Slip, slidin' away
For a guy nicknamed "Happy", Kevin Harvick sure seems like "Grumpy" might be a better moniker.
The driver of the No. 29 Chevy has had a rollercoaster 2007 season. While Kevin Harvick leads the Nextel Cup Series in earnings, he hasn't won a points race since the season-opening Daytona 500. The competitive Kevin Harvick doesn't like it when he's not running well.
"We've had good cars all season," Kevin Harvick said in a press release before the September race at Richmond. "We just need to get some momentum to go with it."
The first event of the 10-race Chase playoffs at New Hampshire was a microcosm for Kevin Harvick's season. His car ran well, but two flat tires kept him from challenging for the win. He eventually finished 17th, although he was able to move up one spot in the points standings to 10th.
The result was a far sight from the sterling start with which Kevin Harvick began the year, winning both the Busch and Cup races in Daytona, even though the Daytona 500 victory was a controversial one. Kevin Harvick nipped the popular Mark Martin by a few inches as bedlam and chaos filled the track less than a mile behind them.
That victory, bringing the biggest payday on the NASCAR circuit each year, plus Kevin Harvick's win in the non-points Nextel All-Star Challenge, gives him more money earned for the year than any other driver.
But Kevin Harvick's intensity, and a little bad luck probably, gave him more angst for the season than any other driver.
Kevin Harvick won the inaugural Busch race in Canada despite the maniacal behavior and post-race celebration of Robbie Gordon. He then lost at the Brickyard, falling from first to seventh in the final 10 laps of the race after bending fenders with eventual winner Tony Stewart.
Push came to shove -- literally -- at Watkins Glen when Kevin Harvick confronted Juan Montoya after a wreck, and the bad karma from the incident lasted for weeks. Before the visit to the upstate New York road course, Kevin Harvick had finished in the top-10 for five of six races.
Kevin Harvick was running fifth when Montoya was tapped from behind by Martin Truex Jr. Montoya was forced into Kevin Harvick with enough force that both drivers wound up outside of their busted-up cars. The two drivers went helmet-to-helmet with no serious consequences, but the wreck seemed to stop Kevin Harvick's momentum.
He wound up 36th and dropped to 10th in the standings. In the next three races he finished outside of the top-10 each time, sliding backward into the standings. Kevin Harvick headed into the last regular-season race Richmond in the 12th and final Chase spot, with much of NASCAR fandom hoping that Dale Earnhardt Jr. would slip past him and qualify for the playoffs. But Kevin Harvick survived a drive through the infield and a penalty for pitting early to finish seventh at Richmond, securing a place in the Chase.
"The Chase is not about the first race, it's not about the last race," Kevin Harvick said in pre-Chase news conference. "It's about all 10. You've got to be yourself and do your own thing. But you've got to be aggressive and if you're not, somebody else is going to be, especially if you have a bad race."
Kevin Harvick, not surprisingly, approaches the Chase differently than most of the other drivers. He plans on being more hard-nosed -- if that's possible.
"You're going to obviously pick the intensity level up just another notch, just because that's what you do when you're racing for championships," Kevin Harvick said. "If you're playing sports and trying to win [at] the end of a game, or whatever the case may be, the good teams and good players always pick it up a notch. You can make mistakes and still come back, but you have to be able to go out and win races."
And Kevin Harvick has won plenty in building a nice NASCAR résumé. He performed admirably in replacing a legend when he took over Dale Earnhardt's ride after Earnhardt was killed in the 2001 Daytona 500. He's been Cup rookie of the year, won the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard, plus captured a couple of Busch titles. Kevin Harvick showed the world it was possible to run full-time on both the Busch and Cup circuits in the same season. He had one of the best years in NASCAR history last season, finishing fourth in the Cup standings and clinching the Busch title with four races remaining.
But Kevin Harvick has never won the Chase, never won a Cup title. He's still young, but he needs that title to cement his spot in history. A championship surely would make him "Happy" again.
"We went through a stretch there at the beginning of the summer where everything was going really good, but now it seems like every week something happens, we get caught up in something," Kevin Harvick said. "Hopefully we can gain that momentum at the right time."
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