Kevin Harvick will have a familiar look when he competes at Homestead-Miami Speedway for one final time in Sunday’s 4EVER 400.
Budweiser returns to Harvick’s car and will carry the same paint scheme that was on his car when Harvick won the 2014 Cup championship at this track.
Harvick won the title in his first season with Stewart-Haas Racing, being paired with crew chief Rodney Childers — a combination that remains together today.
“We put everything together, from hiring a driver, to hiring Rodney Childers to be the crew chief, to him hiring the car chief, all the way through everything that we did,” Harvick said in comments from the team.
“We didn’t have a sponsor, we didn’t have anything. So to be able to put all that together and allow that to grow throughout 2014, because we knew we were fast, we just had to figure out how to get to the end of the race in order to put ourselves in a position to win, and by the time we got to the second half of the year, we had most of those bugs worked out.
“So we got to the playoffs and, really, all the things that didn’t work out in the playoffs were overshadowed by fast cars. You used to look back at the 48 team (of seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson) and think, ‘Man, those guys are the luckiest people on earth.’
“No, they just had the best cars, and they had the best team and drivers and crew chiefs and situations to overcome all those flaws and mistakes or whatever they were. And that’s really where we were. In the end, we won Phoenix and we won Homestead, and we won Charlotte and put ourselves in a position to win the championship.”
Harvick has 14 top-10 finishes in his last 15 starts at Homestead. He has seven top-five finishes in his last nine starts there.
“Homestead is a great racetrack because it’s just so different than all the other mile-and-a-half racetracks that we go to,” Harvick said in comments from the team. “It’s just got unique entries and exits to the corners that were designed for the flat track that it started as. The way that the asphalt has aged, the fast line is going to be right up against the wall, and to be able to carry that momentum through the corners as the tires wear out.”
