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Sprint Cup
CUP: Harvick Looks For Boost At Texas
Kevin Harvick finished seventh in the spring at Texas Motor Speedway...
Kevin Harvick has three NASCAR Sprint Cup wins in 2010. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
If Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 is close to a repeat of the spring race at Texas Motor Speedway this year, the three top Chase contenders will be racing around each other much of the day.
Denny Hamlin won that race, and Jimmie Johnson was second, .152 of a second behind. Hamlin led 12 laps (the final 12), and Johnson led 39 laps. Kevin Harvick was never in front, but he had a typically consistent day and finished seventh.
A similar Sunday this week would keep the point chase tight going into the closing races at Phoenix and Homestead.
Harvick, who had a good car in Texas in the spring, sees his team as being in position to step up a notch this weekend.
“Based upon how we ran the first time, with the progression that we’ve made with all the cars and power and the difference in the way we understand some of the engineering things we work with now, I just think we’re better than we were the first time there,” Harvick said. “You never know until we get back, and a lot of it is dictated by the tire and using those notes, and so you just never know until you get there that weekend and do those first few laps on the race track.”
Although TMS is one of several 1.5-mile tracks on the circuit, it is its own animal, Harvick said.
“The key is just getting off the exits of the corners and being able to hold it wide open, finding that balance between being too loose and too tight up off the corners because at Texas it's much different than a lot of the other 1.5-mile race tracks because the banking flattens out so fast,” he said. “We ran pretty solid there the first time this year and feel like we have a good baseline to start with our setup.
“I feel like we have good notes and way better race cars than we had at the beginning of the year. They were great at the beginning of the year, but I feel like we have better cars now and feel like we’ve fixed some issues on pit road. So I feel like we’re a better race team than we were six weeks ago. So we just have to keep doing the things that we’re doing and keep from having those big hiccups.”
As a testimony to the solid consistency of Harvick’s year, he has 23 top-10 finishes in 33 races. No other driver has more than 20. He has finished out of the top 10 only once in the past eight races.
Additionally, Harvick is tied with Johnson at 15 for the season lead in top-fives.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
Denny Hamlin won that race, and Jimmie Johnson was second, .152 of a second behind. Hamlin led 12 laps (the final 12), and Johnson led 39 laps. Kevin Harvick was never in front, but he had a typically consistent day and finished seventh.
A similar Sunday this week would keep the point chase tight going into the closing races at Phoenix and Homestead.
Harvick, who had a good car in Texas in the spring, sees his team as being in position to step up a notch this weekend.
“Based upon how we ran the first time, with the progression that we’ve made with all the cars and power and the difference in the way we understand some of the engineering things we work with now, I just think we’re better than we were the first time there,” Harvick said. “You never know until we get back, and a lot of it is dictated by the tire and using those notes, and so you just never know until you get there that weekend and do those first few laps on the race track.”
Although TMS is one of several 1.5-mile tracks on the circuit, it is its own animal, Harvick said.
“The key is just getting off the exits of the corners and being able to hold it wide open, finding that balance between being too loose and too tight up off the corners because at Texas it's much different than a lot of the other 1.5-mile race tracks because the banking flattens out so fast,” he said. “We ran pretty solid there the first time this year and feel like we have a good baseline to start with our setup.
“I feel like we have good notes and way better race cars than we had at the beginning of the year. They were great at the beginning of the year, but I feel like we have better cars now and feel like we’ve fixed some issues on pit road. So I feel like we’re a better race team than we were six weeks ago. So we just have to keep doing the things that we’re doing and keep from having those big hiccups.”
As a testimony to the solid consistency of Harvick’s year, he has 23 top-10 finishes in 33 races. No other driver has more than 20. He has finished out of the top 10 only once in the past eight races.
Additionally, Harvick is tied with Johnson at 15 for the season lead in top-fives.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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