NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
  • Peg It on GarageMonkey
CUP: Harvick Sitting On ‘Go’ For 2012
Kevin Harvick won four races and challenged – again – for the championship this year…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted November 29, 2011   Charlotte, NC
Kevin Harvick has finished third in Sprint Cup points the last two seasons. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Quite a few Sprint Cup drivers likely will be approaching the 2012 season with fire in their eyes.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., because he needs a win. A win anywhere. A win. Any sort of win. Fuel mileage. Under caution. Whatever.

Jimmie Johnson, because he’ll wander through this long off-season with no one calling him “Champ”. Imagine that.

Carl Edwards, because this time he came so very, very close. A tie. Can’t get any closer than that.

Kasey Kahne, because he’ll finally be in a situation that matches his talent.

But it’s likely no driver is burning to get to 2012 more than Kevin Harvick.

This was supposed to be Harvick’s year. Team owner Richard Childress had proclaimed in the preseason that his team would be ending Johnson’s five-year reign atop the sport, and Harvick, having finished a close third to Johnson and Denny Hamlin in 2010, figured to be the leading choice among the RCR drivers to make the magic happen.

The season didn’t begin well. Harvick exited the season-opening Daytona 500 with a blown engine.

That would be the first and last race he’d fail to finish.

By race five – which he won – at Auto Club Speedway, Harvick was up to ninth in points, and another win the next week at Martinsville pushed him to fifth.

By the time the circuit returned to Daytona Beach in the summer, Harvick was atop the points and had won three times.

After the first race in the Chase, he was first in points, but he couldn’t sustain the momentum. Finishes of 32nd(Talladega), 13th (Texas) and 19th (Phoenix) killed his championship chances, and he finished third in points for the second straight season, this time to Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards.

At Homestead-Miami Speedway during the final race of the season, Harvick appeared to set his jaw when asked about the future and the season to come.

“Once you race for a championship in something, you pretty much know that you’re going to go through several weeks of ‘What about this’ and ‘What about that’ and worrying about this and you know that you need to control those emotions and just do your own thing,” Harvick said. “You don’t have to get wound up about anything. It is what it is and you just go about your business on the race track. I think last year taught the team that we can be contenders, but contending for it and winning it are two different things.”

Harvick was adamant that there would be big changes at RCR for the new year and, of course, he was right. Shane Wilson will be moving from the former No. 33-Clint Bowyer team to become Harvick’s crew chief, and Gil Martin will be moving from Harvick’s team to an overseer position in the competition department.

That change could be the one that will finally push Harvick, now 11 years into his Sprint Cup career, to the top.

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.
mike.hembree's avatar

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Hembree

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.