Kevin Harvick locked in on NASCAR Cup Series championship after playoff surge

After a so-so regular season, Kevin Harvick has returned to form and is strong contender to win the NASCAR Cup Series championship on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Inside Kevin Harvick’s closet is a photo of him and his son young Keelan on the night dad won his first NASCAR Cup Series championship.

The photo shows father and son sitting against the outside wall surrounding Homestead-Miami Speedway and flashing a thumbs up. That picture, Harvick says, is his favorite memory from three years ago when after 14 years he broke through to finally win the championship.

“It’s one of the coolest thing that you'll probably ever get a picture of,” Harvick said. “It's little things like that mean a lot and go a long ways.”

Harvick has an opportunity to re-create that photo Sunday night, as he faces Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. in the championship finale of the Cup Series playoffs. Whoever finishes best among them will be crowned champion — Busch, Harvick, Keselowski for a second time, Truex for a first.

That Harvick finds himself in this situation again shouldn’t be a surprise, considering he now has made it to Homestead with a shot at the championship three times in the past four years. He finished second to Busch in 2015, while falling just short of qualifying for the finals last season.

Except the 2017 season has been atypical for Stewart-Haas Racing, which underwent a manufacturer switch from Chevrolet to Ford over the offseason and began constructing its own chassis. The changes impacted SHR’s overall performance through much of the season, with Harvick failing to lead a 1,000 laps for the first time since 2013 and the team not possessing the same speed as the Toyotas of Truex and Busch.

“Kyle and Martin have had great years,” Harvick said. “They really have, and there's nothing that you can take away from those guys.”

But SHR has decidedly improved since the start of the 10-race playoffs, with Harvick resembling the driver who so often has been the dominating force over the last three years. He nearly won at Chicagoland Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway — both 1.5-mile tracks like Homestead — then went to victory lane at Texas Motor Speedway, another 1.5-mile track, to secure himself a berth in the championship round.

“We were late bloomers to the party just for the fact that we had a lot of work to do,” Harvick said. “We had a lot of change and we had a lot of things that we had to navigate and maneuver and get to the point of being competitive like we are right now.

“So we feel good about where we are. We won Texas, and have run good really at every mile‑and‑a‑half racetrack that we've been to, and we're back to the point of being able to lead laps, and that's when you can win races is when you can lead laps.”

Harvick’s career is marked with him overcoming obstacles that appeared insurmountable. It was the ethos of his title run in 2014 and a near-title run in 2015, where multiple times he came through in must-win situations where if he failed he would’ve been eliminated from the playoffs.

SHR co-owner Tony Stewart equates Harvick’s mentality to that of a tiger when a piece of red meat is waved in front of him. In the euphoria of Harvick’s Texas win, Stewart offered warning to the three drivers who would be opposing him at Homestead.

When asked about Stewart’s comments during championship media day on Thursday, Harvick smiled and laughed. He then acknowledged he and his team have a knack for rising to the occasion when their backs are in a corner.

“We like challenges,” Harvick said. “The unique part about Stewart‑Haas Racing is the fact that you have an owner like Tony, and he's very good at helping us as a team realize the things that we should realize, and at that particular moment we were all very aware and he re‑emphasized the fact that the timing couldn't be better.”

Truex and Busch are the favorites Sunday, based on their superiority throughout the entirety of the regular season and playoffs. Truex owns a series-best seven wins — six on 1.5-mile tracks — with Busch having won five times.

But Harvick is historically better than both at Homestead, holding an average finish of 6.9 in 16 starts compared to Truex’s 12.3 (12 starts) and Busch’s 19.8 (12 starts). And what occurred two weeks at Texas, where Harvick ran down and passed Truex in the closing laps to take the win, looms as potential precursor to what may unfold Sunday.

“We won Texas and are doing what we have to do,” Harvick said. “We came here with no intention other than to win this championship.”