DOVER, Del. — Talk about flipping the switch. Talk about coming through in the clutch.
Break out any sports cliché you like. What Kevin Harvick and his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing team did Sunday at Dover International Speedway was one of the most clear-cut examples of accomplishing exactly what was necessary under pressure that you will ever see.
Facing the need to win the AAA 400 or be eliminated from the 2015 NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup, Harvick and his Chevrolet led 355 out of 400 laps in the most dominant performance of his career.
A week after the defending Sprint Cup Series champion found himself up against the ropes (there’s another cliché for you), thanks to running out of fuel while leading at New Hampshire Motor Speedway with less than three laps to go, he and his team led by crew Rodney Childers were in the zone Sunday (another) throughout a cold and windy afternoon at the Monster Mile.
Harvick and the rest of the Sprint Cup field got only 40 minutes of practice, and he lined up 14th thanks to qualifying being rained out and based on points. It made no difference, because it took the Budweiser Chevy just 24 laps to find the front of the field and a lead it would rarely relinquish for the rest of the afternoon.
“I mean, if we would have had qualifying on Friday, we’d have led 400,” Childers said with a laugh. “We came here to win. We’re that type of team that when you’re backed in a corner like this, what are you supposed to do?
“We’re not going to ride around fifth all day and wait to take the lead at the end,” he continued. “That’s not what we’re made out of. We came here to lead laps and to do our job and to end up with that car in Victory Lane.”
The result had to be a huge relief for Harvick, who for the second year in a row had to listen to critics question why he hadn’t managed to produce a race win since March.
Of course, last year, Harvick and the 4 team produced their best performances of the season during the Chase, particularly at Phoenix International Raceway where they faced elimination if they didn’t win. Harvick won that race, then backed it up with another win at Homestead-Miami Speedway in the Championship round to secure the Cup Series crown.
Sunday excepted, Harvick hasn’t led as many laps this year as he did in 2014. But his results across the board have been better with top-10 finishes in 23 of 29 races, including 10 second-place runs.
Still, after finishing 42nd as the result of a contentious collision with Jimmie Johnson at Chicagoland Speedway, followed by the heartbreaking loss at New Hampshire, Harvick arguably faced more pressure Sunday to get out of the first round of this year’s Chase than he did to make the final round last year.
“I don’t think there was really any pressure,” Harvick countered. “We all knew what we needed to do, and it was really no different preparation than what we would do on a weekly basis.
“All in all it was business as usual,” he added. “I think if you look at the last three Dover races, it was definitely right in line with the things we’ve done here before. We just didn’t have any problems today. Everybody was really flawless on pit road and up top, and everything just went well.”
Aside from the usual pressure that comes from defending a championship, Harvick drew increased scrutiny at the media day to promote the Chase when he said he was going to “pound Joe Gibbs Racing into the ground.”
The Gibbs team has dominated the Cup Series since late May, winning nine of the 15 races since then, with Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth already locked into advancing in the Chase through their wins at Chicagoland and New Hampshire.
On Sunday, Harvick finally delivered on that promise. JGR’s Kyle Busch finished second, like Harvick doing what he needed to do to overcome a poor finish at New Hampshire caused by a flat tire and subsequent crash.
The Gibbs team tried to seize the advantage by giving Busch four tires to Harvick’s two for the final segment of the race, but it made no difference.
“For as fast as Kevin was today, I don’t know if I could have had eight tires and beat him,” Busch said.
“We finished where I thought we deserved to be.”
Clearly, Harvick, Childers and their team felt as if Sunday’s performance produced the kind of result they expect every week. The question is whether they can get through the next three-race round of the Chase without suffering a letdown.
Childers admitted the poor results at Chicagoland and New Hampshire forced the team to react by fielding its best equipment the past two weeks.
“I think we’re at a little bit of a disadvantage,” he said. “We’ve had to pull out stuff, cars that we really didn’t want to. We really don’t know what car we’re running at Charlotte yet.
“But we’ve got a good race team,” he added. “We’ve been through situations like this before. We’ve got good cars sitting at the shop, but we definitely have had to show more in the past two weeks than what we really wanted to.”
For Harvick, Sunday’s result was sweet because it appeased his harshest critic — his young son Keelan, who took a shine to the Dover winner’s trophy sculpted in the shape of the track’s mascot, Miles the Monster.
“For whatever reason, Miles the Monster is the only trophy that he’s been into,” Harvick said. “We got him a stuffed animal to start the day just in case things didn’t go very good.
“Got to cover your bases as a parent.”
Mission accomplished — as a parent and as a racer.
