In 26 starts at Richmond International Raceway, Kevin Harvick has scored three wins and 16 top-10s. Needless to say coming off of the win at Darlington Raceway, this is the perfect track for ‘Happy’ to head to.
“This has been a great race track for us in the past,” he commented. “As we have come through the years I have been fortunate to have a lot of success. I always look forward to coming to this race weekend just knowing that and hoping that you can contend for a win. Hopefully, we can put ourselves in a good spot throughout the weekend and be around somewhere at the end of both races.”
Harvick credits the success that he has had at Richmond to his short track background, but also the emphasis that Richard Childress Racing put on their short track program. Now with Stewart Haas Racing, Harvick feels confident based on Rodney Childer’s success at MWR on the short tracks, and based on Kurt Busch’s win earlier this year at Martinsville with SHR.
“Really excited about every race, but the short tracks in general because just because I know and I’ve seen the effort that they put into the cars and every part and piece from a weight stand point,” Harvick commented. “It’s fun and everybody expects to run well.”
With the pair of wins that Harvick has secured already this year, he is virtually locked into the Chase for the Championship. As a result, the rest of the weeks this year will be about securing more wins to increase the amount of bonus points that he has going into that final 10 race stretch.
The want for a win is something that the drivers have noticed across the board as Harvick points out more drivers took two tires at Darlington than they would’ve in the past if points were a premium.
For Harvick, the victory versus points scenario has played into his favor as either he’s really good, or he’s in the garage with some sort of mechanical issues or wreck.
“I think for us we have been I guess like a Ricky Bobby scene, we have been first or last. There has really been no in between,” he expressed. “The performance of the cars has been really good and obviously we have had some problems, but it’s just one of those deals where being the point’s leader and having points is really irrelevant at this point.
“You just go out and try to put your best foot forward every week to get a win and protect yourself as much as you can with as many wins as possible is our goal at this point to get into the first rounds because the bonus points matter at this point.”
For some, the negatives so far this year would’ve gotten them down and out of contention. However, Harvick says that he’s still having as much fun as he had been to start the year and the performance that they’ve had is keeping him upbeat and confident in his Stewart Haas Racing team.
“That is really what keeps you going is when you are really capable and in our opinion winning every race that we’ve been in so far,” he said. “Obviously, those wouldn’t have worked out and didn’t work out, but the performance of the car has been there. That keeps you going and that makes enthused and everybody is getting along and having fun and to me it’s like I said at Darlington I think the character of the team has really been tested as we went through the first eight weeks. I think everybody did a good job of not points fingers and not getting overly mad at anybody it was just things were happening and we had to continue to do our jobs and that to me is one of the best things that came out of the first week was just seeing what the character was of our race team when the chips were down.”
While Harvick has been successful so far, he still believes that SHR as an organization has a lot of room for improvement moving forward. He notes that Kurt Busch has a win and Stewart has some top-five finishes, but there’s things from the inside that he has noticed.
“From the inside I just feel very strongly that there is a ton of room for improvement with a lot of things so we just have to keep working and not sit on our hands,” he commented. “Whether you win or lose on Sunday or Saturday night in this case you go back to the shop and you analyze your race just as if you had run 20th. Because that is what you have to do in order to come back because everybody in this garage is going to do the same thing.
“We have to keep building and I think (Greg) Zipadelli and everybody at SHR has done a great job with everything that they have taken on over the past few years. Gene (Haas) has given the resources from a financial stand point to do the things that we have done in a short amount of time. Just a lot of things that need to get a little bit better, but they have done a great job of building a great foundation.”
