NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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HEMBREE: Harvick Racing In Shadow Of Top Two
Kevin Harvick has yet to win a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Race at Martinsville Speedway...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted October 22, 2010   Martinsville, VA
Kevin Harvick is 77 points behind point leader Jimmie Johnson. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
At a race track virtually owned in recent years by Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin, the two leaders in the Chase standings, Kevin Harvick looks like the odd man out.

He enters Sunday’s Tums Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway third in points, and he might be looked at as a non-entity of sorts. Johnson and Hamlin have won the past eight races at NASCAR’s shortest track, and it would be quite stupid to bet against them here. Harvick, on the other hand, has raced here in Sprint Cup 18 times and has never won. In fact, he has no top-five finishes.

Harvick’s negative statistics here can be massaged – to a degree – by the fact that he has two Camping World Truck Series victories at the track. He knows the quality lines around the flat half-mile and has been relatively competitive here in Cup – despite the stats. Sometimes you just have to tell your statistics to shut up.

“It’s a decent race track for us,” Harvick said Friday. “Obviously, those guys [Johnson and Hamlin] have the results to back it up. But we’ve gone from the beginning of the Chase and overachieved on everything we’ve done.”

Harvick is not budging from his Chase premise – and that is to run like he has been running virtually the entire season. That idea has kept him in the top five in the points all year, and, in the Chase, it has kept him close – now 77 points behind – to Johnson. With five races to go, he’s within striking distance of Richard Childress Racing’s first Sprint Cup championship since the glory days of Dale Earnhardt Sr.

“We’re not going to do anything different,” Harvick said. “If we hit a home run, we do. If we don’t, we don’t. I feel like we need to win a race in the next five to make it happen.”

Harvick’s philosophy mirrors that of Hamlin, who is second, 41 behind Johnson. In the Chase, Hamlin has raced as much to avoid disaster as to win races. Clearly, it has worked.

“To be in the game, you have to be close enough to be part of the game,” Harvick said.

The fact remains, however, that Harvick is third and Hamlin is second and neither is first. Johnson is first and seems to be cemented into that position. He’s been there for the past four years and is there again, and he’s five races away from completing a remarkable five-year run of championships.
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For Harvick or Hamlin to catch Johnson, one of two things must happen – Johnson must have a bad race or the two chasing him must step it up a notch. Maybe both. (Of course, all bets are off next week at Talladega, where virtually anything can happen).

If Harvick is stressed about his position, he isn’t showing it. He was cool and calm during his weekly media availability Friday morning, sliding around questions about whether the weekend’s focus should be on a confrontation between Johnson and Hamlin, who are, after all, first and second and the recent kings of Martinsville.

Harvick has finishes of fifth, 15th, third, seventh and eighth in the Chase races to date – good, but not good enough. He might get a boost this weekend from the RCR decision to put members of teammate Clint Bowyer’s pit crew on Harvick’s team.

It also might be time for Harvick to drive out of his comfort zone. And quickly.

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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The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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