 laps of a possible
700 at New Hampshire and Dover. He now has the JGR team, whose
drivers won the first two rounds of the Chase, on the defensive.
JGR's Kyle Busch, who ran a distant second much of the day at Dover
to advance to the Contender round along with Chase race-winning
teammates Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth, said his team would have
preferred to see Harvick drop out of contention.
"That's a guy that can win all these races, and you don't want to
have to compete against a guy like that," said Busch. "But you know,
that's why they're as good as they are, and they were last year's
champion, so they're going to have an opportunity to continue on.
We'll see what happens. There's still two more rounds to figure out
who's going to make it to Homestead."
Harvick is likely to continue to have fast cars. At Dover, where
teams did not qualify and had scant practice due to rain, crew chief
Childers brought a car that had been wrecked once and re-built
twice. The car scored well in a test at team co-owner Gene Haas's
Windshear wind tunnel, but had not turned a wheel since being
re-bodied. Plus, the cold weather produced by a hurricane in the
Atlantic was not typical for Dover in October.
All of this had Childers worried on Saturday night.
He worried the cold temperatures would result in a concrete surface
without spent rubber giving the groove traction. He couldn't
anticipate "if the balance (of the chassis) is ever going to change
like it normally does. Really my engineer and myself, we talked back
and forth last night, and kept watching old races and looking
through notes and finally I sent him an email and I said, 'Look,
man, I don't know what to do. I don't know anything to change other
than just leave it alone and we'll deal with it.'"
It turned out well. There were two cautions in the final 100 laps
that raised the questions of another fuel mileage gambit and then
tire strategy. But with NASCAR's new re-start zone giving leaders
the advantage, Harvick ran undaunted to the checkers. He said he
didn't even feel relieved after the weight of getting eliminated had
been lifted. He was still in his zone.
"I could have dealt with it myself," said Harvick, now more of a
racing philosopher. "I've been through a lot of ups and downs in my
life and career of things that you've had to handle. But a lot of
those guys (at Stewart-Haas Racing) haven't, and I would have felt
like I let them down more than anything."
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