Strange, but great way for Harvick to start ‘10 season (NASCAR.com)
February 8, 2010
Clint Bowyer practiced for Kevin Harvick — but ended up crashing Harvicks primary.
Kevin Harvick fell so ill last week he admitted he may have been delusional at times.
But even at Harvick's sickest he is smart enough to know his victory in Saturday's Bud Shootout at Daytona does little or nothing to guarantee success in the 2010 running of the Daytona 500, or the long Cup season that stretches beyond Sunday's Great American Race.
The last driver to win both the Bud Shootout—well, back then it was still called the Busch Clash—and the season-opening Daytona 500 was Jeff Gordon in 1997. Heck, Harvick won the Bud Shootout in 2009, too, and it hardly served as the springboard he had hoped it would for the remainder of the season.
Harvick did go on to nearly win the subsequent Daytona 500, finishing second in the rain-shortened event to Matt Kenseth. But pretty much the rest of the season was a struggle. He fell all the way to 27th in points by mid-June, and needed a late-season surge just to get back up to 19th by season's end—missing the 12-driver cutoff to the Chase by a long Talladega lap, or three.
He also failed to win a Cup points race for the second year in a row. His winless streak in points events now sits at a whopping 107 races, dating back to the 2007 Daytona 500.
Still feels good
But still, with all the turmoil that has surrounded Harvick lately in terms of having his future at Richard Childress Racing up in the air beyond this season, he had to admit winning Saturday's non-points event for the second consecutive year felt pretty darn good. Hey, it certainly beat the alternative—which for a while late last week might have included Harvick lingering in bed with flu-like symptoms while someone else drove his No. 29 RCR-powered Chevrolet.
"They want to kick me out already and get sick again," Harvick told reporters in the Daytona media center after Saturday's win. He was joking that crew chief Gil Martin and the rest of his team is fine with whatever formula it takes to get to Victory Lane—and that they will take whatever trip they can get there, even in a non-points event, anytime really but especially now in light of their struggles to return there since February of 2007.
So Harvick didn't really care much that he didn't have any practice time in the car prior to Saturday's triumph. Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton—Harvick's RCR teammates—drove the car for the No. 29 team while Harvick tried to get well enough to join the party.
And what a party it became, even after Bowyer got involved in a wreck during the first Shootout practice last Thursday and forced the No. 29 team to roll out a backup car.
Problem was, Harvick wasn't quite sure at the end Saturday that it was truly over. He admitted he was confused, wondering if perhaps because it was a non-points event there were going to be multiple green-white-checkered attempts to make certain the race didn't finish under caution.
"I was a little bit off kilter on that one," Harvick admitted. "[The rest of the team] knew. But I read on something somewhere—it wasn't the entry blank, I know that for sure—but I read somewhere that the race will end under green. Maybe it was on a TV telecast as I was delusional, sleeping in bed on Thursday. I don't know. Maybe I dreamed it."
Informed of this, NASCAR officials assured Harvick afterward that there never was a plan to alter the usual one attempt at a green-white-checkered finish. But he still wasn't completely sure he had won Saturday's race when the caution came out during that one attempt, freezing the field with him at the front of it.
"I should have known that because that's how it ended last year. It ended exactly the same as last year," Harvick said later.
Better season ahead?
So the Shootout ended the same celebratory way for Harvick this year as last, but he hopes what follows for the rest of the season is dramatically different—as in better. He also said he knows there are absolutely no guarantees that it will be.
In fact, Harvick said he is painfully aware of the fickle nature of races at Daytona International Speedway. What he accomplished Saturday night was great, but in the long run of Speedweeks at DIS it may not mean a whole lot—or even anything at all.
"I've been here enough times to know this can be a funny week," Harvick said. "It can mess with you time after time. Hour by hour can bring something that's unexpected, just like getting sick to start the week. I mean, that's not something that you plan for or can plan for.
"Getting sick … having the car wrecked in the first practice with someone else driving it … there are just so many variables that can get thrown at you this week, you just have to stay even keel. This is great that we won this race. We're all really excited about what we want to do. But the big picture is on Sunday. It's just taking it hour by hour, one day at a time."
He said he is comforted by the veteran makeup of his race team. Obviously, he correctly pointed out, they know what they are doing if they can prepare a race-winning car for him during a week when he's laying in bed sick, having delusional thoughts about multiple green-white-checkered finishes.
"These guys have been here enough," he said. "They know this place can knock you down as fast as it can pick you up. You got to maintain even keel and you've got to be able to keep that focus through Sunday, all the way through the race. I mean, strange things happen."
Indeed, they do. Every season. And already once in 2010.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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