Author: Bob Pockrass
Date: August 5, 2015
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Standing on the grounds of the South Carolina governor's mansion Tuesday, Kevin Harvick didn't bother playing politics when answering a question about the rise of Joe Gibbs Racing and Kyle Busch.
Then again, maybe he did play some politics by refusing to go along with the conventional wisdom about JGR's recent surge.
"One car," he said, referring to Busch.
Harvick, the defending Sprint Cup champion, has reason to feel good even though JGR has rattled off four consecutive wins, three straight by that "one car" -- the No. 18 of Busch -- and then Matt Kenseth, who won last week at Pocono Raceway when Busch and Joey Logano ran out of fuel.
Even with an engine failure that relegated Harvick to a 42nd-place finish Sunday at Pocono, he still has an average finish of 8.4 this season. Prior to Sunday, his average finish stood at an are-you-freakin-kidding-me 6.6.
His 14 top-5s this season already match his total last year, and the Stewart-Haas Racing driver entered Pocono with 18 top-10s in the first 20 races. He has failed to lead laps in only four events this year, and after a three-race stretch in which he didn't lead any, he led a combined 134 at New Hampshire and Indianapolis. And things were looking good at Pocono before he blew his engine ... while leading.
So Harvick has no reason to feel all shaky in his shoes just because Busch has won four of the last six races and JGR has six wins in the last 10 races.
Harvick, who has a 17-race winless streak that dates back to March, probably should have won a couple of races ago at Indianapolis, but he didn't get the push he needed on a restart as Busch prevailed. It marked another big win for Busch, NASCAR's comeback story of the year, as he tries to break into the top 30 and make the Chase for the Sprint Cup after missing the first 11 races with a broken right leg and broken left foot.
"I've raced against a lot of cars for the lead over the last several months and our biggest concern is just continuing to do that," Harvick said at an event promoting the Labor Day weekend race at Darlington Raceway. "Obviously the Gibbs -- the 18 car -- has run very well, but really this is their Chase. If they don't make it to the 30th spot at Race 26, they don't really have anything left to race for but wins.
"They're doing a very good job of what they need to be doing, and I feel like we've been right there with them on a weekly basis."
It's a remarkable turnaround for JGR, considering the Hendrick Motorsports-SHR alliance opened the season with seven wins in the first 11 events. In fact, many of the Toyota teams appear to have more horsepower and also seem to have adapted well to rules changes throughout the year. Their surge has coincided with an improved run of late by the Fords of Team Penske.
The whispers in the garage are that Hendrick has fallen behind.
"You've got to be honest with yourself," Hendrick driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. said last week. "The Gibbs guys have found more speed. They look like, over the last couple of weeks, to be a lot stronger and that we're not on top of the mountain anymore."
And the common theory in the garage is that if Hendrick struggles, so will SHR as part of the teams' technical alliance.
But so far, Harvick's team has not appeared so speed-challenged.
"We don't pay attention to the chatter," Harvick said. "We just go about our business and try to just constantly do what we do at the racetrack and try to improve. From a mental standpoint, that's the only way you can do it."
It's a philosophy that worked well last year for Harvick, who stayed the course with the exception of a pit-crew change prior to the Chase for the Sprint Cup. He went through a stretch of 23 races without a win in 2014 before capturing three of the last six on his way to the Sprint Cup title.
This year, he has seen more races slip away from racing fortune than from self-inflicted mistakes.
"[The No. 18 team] has made it happen and won some races," Harvick said. "It's just part of the progression of the year. You're going to have different guys [winning]. That's the thing I'm most proud of with our guys -- [we] started off the year racing against a set of guys and now it's a different set of guys and last year it was different rules.
"Our guys do a really good job of adapting to the things that they need to adapt to no matter what the change is."
No one doubts that Harvick can win again at any time. He won at Watkins Glen, the site of this week's race, in 2006. The series then heads to Michigan, where he led 63 laps in June, and Bristol, where he led 184 laps in April, before going to Darlington, where Harvick is the defending champion.
Even with the blown engine last week, Harvick has a 46-point lead in the standings. He has led 23.56 percent of all laps this year -- more than the next two drivers (Kurt Busch and Logano) combined -- and has led 20.73 percent of all miles run.
"The confidence is through the roof just because having won that championship and the year how it's gone," Harvick said. "That wasn't a fluke. You prove that to yourselves and week after week, you prove that to yourselves as a group again.
"It's fun to be able to race like that and be able to have that confidence in each other to feel like you can overcome whatever you need to overcome on a given weekend."
It seems the only thing Harvick needs to overcome is his five-month winless drought. All of the other pieces, he says, are in place.
"Up until last week the average finish was like sixth -- if you're going to complain about that, they're going to look at you cross-eyed," said Harvick, whose two victories this year increased his career total to 30. "Winning races is hard to do in this deal. Sometimes it's harder to win races when you're running up front with the circumstances.
"That's got us a couple of times," he explained, "because everybody wants to do the opposite of what you do. You just keep running like that, leading laps and running in the top five, you'll win your share."
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