Kevin Harvick's Dominant Win Sets Up His Best-Ever Shot at a Cup Championship

Some things in life are just a sure thing.

Like Kevin Harvick winning a Sprint Cup race at Phoenix International Raceway. 

When the day began, Kevin Harvick sat eighth in points in the Chase standings, and a win was going to be the only sure way to be part of the foursome that would be racing for the title the following week at Homestead-Miami Speedway. 

With a two-race winning streak at Phoenix, including in February earlier this year, safely in his back pocket, it was a pretty good bet that Harvick would be the driver to beat on Sunday.

And so here we are back at Phoenix, and Harvick is back in Victory Lane.

The return ride has been quite bumpy at times.

There was that month-long streak of nightmares that followed the earlier win at Phoenix. The problems were odd mechanical issues, an exploding brake hub at Las Vegas, a broken oil line at Bristol. Instead of shaking this new team’s foundations, its misfortune made it stronger, a lot stronger. 

The win at Darlington in May turned the team into believers again, and for nearly every weekend this season, Harvick’s No. 4 Chevrolet has been the car to beat.

“It's like a dream,” said Harvick in the post-race press conference. “Coming over here and racing this year has given me new life and a new perspective on the way that things work.  Gene (owner Haas) and Tony (co-owner Stewart), they give us a lot of resources to draw from within our own company and from a financial standpoint they've made a huge commitment to make this race team right.”

In life, a long-overdue change in scenery is often rewarded with success. After 13 years of failing to win a championship with Richard Childress, the man who pulled Harvick out of obscurity to replace the legendary Dale Earnhardt, Harvick went to race for his good friend Tony Stewart.

It's not that the years at RCR were failures; Harvick did finish third in the championship while there. It was just that the relationship had run its course, and it was time for a change. Harvick obviously knew that.

At the time, pundits called it the right move, but few predicted that it would pay off as quickly as it did. This writer is proud to say that he did, predicting before the season started that Harvick would not only make the Chase field in his first season with Stewart-Haas Racing, but he would go on to win the championship.

I still believe that.

It was pure entertainment to watch Harvick on Sunday as he hammered the rest of the field on restarts. He would dive deeper into Turn 1 than anyone else and then rocket off Turn 2 to gain the advantage going into Turns 3 and then 4. It set up a sprint down the front stretch and the sequence starting over again and again and again.

“I don't think we ever talked about anything but trying to come here and win the race,” Harvick admitted in the post-race press conference on Sunday.

For Harvick’s crew chief, Rodney Childers, Phoenix International Raceway was one of those places where the driver made all the difference between winning and losing.

Matt Sullivan/Getty Images

“Truthfully, I think in the beginning of the year, it was quite interesting, like we knew this was probably one of his best racetracks, and when we came here, we didn't talk about car setups, we didn't talk about anything,” Childers said in the post-race press conference. “We just showed up here in the spring and hopped in there and was fast right off the bat.”

If Harvick didn’t win at Phoenix International Raceway on Sunday, it would have been a much bigger story than the spanking he gave to the field in the Quicken Loans 500.

The stage had already been set for the veteran driver to lead the most laps and win, even if he didn’t completely follow the script by starting from the pole. Fellow Chase contender Denny Hamlin took those honors. Harvick started fourth. 

Once the race settled in, it became apparent that it wasn’t going to be much of a fight. Harvick’s Chevrolet was what drivers often refer to as “in another zip code” for most of the afternoon.

Childers admitted afterward that he wasn’t all that confident in the race car going into the race.

“We came back with a different car and really close to the same setup, but we had to change a good bit over the weekend to get it going,” Childers said in the post-race press conference. “The car didn't look very good and was really loose, and it's hard to know whether you're going to be able to fix it or not.”

That put it in the hands of his driver to make things work.

We’ve seen this kind of performance before from the veteran driver. It had been that way for Harvick’s three other wins this season at Darlington, Charlotte and the one that started it all, at Phoenix in February. That race, officially the second race of the season (longtime NASCAR fans know that the Daytona 500 is a crapshoot), is the true harbinger of things to come.

The win in February was a not-too-subtle tap on the shoulder to the rest of the Sprint Cup field early on that if they were planning on winning the title this year, they were going to have to knock him out of the way.

The past two weeks have admittedly been emotional for the 38-year-old.

The disappointment of finishing 33rd after he was sent spinning by fellow Chase driver Matt Kenseth and then the runner-up finish last week at Texas, plus his involvement in “the Brawl,” were all distractions that begged for his attention as he watched himself fall to the bottom of the eight-man Chase roster.

“I feel like the last two weeks have been good learning lessons for me in how to approach things with people that are your friends and situations and things when you do things wrong,” Harvick continued from the press conference. “I was bound and determined to not talk to any of you (about Texas) unless we were sitting right here, and I was like, that's not the right thing to do, either.  You need to fess up and take responsibility and talk about the situations that have gone on.”

Todd Warshaw/Getty Images

The combination of Harvick and Childers has produced magic on 1.5-mile race tracks this season. Harvick’s most recent win before Phoenix came on the 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway. And there are the pole wins on those tracks: Kansas (twice) and Atlanta. 

There were other pole wins, eight in total, at Darlington, Michigan, Indianapolis and Dover. The Darlington start also produced a winner.

Harvick’s average finish at Homestead (8.1) is the best among the other three Chase contenders, Denny Hamlin (11.2), Ryan Newman (17.0) and Joey Logano (20.8). With the exception of Hamlin, none of the four has ever gone into Homestead in serious contention for the title before. Hamlin has won Homestead twice.

“It's never ours to lose,” said crew chief Childers at the post-race press conference. “I feel like, yes, we've had good speed compared to most guys this year, but on the other hand that doesn't mean anything going to Homestead. We've just got to keep doing our jobs and prepare the car the best we can and go down there and have nice, smooth practices and get ready for the race.”

Sounds like a plan, doesn't it? Like I said, some things are just a sure thing. 

All quotes are taken from official NASCAR, team and manufacturer media releases unless otherwise stated. 

Bob Margolis is a member of the National Motorsports Press Association and has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, the NHRA and Sports Cars for more than two decades as a writer, television producer and on-air talent. 

On Twitter: @BobMargolis