The closer: Kevin Harvick is ice man in Chase
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Crew chief Rodney Childers was thumbing through his cell phone in victory lane, sorting through messages in the minutes after yet another great escape.
He and Kevin Harvick weren’t going to be able to keep doing this, he said. It just couldn’t happen.
“There’s only so many times you’re going to be able to do that. That’s the honest truth,” he said with a grin.
Sunday at Kansas Speedway was one of those times, though. And so far, it’s every time as they demonstrated again their penchant for scoring pressure wins in the pressurized Chase for the Sprint Cup playoff format.
“Kevin steps up to a different level when we’re in these situations,” Childers said.
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Harvick and his Stewart-Haas Racing team have no cheer or motivational poster. They have something better. They’ve been there, they’ve done this. And with each subsequent wriggle off the proverbial hook, there is the growing perception of the closer, the ice man, the irresistible force. That makes Harvick smile. And even in a sport where broken parts and miffed competitors can squelch momentum and confidence in an instant, he has taken on an aura of the man who won’t relent.
What can stop him? Sometimes he runs out of laps.
In the first season of NASCAR’s elimination format in 2014, Harvick won the penultimate race of the season — he entered it last of eight eligible driver in points — to advance to the four-driver final at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Then, he won in South Florida to capture his first championship.
Last season in the first round, he won at Dover International Speedway to jump from 15th of 16 to round two, marched to the final again and finished second in the standings.
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This time, he entered Kansas last of 12 drivers eligible for the championship with a four-driver cut looming next week at volatile Talladega Superspeedway. But he led the last 30 laps Sunday to advance to the third round of races at Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix. Harvick has advanced to the final in each of two-plus years of the tweaked system.
“You just have to keep going. You never know how it’s going to end,” Harvick said of the streak. “It’s not easy. There’s a lot of anxiety. There’s a lot of pressure.”
But, correlating performances. Maybe they have something to do, Harvick said, with how his team treats every race like a Chase race and as a group loathes points racing. Maybe the results come from a knotty toughness he took from his youth as a high school wrestler. Much of it probably has to do with finding the rare combination of crew chief and driver in harmonious heights of their abilities, surrounded by race winning equipment and team members.
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The No. 4 Chevrolet that Harvick won with for the first time Sunday finished second in the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway and the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and Childers doesn’t know when it will be re-deployed. Perhaps it will be placed in a glass case to be accessed in the next emergency.
And then driven to the bank.
“When the money has been on the line,” Harvick said, “we’ve been able to drive up to the window and take it.”
There's no reason to believe that will stop anytime soon.
Follow James on Twitter @brantjames
