Kevin Harvick using brand new chassis for Phoenix

Kevin Harvick (9/4 odds) was fastest in both Saturday Phoenix practices.

Chassis Information: Chassis No. 4-021: Kevin Harvick will pilot the No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Fusion built on Chassis No. 4-021 Sunday in the TicketGuardian 500k at ISM Raceway near Phoenix. Built new in 2018, Chassis No. 4-021 will make its debut this weekend. 

TicketGuardian 500k Notes of Interest: 

 Freaky Fast Since 2014: Harvick is in his 18th Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season and his fifth at StewartHaas Racing (SHR) with crew chief Rodney Childers at the helm. Since joining forces, Harvick and Childers combined to produce 16 victories, 15 poles, 70 top-five finishes and 100 top-10s; led 7,060 laps; won the 2014 Cup Series title; finished runner-up in 2015 to champion Kyle Busch, eighth in 2016 and third in 2017. The team qualified for the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway three of the last four seasons. 

 Points Position: Harvick arrives at Phoenix ranked first in the NASCAR Cup Series standings with 135 points after back-to-back wins at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway.  Playoff Qualifier: Harvick qualified for the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs with his back-to-back wins at Atlanta and Las Vegas. He will enter the playoffs with a minimum of 13 playoff points. He gained five playoff points for each of his two wins and picked up three additional points for one stage win at Atlanta and two at Las Vegas. 

 100 and Counting: Harvick scored his 100th career win in NASCAR’s top three series when he won Sunday’s Cup Series race at Las Vegas. He has 39 Cup Series wins, 47 in the Xfinity Series and 14 in the Camping World Truck Series. Harvick and Childers also have 100 top-10s since they joined forces in 2014.

KEVIN HARVICK, Driver of the No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford Fusion for Stewart-Haas Racing: 

Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. talked on pit road after Las Vegas about how you looked like did in 2014, and Truex said, “There goes Kevin Harvick off in his own ZIP code again.” Does it really feel that way, or has so much changed in that time, is it difficult to compare? 

“For me, there were a lot of questions coming into the weekend. I think Atlanta is its own beast, but I think we answered a lot of those questions for ourselves. And now it’s about navigating the rest of it, and how do you push yourself forward, what do you need to work on, even though things are going good. Sometimes you have to trick yourself and everybody else into thinking, ‘OK, well, everything is going good.’ Well, I can promise you that the 78, the 18, the 2, the 22, everybody is going to work, and they’re going to get better. I mean, we did that last year. We’ve been in this position before, and you have to keep pushing forward to try to keep your advantage of things that are working well for you, but you also have to find out what your weaknesses are. This weekend, we’re going to a flat track, and we didn’t run well there in the spring. We ran better in the fall but not like we expect to run. So that’s an important playoff race. So we have to figure out how to motivate everybody to keep pushing forward, to not sit idle in the things that we’re doing, and become complacent in the things that you’re doing because it’s good enough right now but it won’t be when you get to summertime.” 

Does your car feel that much better than it did near the end of last year? 

“You’ve got to remember, at the end of last year, our car was as competitive as anybody. We drove to victory lane there at Texas and led the most laps and won both stages and just had some things not work out for us at Charlotte. So, the mile-and-a-half stuff has been on point since we got to Chicago last year. I think as you have the whole winter to step back, take a deep breath and work on some things, I think as you look at everything that’s changed, it’s obviously not hurt us as much as it hurt some other people. There’s still a lot of racing left to go. But it’s good to have momentum. It’s good to have things going early. It’s good to score playoff points because we saw how important they were last year for the 78, and you want to, when things are going good, you need to hammer it home. You need to capitalize on it. You need to win stages because there will be a point where you go through that lull where somebody else is hot, and you hope that your hot streak is longer than theirs so you can score more points and put yourself in a better position for the playoff points than anybody else.” 

You just scored your 100th win in NASCAR’s top three series and your next Cup Series win will be your 40th, tying you with Mark Martin for 18th on the all-time list. What do those accomplishments mean to you? 

“I think any place you get on the list at this particular point, for me, I just kind of laugh, just because of the fact that I don’t think you ever really – I never really thought that I would actually – get to the point of putting yourself beside Mark Martin and some of the guys who are on that part of the list. I think as you look at the last five years and you look at the wins and the championship and the way that things have gone, it’s really kind of rejuvenated everything that I’ve done and the way I feel about coming to the racetrack. You feel obligated to be a part of it during the week and try to put in the maximum amount of effort because (crew chief) Rodney (Childers) and (race engineer) Dax (Gerringer) and the engineers and everybody who’s working at the shop, they’re digging, and they’re not worried about where you’re at on the list. That, for me, is a good thing because it’s really week-to-week. They’ll go home and we probably won’t ever talk about what we did at Vegas until we come back to Vegas. It’s all about Phoenix this week and what we’re going to do and what we did wrong and what we did right at the fall race and where we’re at with the cars at this particular point and what do we need to work on and how do we need to work on things. Then we’ll fly home and have a good time and talk about how the weekend went. There are always things you can make better. There’s really no time to sit and reminisce about where you’re at on a list because, when things are like this, you want to capitalize on them and you want to capitalize on your cars and your people and your enthusiasm and the momentum and all the things that come with that. So, you’re almost scared to even really step back and say, we did this or we did that, and your name is on the list here. It’s just, ‘How do we keep doing this?’,And, ‘Let’s just keep pushing things forward and try not to stumble along the way and screw up what’s going on.’ To me, it feels a lot like 2014, except now you’ve got a team with five years of experience, and that’s pretty scary.”