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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Harvick Ready For Pocono
Kevin Harvick was fourth in the June Pocono race...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted July 28, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Kevin Harvick literally has nothing to lose at Homestead. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Kevin Harvick is in an enviable position. No matter what happens this weekend at Pocono Raceway, after Sunday’s Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500, he’ll still have the NASCAR Sprint Cup points lead, a lead he’s held since May 1.

On top of that, he’s hot. The Bakersfield, Calif., native is coming off a runner-up finish at the Brickyard 400, and in his last five races, has three top-three and four top-five finishes in his No. 29 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.

This weekend, he’ll be looking to build on the fourth-place finish he had at Pocono in June, a run he felt was good but not great.

“Hopefully we can get a touch better,” said Harvick. “We ran really well there the first race. It hasn’t notoriously been a great track for us, but we had a top-five car all day and we were able to leave there with a top-five finish. I don’t think you approach it much different. We’re going to go there to race to get the best finish that we can and it’s not going to be a whole lot different than any other week."

The three-turn Pocono track is unlike anywhere else the Sprint Cup Series races on, and that poses some difficult challenges, according to Harvick.

“Pocono has a lot of its own characteristics, to say the least,” Harvick said. “It's a 2.5-mile triangle-shaped race track that has three pretty tricky turns. Turn 1 is really bumpy, and the Tunnel Turn has a pretty big curb and it is pretty easy to make a mistake there. Turn 3 is one of the flattest turns we deal with on the NASCAR circuit. It definitely has its own unique challenges.”

And, as drivers will tell you, it’s almost impossible to get all three turns correct.

“For me, the trickiest part of Pocono is the Tunnel Turn,” said Harvick. “You have to carry so much speed into that turn that there is not much room for error. The Tunnel Turn is so much harder to get through now than it used to be. A few years ago, there was a flat curb there and you could lean on it a little bit if you needed to. Now, there is a big curb there and, if you hit it, you'll probably be forced up the race track, and the chances of hitting the wall are pretty high.”
Kevin Harvick has two NASCAR Sprint Cup wins this season. (Photo: Getty Images)

Harvick has also been vocal about the safety shortcomings of the Pocono facility.

“I think you can look all the way around and you can see a lot of things that need to be fixed at that particular place,” he said. “I don’t know why one particular race track has not had all of those safety upgrades that all the other race tracks have, but it’s the only race track that we go to with a dirt bank and an ARMCO barrier on the inside and no catch fences along some of the walls. It is definitely the worst race track that we go to as far as SAFER barriers and catch fences and all the things that should be there.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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