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Harvick's Goal: Recapture Magic

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By TONY FABRIZIO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 15, 2008

Updated: 01/14/2008 11:56 pm

DAYTONA BEACH - Kevin Harvick left Daytona last February as not only the 500 winner, but also a favorite for the championship.

He had finished the previous season with three wins in the final 11 races and a career-best fourth-place finish in the points. The Daytona 500 victory looked like a continuation of 2006.

But Harvick didn't win another points race. He didn't get a top-16 finish in his final 16 races, and that fall-off has cast doubts about his prospects for 2008.

This is a new year, though, and Harvick was so eager to put last year behind him he was the first driver on the track Monday to start the second round of Daytona testing.

"California kind of set the tone for our season last year," Harvick said about the year's second race, the Auto Club 500, in which he had a flat tire while running second behind eventual winner Matt Kenseth. "It just seemed everything kind of went that way all year.

"Every time we had a good day, something went wrong, and every time we had a bad day, it got worse."

Harvick made the Chase, as did his two Richard Childress Racing teammates, Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton. Only one other organization, Hendrick Motorsports, placed three drivers in the 12-driver championship.

But of the three RCR drivers, only Bowyer pushed frontrunners Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon. Bowyer won a Chase race and finished third in the points. Burton finished seventh and Harvick was 10th.

"We were running as well as any team on the circuit for five, six, seven races, and then we lost it a little bit," Burton said. "Our stuff didn't drive as well as it had earlier in the year, and I think other people got better. We weren't able to make a step to get our cars better later in the year."
RCR made a huge gain on the competition from 2005 to 2006, going from not having any drivers in the Chase the first two years to getting Harvick and Burton qualified and having a solid season from Bowyer. Harvick was particularly good, winning five races and blowing to the Busch Series championship.

A lot was expected from Harvick and Burton in 2007, but like so many other championship hopefuls, they were no match for the Hendrick Motorsports tandem of Johnson and Gordon.

The question now is whether Hendrick will continue its dominance.

"I think you're definitely trying to catch up," Harvick said. "Those guys have won the championship the last two years, and they were 1-2 last year. They're what everybody is shooting for. Everybody knows they have to get better."

Harvick did experience two of the biggest moments of his career in 2007 - the Daytona 500 and a $1 million victory in the non-points Nextel All-Star Challenge at Charlotte in May. Along with his victory in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis in 2003, Harvick has won three of NASCAR's biggest races.

His Daytona 500 victory came in one of the most spectacular finishes in race history. He beat Mark Martin by a couple of feet with practically half of the field wrecking behind them.

"We've been fortunate to win a few of the big races, and I always thought I wanted to win the Brickyard most of all, but I was wrong," Harvick said. "Just experience everything from the 500 and being able to be a part of the weeks after it. Everywhere you go, that's all anybody wants to talk about is winning the Daytona 500."

Heading into 2008, Harvick is trying to recapture some of that magic.

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