Author: Pete Pistone
Date: Oct. 16, 2015
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Kevin Harvick comes into Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway feeling good about his chances to keep rolling in this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
The defending champion kicked off the Contender Round last weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway with a second-place finish. It was a far better start then what happened to Harvick in the first round, when two straight weeks of poor finishes put him into a must-win situation at Dover - which he accomplished.
The Stewart-Haas Racing driver thinks there were lessons learned from that experience that make his team even better as the post-season rolls on.
"As you look at last year, this team dealt with a lot of adversity and a lot of situations that could have torn things apart in other places," Harvick said. "Everybody believed in each other. The common denominator is having really fast racecars. You can make things happen when the car is running like it does and that's what's held everything together. Everybody sees the potential and the performance we have, and we want to make that even better."
Harvick has been fast and successful at Kansas Speedway throughout his Sprint Cup career. He won the Hollywood Casino 400 in 2013 and has finished second in his last two starts including this year's first visit to the Kansas City oval in early May.
Harvick has scored 512 points in the last 10 races held on the 1.5-mile oval, more than any other driver, and brings a sense of optimism into Sunday’s race.
"Kansas is an opportunity, just for the fact of how well we’ve run over the last two years," he said. "We had a great test there and learned a bunch of things that we can immediately apply to a lot of different racetracks. That test has shown up in the performance of our cars. The test should give us a great starting point for this weekend."
To view this article as it appears on MRN.com, click here.