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NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Kevin Harvick Has Reason To Be Happy

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There’s three races to go in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series regular season, as the circuit heads to Bristol, TN, for Saturday night racing (7:30 PM ET, ABC). And one driver who has reason to be very happy right now is Kevin Harvick.

Harvick hasn’t gotten a lot of attention this season. He’s lurked a little bit off the points pace set by Jimmie Johnson. Harvick doesn’t have the four wins of Matt Kenseth. And on the flip side, Harvick’s solid fourth-place standing have kept him in very safe position for playoff qualification. There hasn’t been reason to focus on Harvick so far, but that may change as the postseason draws near.

With two wins under his belt, Harvick has put himself in good position to win his first-ever Sprint Cup Championship, if he has a strong finishing push (Click here for a complete layman’s explanation of NASCAR’s postseason qualification rules ).


Harvick broke into the circuit in 2001 with Richard Childress Racing, and he did so with big shoes to fill. Harvick got the spot that opened up with the tragic death of Dale Earnhardt Senior. Perhaps feeling the pressure, the young driver seemed to always be on edge.

“He always seemed to be ticked off at something,” said TheSportsNotebook’s NASCAR consultant, my brother Bill, who is not unfamiliar with the concept of living in a state of perpetual agitation. “But he seems to have settled down a lot.”

Winning will do that for you, and while Harvick has never won the brass ring, he’s finished in the Top 10 seven of the last eight years. He got as high as third, in both 2010 and 2011 and finished fourth a year ago.

Given that solid track record, it was perhaps surprising that Harvick was posted as a 25-1 shot to the win the Sprint Cup championship at the start of the season. When we did our NASCAR season preview prior to Daytona, Bill did not hesitate in recommending Harvick as the best longshot pick to win the title.

He’s got some work to do in the races ahead, but the way the season has unfolded assures that February’s longshot is going to be September’s contender.

REVENGE TIME AT BRISTOL

I don’t know who its revenge time for, but if you do have a grudge against a driver, Bristol Motor Speedway is the place to do something about it. This is a tight track, with the drivers bumping and grinding against each other, and it’s easy to get away with something if there’s an opponent you’ve got it in for. Put another way, if baseball were like NASCAR, this would be the track that Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun got their come-uppance at.

The other thing we know about Bristol is that Kyle Busch owns the track. At least that’s the record over the past five years. Busch swept two races here in 2009, and also won in 2010 and 2011. That’s three wins in a nine-race span that includes this year’s March 17 running, won by Kasey Kahne.

Its then with good reason that Kyle Busch joins Jimmie Johnson as the 5-1 co-favorites on Saturday night. And Kevin Harvick? Still not getting the respect, at 15-1.

PLAYOFF DEVELOPMENTS

Joey Logano’s win last week at Michigan was a game-changer in the race for the two wild-card spots. Logano is now a threat to Martin Truex for the final spots, and should Kasey Kahne move from 11th to 10th, and out of the wild-card realm, Logano’s win mean that he and Truex would get the extra berths.


The driver most hurt by this is Jeff Gordon, who has the point totals to be a wild-card contender, but without a win he’s not going to qualify. Gordon has three more chances to change that, but time is running out.

Of the seven drivers who’ve been steadily holding down spots in the Top 10 most of the year, Dale Earnhardt Junior is starting to show some slippage. He blew a tire and had a bad race last week in Michigan. Junior is now in seventh place, with a 20-point cushion on the playoffs. Because he does not have a win, he won’t make it as a wild-card (and if he does get a win, he’ll strengthen his position enough that falling outside the Top 10 won’t be an issue). This means that Junior is one more bad week away from being in serious trouble.

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: All Eyes On Kyle Busch

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The fourth race of the NASCAR Sprint Cup season goes Sunday, with the running of the Food City 500 (1 PM ET, Fox) and the presence of Kyle Busch overshadows this race. It’s not because Busch is off to a blazing start—he’s only 17th in the point standings. Nor is it because he’s a dominant figure in racing—he’s missed the Top 10 each of the last two years and never come close to a championship. But Busch owns Bristol Motor Speedway, and now he’s got the pole for Sunday.

There are two races run at Bristol each year, and Busch has won four of the last eight. He might not be a dominant figure in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series overall, but he sure is at this track. The circuit comes to Bristol at the right time for him. Busch’s season got off to a disastrous start in Daytona, with a wreck and a 34th-place finish. It got a little better in Phoenix the week after, when he came in 23rd. Then he ran an excellent race in Las Vegas, placing fourth. Busch still has work to do repairing the point damage from Daytona and Sunday’s Bristol race fits perfectly into his gradual ascent with each passing week.

The pole position is of no small importance at Bristol. It’s a shorter track, which makes it tougher to pass and to come back on. “Position is everything,” said TheSportsNotebook’s NASCAR consultant, my brother Bill. “There’s a lot of bumping and grinding.”

