NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Harvick Looking To Beat The Curve
With a crew-chief change, Kevin Harvick hopes to take the last step to a championship next season…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted December 12, 2011   Charlotte, NC
Kevin Harvick faces the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season with a new crew chief. (Photo: Getty Images)
The times, they are changing, Kevin Harvick says, and if he and his team don’t change with them, they’ll be left behind.

Harvick finished third in points this year, duplicating his performance in 2010. For many, two consecutive thirds in the standings would be cause for celebration. For Harvick, still in pursuit of his first Sprint Cup championship more than a decade after he replaced the late Dale Earnhardt Sr. as Richard Childress Racing’s top driver, floating in the shadows of the championship is not enough.

“I feel like last year’s (2010) Chase was better for us than this year,” Harvick said. “Obviously, we achieved the same result. We have to win more races in the Chase. That’s what won Tony (Stewart) the championship.

“We lost our consistency throughout the whole year. As we go forward, you have to have that consistency, and you have to win, as well. In the end, Carl (Edwards) had the consistency, but he didn’t win, and he didn’t win the championship.

“We have to keep up with the changes of the sport. We have to push forward and hopefully get in front of that learning curve. I felt like we were just on the tail of that curve. We need to be the ones pushing forward.”

Part of that movement, in the Harvick/RCR camp, is a change for next season in crew chiefs. Shane Wilson, formerly Harvick’s crew chief in the Nationwide Series, has replaced Gil Martin.

“We felt we needed to make some changes,” Harvick said. “Shane and I have obviously worked together in the past. We have a good personal relationship. I like the way that he goes about the leadership and the way he lets his guys do their job.

“This sport is changing as we sit here as far as the type of crew chiefs and the 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.”

To push higher in the championship race, Harvick said, he will need both consistency and winning.

“The one thing we’ve always had in the past has been consistency, and we’ve always talked about wanting to win more,” he said. “This year we won more (four times), and we didn’t have the consistency, our former strong point. As we move forward, we have to make sure we continue to bring out our strong point, which has always been finishing races and consistency, and have those race wins come with it. It’s a fine balance, but we have to get ahead of that curve.”

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 29 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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