NASCAR Cup Series: 5 drivers poised for low-key championship runs
By Asher Fair
Kevin Harvick
Kevin Harvick as a “low-key” championship contender in any other season but this one might be considered ridiculous, but through the first 20 races of this year, he fits the bill to a T.
It took Harvick until the season’s 20th race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to finally secure not only his but Stewart-Haas Racing’s first victory of the season, and this victory was his first top three finish of the season as well. He had never previously gone past a season’s ninth race without recording at least one top three finish.
Only twice in Cup Series history (Ned Jarrett in 1961 and Tony Stewart in 2011) has a driver won the championship without winning any one of the season’s first 19 races, and no driver has ever even come close to winning a championship without recording a single top three finish in the season’s first 19 races.
The 43-year-old Bakersfield, California native has as good a chance as anybody to change that. Even with only one top three finish in the season’s first 20 races, he sits in an impressive third place in the championship standings, and his laps led total of 482 trails only the totals of the four drivers discussed in the first slide of this article.
Additionally, Harvick has been in the Championship 4 four times since its introduction in the 2014 season, and he won the 2014 championship. He has finished in the top three in the championship standings in five of the last six and seven of the last nine seasons.
While he hasn’t dominated the headlines like he did last season by winning five of the season’s first 12 races and ending up tied for a season-high in victories with eight, Harvick is in a position to make a low-key championship run.