Last weekend among the craziness that occurred, Kevin Harvick was able to pick up the victory, therefore clinching a spot for himself into the next round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Now heading into this weekend at Talladega, Harvick is kicking back and relaxing as he doesn’t have to worry about it and can “just go race.”
“Those guys have worked hard on the cars to make them as good as they can no matter the scenario. At the bare minimum, we owe it to them and the fans to race as hard as we can and take the same approach as we have all year – try to run well in practice, qualify well, lead laps and try to win a race. If it works out, it works out,” he commented. “That’s the thing that comes out of last week. If it works out, fine and if doesn’t, fine. Just race hard.”
Though while the pressure is off, Harvick says that he isn’t willing to let his guard down as there’s a lot of things that a driver and team have to worry about with being at the race track.
“I look at last week as what we’re supposed to do and what we should have done a number of times if it wasn’t for crazy things happening, mistakes and different things that have happened,” he explained. “But I think that’s part of the building process. You look at last week as great timing for our circumstances. With building a new team, having new people in new situations and a lot of things to learn, this format has allowed us to mature throughout the process of a year. Hopefully you’re getting to a refined point that you think is where you need to be to race for a championship.
“Last week was kind of the beginning of that and hopefully we can close out the last several week at the same level we had then. We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing. I think there is a huge sigh of relief in a way but it’s also that this is what you want to do and expect to do at this time of year.”
Harvick says that he also plans to be aggressive and do whatever it takes to win to prevent someone else from winning, such as Brad Keselowski, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who are trying to leap themselves into the championship picture. “Being aggressive, trying to lead laps, taking those points away, winning the race and not allow that automatic bid going forward is really the main goal,” he shared.
“Anytime you see people in a vulnerable position where they could not advance to the next round, from a competitor’s standpoint you want to do everything you can do to try and keep an upper hand,” he added. “Whatever your best shot is for your team is what you want to see happens. You may have some feelings one way or the other toward teams and drivers and different people, and you want to see different scenarios play out and the excitement that goes with it. But in the end, you want the best scenario for your team to win a championship from pure greed standpoint, I guess you could say. Really that’s what we’re here to do and that’s win the championship and you want the best scenario for your team. It will be an interesting weekend regardless of how it all shakes out and who wins the race.”
Moving forward, Harvick feels confident in his chances, simply based on the speed that they have shown this year. Harvick has a handful of wins under his belt, though possibly could’ve have more if not for other scenarios coming into play. In knowing that he has the speed, Harvick says “it becomes a matter of controlling all the things we can control. I feel good about all those pieces.”
The first race of the next round takes place at Martinsville Speedway, a track where the driver of the No. 4 Budweiser Chevrolet has seen success before. He admits that he hasn’t thought about it yet as he is right now focused solely on this weekend at Talladega.
“That’s just the approach we’ve taken,” he commented. “Martinsville can be as crazy as Talladega if things start getting out of hand and I think for us, we probably ran then better than seventh. We had a failure on one of the pieces on the rear end at the last race there. So, I feel like we should run well. It’s just a matter of, like every other weekend, you’ve just got to put it all together.”
