Richard Childress Racing’s Kevin Harvick ducks 2011 question, says having fun and winning races remains priority
Kevin Harvick is in the final year of his contract with Richard Childress Racing. // LaDon George, NASCAR Illustrated
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Kevin Harvick sidestepped a question on whether he will return to Richard Childress Racing in 2011, saying just that he wanted to have fun and win races in 2010.
Harvick’s contract at RCR runs out after the 2010 season, and he had indicated last year he wanted to look elsewhere by not committing to returning in 2011.
If anything happened during the offseason that would change Harvick’s mind, he wasn’t sharing it Saturday during the preseason Fan Fest at Daytona International Speedway.
When asked if there was any chance he would return in 2011, a grinning Harvick said: “I’m not getting in the middle of it. … [What] it all boils down to … it’s all about winning races, and that’s all I care about. We’re going to come into the season, and we’re going to race a lot this year, and we’re going to have fun.
“That’s my main goal … to have fun. How it all plays out, I couldn’t tell you. It’s just up to all the – I’m not going to get into all of that right now. We haven’t even got on the track. And we’re going to come to Daytona and race, and we’re going to have a good time this year.”
Whether he plans on leaving or not, Harvick certainly wants to run better in 2010. He missed the Chase For The Sprint Cup for the first time in four years and ended up 19th in points.
Harvick was 20th in points after nine races before Gil Martin replaced longtime Harvick crew chief Todd Berrier.
“I think at the beginning of the year last year we went the wrong direction with our stuff and our cars, and we tried to cover it up with crew chief swaps and different things like that,” Harvick said. “In the end it was just about making our cars right and doing the things that it took.”
RCR also reorganized its competition department late last year, moving Berrier to crew chief for Jeff Burton. Burton’s crew chief, Scott Miller, is the new competition director.
“Most of my communication is with Gil,” Harvick said. “I’ve tried to kind of just stand back and be the driver and really just – you give your advice on how it all works and what you think is better or worse from a driver’s perspective on how things are working.
“But how the team runs … and how it all functions, I try to stay out of that. I definitely think that Scott Miller is a great person for that additional position to help the performance go in the right direction, and I think a lot of that is just structure that he’s going to help the most with.”
Harvick finished third in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway and had two top-fives in the last three races. Burton finished the year with four consecutive top-10 finishes and Clint Bowyer had four top-10s in the final seven races.
“The end of the year just proved that they’ve definitely headed down the right direction,” Harvick said about the team’s car-building department. “As a team we had several opportunities to win several of the last few races. … They had things headed back in the right direction. They had speed back in the cars.”
