NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
  • Peg It on GarageMonkey
CUP: Harvick Has Eye On Title Run In ‘12
Kevin Harvick has finished third in Sprint Cup points the last two seasons...
FOXSports.com  |  Posted December 08, 2011   Charlotte, NC
Kevin Harvick had a big season for RCR in 2011 but fell short of his ultimate goal: The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title. (Photo: Getty Images)
Kevin Harvick certainly didn’t have a bad season. After all, finishing third in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings for the second consecutive season is resume fodder many of his competitors would covet.

However, Harvick and his Richard Childress Racing team have a larger goal in mind.

They want to be champions.

That’s why Harvick is bringing a new crew chief to the 2012 season. It’s why he’s spending time in the shop with his team trying to gain that needed edge for next season. And it’s why he’s personally geared toward improving on his back-to-back third-place seasons.

That's not to say Harvick is anything less than proud of his accomplishments. The 36-year-old has 68 overall NASCAR series wins, with 18 of those coming in the Cup series. He also has 174 top-10 finishes, 86 of them top fives, in the Cup ranks.

Still, with RCR preparing to go from four Sprint Cup teams to three entering 2012, it was apparently just the right time for Harvick to make the change.

“We had an OK year,” Harvick says of his 2011 season, in which he won four races and finished third overall. “I think as you look at the changes that were coming to RCR with the four teams to three, we obviously, there’s a lot of people and things that were going to change up. I think when you look at the results that we’ve had over the past couple of years, they‘ve been good. Obviously we’ve had good results. In the end, we’re here to win championships and to do the things that it takes to do that. So I feel like all three teams need to get better in order for us to do that. It can’t just be our team here and there, it can’t be the 27 team (of teammate Paul Menard) here or there doing whatever the results are or taking us in a direction – we need to take ourselves in a direction as a company. Just felt that we needed to make some changes in order to do that."

So he turned to Shane Wilson, the crew chief who has been working with the now-defunct Clint Bowyer team and who led Harvick to the 2006 Nationwide Series championship.

They quickly thought of Wilson when Harvick and team owner Richard Childress decided to make a change.

“He’s won a championship with Shane, he’s won a lot of races with Shane in Nationwide, and he just felt that he was a guy who could go in there and do the job,” Childress said.

Harvick seems comfortable with Wilson – and confident they can break into a new level of competition together.

“Shane and I have obviously worked together in the past,” Harvick said. “I know we obviously have a good personal relationship. I like the way that he goes about leadership and the way he lets his guys do his job. The sport is changing. As we sit here right now as far as type of crew chief, type of things that go into being a crew chief, engine tuners are changing, from screwdrivers to computers. There’s a different wave of the way you approach things that we have to keep up with.”

Looking back, Harvick believes that his 2010 Chase played out better than his 2011 run. That season, he was in the running for the title entering the final race. This year, although he was third, he had already been eliminated from title contention entering the finale, leaving that showdown to eventual champion Tony Stewart and runner-up Carl Edwards.

Harvick says he needs to win races in the Chase in order to be champion. This year, he won his races before that critical final 10-race stretch.

“We lost our consistency throughout the whole year as we went through the regular season and into the Chase,” Harvick said. “I think as we go forward, you have to have that consistency and you have to win as well. In the end, Carl had the consistency, but he didn’t win either and he didn’t win the championship. We have to keep up with the changes in the sport, we have to push forward and hopefully get in front of that learning curve and I didn’t feel like we were in front of that curve, I felt like we were just on the tail of that curve and always we need to be the ones pushing forward.”

Part of that formula for returning to the top includes regaining the consistency that has long been a trademark of his team.

This year, Harvick was more up and down over the course of the year instead of generally being in contention. So while he won more races than he has in some seasons, he wasn’t always a factor week to week.

And that is something he hopes to change next season as he continues to pursue his first Cup title.

“I think that’s been the one thing we’ve always had in the past was consistency and we’ve always talked about wanting to win more,” Harvick said. “This year we won more and the one thing that was our strong point, we didn’t have on this particular season. So I think as we move forward, we have to make sure that we continue to bring out our strong points, which has always been finishing races and consistency and to have those race wins.”
foxsports_com's avatar

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOXSports.com

MORE BY THIS AUTHOR
Advertising | Jobs | Feedback | FAQ | Terms of Use | NEW Privacy Policy | Ad Choices | Site Map
Fox Sports | FUEL TV | FX Network | National Geographic | IGN | AskMen
The Motor Sports Authority, SPEED and associated logos are registered trademarks of Speed Channel Inc.
All Rights Reserved © Speed Channel, Inc. 2013

All external links will open in a new browser window. SPEED.com does not endorse external sites.