{"id":15850,"date":"2018-04-06T16:30:12","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T21:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=15850"},"modified":"2018-04-06T16:58:26","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T21:58:26","slug":"harvick-hopes-to-keep-momentum-at-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/06\/harvick-hopes-to-keep-momentum-at-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvick hopes to keep momentum at Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, <\/em>NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

FORT WORTH, Texas \u2013 Obviously proud of the fact he\u2019s won half of the races in the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup<\/a> season \u2013 three of six \u2013 Kevin Harvick<\/strong> acknowledged Friday morning at Texas Motor Speedway that just being at the Fort Worth track buoyed his already-good mojo.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Kevin Harvick. Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, he\u2019s had an incredible run to open the season, but it was actually his win last November in the Texas playoff race that Harvick considers the start of his current success.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all started or a lot of it started right here in the fall last year winning here for the first time and being able to get to victory lane and do the things that we did at the end of the year,\u2019\u2019 said Harvick, Friday morning in advance of Sunday\u2019s O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts 500 (2 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is fun to be able to ride that momentum. You never know when it is going to shift the other way. The whole company is doing a great job. Clint (Bowyer) winning last week and Aric (Almirola) and Kurt (Busch) doing well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a great start to the season for Stewart-Haas Racing and we have been fortunate to win a few of those races and hopefully we can do the same this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harvick\u2019s 1.580-second victory over eventual 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr. at Texas was his first victory in 30 tries at the high-banked 1.5-mile oval. But it was also the first of four trophies he\u2019s hoisted in the eight races since. It checked a box for Harvick \u2013 who had six straight top-10 finishes at Texas before that win, including back-to-back runner-up showings in 2014-15.<\/p>\n

The win was both personal triumph and a competitive statement \u2013 but one that Harvick hasn\u2019t put an exclamation point on yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a really big market for us personally as a race team because we have Mobil and Busch who spend so much time and money promoting this particular market and bringing a bunch of people to the race track and to not get to victory lane was almost a little embarrassing because we hadn\u2019t done it,\u2019\u2019 said Harvick, who spent Friday morning alongside Texas Motor Speedway President Eddie Gossage looking at the facility\u2019s impressive new \u201cBusch Restart Bar\u201d trackside suite-of-suites.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo check that off the list and have Mobil 1 on the car at that race here in Texas was a really big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as it turned out, the beginning of some incredible momentum.<\/p>\n

Harvick\u2019s season\u2019s lot of trophies has duly impressed his team co-owner, three-time Monster Energy Series champion Tony Stewart, who acknowledged with caution, that the fast start is good. But a fast finish and the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup championship trophy remains the goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty cool. You want your drivers to start like that,\u2019\u2019 Stewart said.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s definitely the way you want to start the year, but at the same time I reminded the shop, it\u2019s an awesome start but we\u2019ve got to finish it that way. \u2026It\u2019s extremely hard to ride a wave of momentum like this all year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hard, but not impossible. Harvick absolutely believes his No. 4 Ford is the car to beat for the 2018 title and he\u2019s certainly shown that to be the case this year. It\u2019s fast, the crew \u2013 led by crew chief Rodney Childers \u2013 is top-notch and the whole SHR organization is establishing itself as the class of the field.<\/p>\n

Add in Clint Bowyer\u2019s win at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway two weeks ago and SHR has won four of the opening seven races. All four of the team\u2019s drivers \u2013 including new addition Aric Almirola and former Cup champ Kurt Busch are ranked among the top-11 in points coming into Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have, in my opinion, the most stable team in the garage,\u2019\u2019 Harvick said. \u201cWhen you have the most stable team in the garage from a financial standpoint and manufacturer standpoint, that attracts good people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, it is all about good people. We have a very committed manufacturer and owner group and we are the drivers lucky enough to be in a position of where Stewart-Haas racing is right now. We have a very solid foundation which is something to hang your hat on.\u201d<\/p>\n

And should Harvick win on Sunday, he\u2019ll have a new [Texas Motor Speedway winner\u2019s] hat to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service FORT WORTH, Texas \u2013 Obviously proud of the fact he\u2019s won half of the races in the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup season \u2013 three of six \u2013 Kevin Harvick acknowledged Friday morning at Texas Motor Speedway that just being at the Fort Worth track buoyed his already-good mojo. Yes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[95,16,413,21],"class_list":["post-15850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-kevin-harvick","tag-nascar","tag-oreilly-auto-parts-500","tag-texas-motor-speedway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/MENCS-ACS-HARVICKPRACTICE-031718.jpg?fit=5184%2C3456&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-47E","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15850"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15853,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15850\/revisions\/15853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}