The Inside Line: Harvick continues dominant run

(SportsNetwork.com) – Kevin Harvick has become a one-man show in the Sprint Cup Series.

Harvick has now finished in the top two in seven straight races, a streak that began on Nov. 2, when he was runner-up at Texas. He went on to win the last two races in the 2014 Chase for the Sprint Cup — Phoenix and Homestead — to claim his first championship in NASCAR’s premier series. Harvick began this season with second-place finishes in the Daytona 500 and at Atlanta before winning at Las Vegas last week and Phoenix on Sunday.

Not since Richard Petty in 1975 has a driver in the series finished either first or second in seven or more consecutive races. When Harvick was informed of that statistic at the start of his Phoenix post-race news conference, he responded, “When you said the Richard Petty part, that gives me chills.”

Harvick’s fellow competitors Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, all of whom are repeat champions in the series, have yet to accomplish that feat. Gordon had six straight finishes of first or second during the 1996 season.

Petty’s streak of 11 consecutive 1-2 finishes 40 years ago is a NASCAR record. He also had seven or more top-twos in a row in 1964, ’67 (twice that season) and ’71. David Pearson had eight straight in 1968.

Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California (March 22), Martinsville (March 29), Texas (April 11) and Bristol (April 19) are the next four races on the schedule, as Harvick attempts to match Petty’s record. Harvick has finished in the top two at each one of those tracks in the past.

Harvick once again showed he is the most dominant driver at Phoenix after notching his fourth win in a row there over the weekend. He became the first driver in the series to score four consecutive victories at a track since Johnson won that many at Charlotte from 2004-05.

It was also Harvick’s fifth win in six races and record seventh overall in Sprint Cup competition at Phoenix.

“I’ve raced here (at Phoenix) for a long time, and the success wasn’t there right off the bat, but it was always a place that we came to year after year to race our Southwest Tour cars and every other division along the way. To be able to come back here now and continue to win races is something that is a lot of fun for me.”

This is Harvick’s second season as driver of the No.4 Chevrolet for Stewart- Haas Racing after spending his first 13 years in the series with Richard Childress Racing.

Harvick and crew chief Rodney Childers have paired well since the start of the 2014 season, but the two are really on a roll right now.

“I think at this point everybody just expects you to keep winning,” Childers said. “That’s what makes it hard on all of us. I feel like we’ve got a team that can do that. We have a driver that can do that. We have the resources to do that.

“The more you win, the more you expect out of yourself and the more pressure you put on yourself. When we left Las Vegas last week, (Harvick) made a point to say, ‘I want to win all three of these West Coast races.’ I think anybody that knows Kevin Harvick, if he puts his head to something, he’s going to try to make it happen.”

The series will conclude its three-week West Coast swing at Fontana, which is Harvick’s home track. The Bakersfield, California, native won there for the first time in 2011. He has never won three races in a row in Sprint Cup.

“You don’t want it to end; you want it to keep going,” he said. “You just want to keep that same approach every week as you go to a different track.”

Categorized in: NASCAR