Harvick feeling the heat as Cup series heads to Bristol
By Jared Turner - SceneDaily Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
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Asked on Tuesday’s conference call with reporters why he’s not running Friday’s Nationwide Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Kevin Harvick offered a lighthearted yet succinct reply.
“It’s too hot,” he said with a chuckle.
The Richard Childress Racing driver was clearly joking.
Well, sort of.
While temperatures might have little to do with Harvick’s plans this weekend to forgo his Bristol tradition of running the Sprint Cup race and its companion Nationwide event on the previous day, Harvick is feeling plenty of heat in another area.
But sultry temperatures have nothing to do with it.
Entering Saturday night’s Sharpie 500 event, Harvick is eighth in the Sprint Cup Series standings but well within striking distance of six others jockeying for the last few spots in the 12-driver Chase For The NASCAR Sprint Cup.
Harvick is just 103 points ahead of teammate Clint Bowyer and Roush Fenway Racing’s David Ragan, who are tied for 13th in the standings and boast a decent shot of breaking into the championship-determining field in the final three races of NASCAR’s regular season.
One slip-up at the short, high-banked Bristol oval on Saturday night and Harvick could be one of those playing catch-up on the Chase group when the field is set Sept. 6 at Richmond International Raceway.
“There's so much pressure on everybody right now, and there's a few more people involved in trying to get in the Chase than there probably has been in the past,” Harvick said. “And there's a lot of us that are really close, from sixth to 14th. One mistake can lead to pretty big failure in the next three weeks.”
Harvick is plenty aware of the hazards that exist at the .533-mile Bristol track, a place where cautions are as customary as flashing cameras against the nighttime sky. Harvick was in contention to win there in the spring before a late bump-and-run with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Tony Stewart allowed eventual race-winner Jeff Burton to slip by.
Instead of scoring a win, Harvick settled for second.
“We came up one spot short the last time, probably by fault of the driver for sure,” he said.
Though Harvick has not won in 2008, he has won at Bristol, having gone to victory lane at the facility in spring 2005. He has been running at the finish of all but one of his 15 Cup starts at the track.
“I think there's just a lot of things happening at Bristol, and obviously you can get caught up in somebody else's mess pretty fast and not make a mistake,” the driver of the No. 29 Chevrolet said. “I don't know that I would categorize it as scary, but it's just a pretty fast short track that things happen pretty fast. The biggest thing you worry about is getting caught up in something that you really aren't a part of.”
Harvick comes into Saturday night’s race with momentum on his side, having finished no worse than eighth in four of his last five outings. That could be a good sign for the 2007 Daytona 500 champion as the Chase draws nearer.
“We've been running really well for at least two-and-a-half months now. We didn't have the finishes to show for everything that had been turned around the last probably three months, really,” Harvick said. “You know, there's just better cars, better engines, better everything. Everything just seems to be going our way now, and we're getting some breaks and doing things right in the shop. Not that we were doing them wrong before, it just seems like everything is transferring over to finishes now.
“Hopefully … we're hitting our stride at the right time and we can carry that into the next three weeks and hopefully onto the Chase.”
- Mentioned Drivers:
- Kevin Harvick
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