Bill added that the close-quarters racing makes it an ideal environment for drivers to take revenge on someone. It reminds me of a scene in the 1992 movie Far & Away. An Irish immigrant, played by Tom Cruise (who mastered the brogue beautifully) is running in the 1893 Oklahoma Land Rush, where the settlers rode horses to the plots of land they were going to claim. The antagonist to Cruise comes up to him the day before to warn him ominously—“there’ll be a lot of confusion in the race tomorrow lad. Someone could get shot.” I digress, but the obvious corollary to our original topic is that the drivers have opportunity to get away with some stuff in a tight, bump-and-grind race.

Bush’s record at Bristol are reflected in the betting lines for Sunday. He’s one of three drivers going off at 7-1, with only Jimmie Johnson’s price being shorter. You don’t normally see Busch in this kind of rarefied air, but the record says he’s the driver to watch on Sunday.

HAMLIN SPEAKS OUT

Denny Hamlin is a little lighter in the wallet. He drew a $25,000 fine from NASCAR for his criticism of the Generation Six car. “He says you can race in a single file line,” Bill said, in explaining the driver’s criticisms. Bill was non-committal on the substance of Hamlin’s criticism, but he (Bill) firmly criticized NASCAR for the fine. “They want drivers to speak their minds and then fine them if they don’t like it,” he lamented. Whether NASCAR has something to hide I don’t know, but the decision to slap Hamlin with a fine does at least give the appearance of corporate insecurity.

Speaking of something to hide, I wish I could hide last year’s previews of the two NASCAR races at Bristol last year. When I hear “Bristol”, I think Connecticut and the home of ESPN. And in researching the track, I never noticed that it’s actually in Tennessee. This year’s research brought it to light. My apologies to the good people of Tennessee.

THE BETTING LINE

Johnson, as mentioned is the betting line favorite. Busch is joined by Hamlin and Brad Keselowski at 7-1. Then there’s a sharp drop to 12-1, where Kasey Kahne, Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Greg Biffle and last week’s winner Matt Kenseth are sitting. Of the “name” drivers, Stewart is the one who still needs to get untracked, as he’s 16 points outside the top 10. Danica Patrick has fallen hard in the last couple weeks, dropping to 30th overall.

Bristol Motor Speedway Welcomes NASCAR & Kyle Busch

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The NASCAR Sprint Cup series is back in the house of ESPN tonight, as the Motor Speedway in Bristol, CT hosts its second race of the season. This is the first of three more races that go until NASCAR effectively hits the re-set button on the standings, when only the Top 10 points leaders, plus two wild-card drivers will be eligible for the championship in the last ten races of the year (though the entire Sprint Cup field remains eligible to win the week-by-week races and the accompanying purses). The Irwin Tools Night Race starts at 7 PM ET on Saturday night and will be televised by ABC.

Brad Keselowski won the earlier race in Bristol and a victory here would be his fourth of 2012, which would be the most of the field. He’s currently tied with Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart at three apiece and when the standings re-set takes place its wins, not total points that will put you at the top. Hence, Greg Biffle’s victory last week was crucial not because it put Biffle back atop the points standings, but as his second win of the year, put him in closer striking distance of the top for when the postseason begins.

The focus of the racing world though, remains the jousting for the second wild-card spot. The drivers who finish outside the Top 10 are first ranked based on outright wins, with total points being used as the tiebreaker. That makes Kasey Kahne, the only non-Top 10 driver with two wins and sitting in 11th in points, secure. It means Carl Edwards, ranked 12th, but with no wins, has only three chances to finish at the head of the pack.

But since we’re in Bristol, the focus should be on Kyle Busch. In 14th place, he’s 11 points behind Ryan Newman and each has won a single race. While any of Jeff Gordon, Marcus Ambrose or Joey Logano could win a second race and nullify significant points deficits, only Busch has a realistic chance to catch Newman purely on points and to all but lock up a wild-card with a win himself. And given that Busch has won an astonishing five of the last eleven races held at Bristol Motor Speedway, we clearly should not bet against him on Saturday night.

The playoff joust provides drama enough, but according to TheSportsNotebook’s NASCAR expert, my brother Bill, the structure of Bristol Motor Speedway can make things even more interesting. “They reconfigured the track to go back to the old way,” Bill informed by phone as he drove his long-haul rig through central Wyoming this morning. “The drivers are banging on each other and you have to bump and run to pass.” When I asked why a track would switch to such an approach, Bill said the strategies of the bump-and-run make for a more exciting race, even if they do increased the odds of a crash. “And if a driver has a grudge against a rival, this is the kind of place they do something about it,” he added.

Whether the track is open or close-quartered, one thing holds true over the last several years. Kyle Busch is more at home in the home of ESPN than anyone this side of Chris Berman.