Looking to be Chase contender Harvick knows RCR has work to do

[media-credit name=”Adam Lovelace” align=”alignright” width=”219″][/media-credit]A year ago Kevin Harvick was sitting primed to make a run at his first Sprint Cup Series championship. He had three wins, six top fives and was comfortably in the top three in points. He had made a reputation of being the closer, coming from behind and making the most out of what could have been a bad day.

That was a year ago. The 2012 version of the Richard Childress Racing driver isn’t as pretty. Harvick hasn’t been able to close the deal thus far in the season’s first 20 races, leaving just six more before the Chase starts. If he’ll be among the contenders has yet to be determined but with no wins and just three top fives, the No. 29 Budweiser team has work to do as the regular season starts to wind down.

“I think for us we need to make our cars better. We need to get faster,” Harvick said on Friday in Pocono, where he has yet to win. “We have been fortunate to be in the position that we’re in points wise. You’ve got to kind of balance that with trying to get better and also trying to protect what you’ve got.”

That would be a current spot in the top 10. Entering Sunday’s Pennsylvania 400 at Pocono, Harvick is tied in points with Martin Truex Jr., sitting sixth. The good news is that he has a 65-point advantage on 11th place Kyle Busch, 74 over 13th Kasey Kahne. Busch and Kahne hold the Wild Card positions because of the wins they bagged early in the season.

Winning is something Harvick’s accustomed to but what’s been foreign this season. The man he won with last season is gone, Gil Martin replaced by Shane Wilson before the start of the season, at Harvick’s request. After failing to win the title the last two seasons – finishing third to Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart – he went to Childress and asked for a change. Wilson moved away from the 33 team of Clint Bowyer, who left RCR in the offseason and the 33 team was disbanded, for Harvick’s 29.

Martin had worked with Harvick since 2009. While Harvick and Wilson had previously worked together in the Nationwide Series, the two have yet to reach Victory Lane together in the Cup Series. Their best shot to date was Phoenix, the second race of the season. Harvick led a race high 88 laps, only to finish second to Denny Hamlin after losing fuel pressure while attempting to make a battle for the lead.

More of a performance they’ll need over the next six weeks if they don’t want to chance falling out of the top 10 in points, even with the slight gap he currently holds.

“Well it doesn’t hurt anything you just don’t want to screw anything up,” Harvick said about his position. “When you are in that Wild Card position and you are trying to get in; not that we are not throwing everything at it that we have, but you are willing to take a lot more chances. You really don’t have anything to lose. It helps but you just don’t to screw it up.”

For as frustrating as Harvick’s season looks he’s still RCR’s only hope for a title chance. Teammates Paul Menard and Jeff Burton are also winless but sit 16th and 20th in points respectively. As Harvick races for an insurance win and bonus points toward the Chase, Menard and Burton are racing for a win that would give them a small chance at a WC position.

It will be a long six weeks for all three RCR drivers and teams. The pressure of trying to make NASCAR’s postseason will build as it looms. And Harvick said it’s not just his team that needs to get better, everyone at RCR has work to do. And there are many areas in which they need to improve before they can see the results and hope it’s in time for a Chase they’ll be apart of.

“I don’t think there is really one specific thing that you can put your finger on to say this is what we are doing,” he said. “I think it’s a lot of things that need to get better. Everybody is working on them to make them better. We didn’t capitalize on the situations that we were in to win races at the beginning of the year.

“Performance wise hasn’t been exactly where we needed to be. Everybody is working hard to try to get it to that point. Hopefully we can do that over the next six weeks.”