How a midseason turnaround propelled Kevin Harvick back to title contention at Homestead
As late as July, Kevin Harvick’s 2019 season was on the ropes. The 43-year-old had finished outside the top 20 as often as he finished inside the top five — four times apiece — and he had not posted a finish better than fourth all year.
The first day of July became a clear demarcation in the veteran’s season. He headed up to Loudon, New Hampshire, and won the Foxwoods Resort Casino 301. Three races later — after two more top-10 finishes — Harvick won again at the Consumers Energy 400 in Brooklyn, Michigan, and then again two races later at the Brickyard 400 in Speedway, Indiana. An underwhelming season was quickly turning into a dominant one.
“I don’t think we’ve run as well as we’ve probably wanted to run week in and week out compared to the things that we expect,” Harvick said after winning the AAA Texas 500 in Fort Worth on Nov. 3, “but this particular year has been neat for me to sit back and watch the evolution of how we progressed with the race cars. How the conversations have progressed, how my theories, and things that I think are right and wrong have changed — it’s such a process of going to all these different racetracks.
“It’s been a good character-building year to have to battle in order to get yourself in position.”
His win at Texas Motor Speedway punched his unlikely ticket back into the Championship 4. On Sunday, he will be one of four drivers racing with a chance to win the NASCAR Cup Series in the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. It’s a familiar place for Harvick — this is his fourth time in the Championship 4 in six years and he won the title in 2014 —even if the path back to a meaningful race in Homestead wasn’t exactly smooth.
“I’m surprised, to be dead honest with you. You know, I’m surprised but I’m not,” Harvick said. “I think the expectations are always there.”
Expectations have been set by Harvick’s consistency in the past decade. He hasn’t finished outside the top eight of the Cup Series’ final standings since 2009 and the consistent way he has run in South Florida has buoyed him. Harvick hasn’t finished outside the top 10 in the final race of the year since 2007, and his average finish down in Homestead is 6.6. He won there in 2014 to hoist the Cup Series trophy and hasn’t finished worse than fourth since.
Last year, he won three of the season’s first four races. The year before, he posted three top-five finishes and two more top-10s in the first nine races. His win at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this year was the latest in the season it took him to get a win since 2012, which was one of only two years in the past nine he finished outside the top four in the final standings.
This season was different, though. NASCAR introduced a new aerodynamics package before the season, and everyone was adjusting to the new style of racing which accompanied it. Some took to it quickly. Harvick and No. 4 team from Stewart-Haas Racing did not.
“I’ll take as much responsibility for that at the beginning of the year than anything. We looked at a lot of different things going into the year ... and we decided to go different ways on different things,” crew chief Rodney Childers said in Texas. “Obviously, you have to pick a direction, right? And we picked a direction and it wasn’t the right direction, but you’ve got cars built that are six weeks out and then you’ve already went through six, seven races before you can even react to anything. And then once you react to that, you’ve got to figure it out. You’ve got to figure out how to drive it, you’ve got to figure out how to set it up, so at that point then you’re 10 weeks out.”
Despite the shaky start, Harvick still enters the final race of the year tied for third in wins and top-five finishes, and second in top-10 finishes.
Since the win in New Hampshire, no one has been better than Harvick — and no one has ever been better than Harvick in Homestead.
This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 12:13 PM.
