Author: Bob Pockrass
Date: Nov. 22, 2014
Throughout the championship race weekend, Kevin Harvick had a multi-time former Cup champion giving him advice.
And it wasn’t car owner Tony Stewart.
Harvick got plenty of advice from Stewart but he also got a huge boost from Hendrick Motorsports driver Jimmie Johnson.
Johnson, a six-time Cup champion, is longtime friends with Harvick but they also can share technical data as part of the Stewart-Haas Racing alliance with Hendrick.
“Jimmie Johnson was a huge help,” Harvick said. “He'd show up in the trailer after every practice and called and texted to Rodney (Childers) and myself. You pull the data up, and I was making some pretty huge mistakes (in practice). So that eased my mind going into the day.
“Just to have those resources to draw from, whether it be Tony's three championships or Jimmie has won six, and Hendrick Motorsports and Stewart‑Haas and Kurt (Busch), we just have so many things to draw from.”
Both Harvick and Johnson have California roots and at one time spent time living at Ron Hornaday’s home.
“We spent a lot of time together as friends and have grown to be better friends as we've gone past the last few years, for sure,” Harvick said.
“It’s been fun. He’s been very supportive, and we've been very supportive of him, as well, and they went through some struggles, and trying to support them as much as we could to help them get back on track.”
It’s fun for those who have those alliances but what about those who don’t? Richard Childress Racing has alliances with three single-car teams (Furniture Row Racing, Germain Racing and JTG Daugherty Racing). The Ford teams and Toyota teams are encouraged to work together but they don’t appear to work as closely as Hendrick and SHR.
Still, that doesn’t mean automatic success. Kasey Kahne had only one win while the rest of the Hendrick drivers had four apiece. While Harvick won the title, he was really the only SHR driver to have a good year.
“There is something to be said for strength in numbers,” Team Penske driver Brad Keselowski said. “My thought on it is that two teams is about all you can get to work together. That group over there is kind of a unique situation in the sense that you look at Hendrick and they have two two-car teams, just by the way they are laid out with shops and so-forth.
“And you look at Stewart-Haas, and I guess it could be said they have four one-car teams. So I don’t know how you make the math out of it all.”
Penske will add an affiliation with Wood Brothers Racing in 2015 so that Ryan Blaney can get some Cup experience and they can get additional information.
In a lot of ways, it’s just like anything else. It’s what one does with the resources given.
“The way these eight cars have worked together this year, I've never seen anything like it,” Harvick, in his first year at SHR after 13 at RCR, said about the Hendrick-SHR alliance. “It's like nobody questions anything about, we're sharing this or we're talking about that, so that part has been pretty awesome.”
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