NASCAR: Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, and ‘wasting playoff spots’

Tony Stewart isn’t ruling out Kevin Harvick going on a Stewart-like 2011 NASCAR Cup Series championship run after a winless regular season.

In the 2011 NASCAR Cup Series season, then two-time champion Tony Stewart entered the playoffs thinking he didn’t deserve to be there, having won none of the 26 regular season races.

As one of just two winless playoff drivers, he even said during Media Day before practice started at Chicagoland Speedway that he was “wasting a spot that somebody else should have”.

So what did he go on to do? Win that weekend, win the next weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and add three more wins, including one in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway to secure his third career championship on a tiebreaker (a wins tiebreaker, ironically) over Carl Edwards.

Now let’s skip ahead a full decade to 2021.

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Everybody saw last year what Kevin Harvick is capable of doing when he won nine races, the most since Edwards won nine back in 2008. But in 2021, he and Stewart-Haas Racing have struggled mightily.

Stewart-Haas Racing’s only victory so far this season is a win at New Hampshire Motor Speedway by Aric Almirola, who finished the regular season in 23rd place in the point standings.

Harvick, meanwhile, is on a 33-race losing streak that dates back to last September. He is set to enter the playoffs in last place in the playoff standings among the 16 drivers still competing for a championship, just one year after winning the regular season championship with seven victories and clinching the top seed in the playoffs.

So we asked Stewart if he can see Harvick going on a run like he did himself back in 2011 to win the whole thing.

“It would be hard to not take that into account and say that that’s possible,” Stewart admitted to Beyond the Flag. “I was the one who sat there at Media Day the day before practice started at Chicago and said, ‘I am wasting a spot that somebody else should have.'”

Suffice it to say that Harvick, even as the last place driver, is far from “wasting a spot”. In the modern playoff format, getting hot at the right time means even more than it did back in 2011, when Stewart was able to rally from a winless regular season to become a three-time Cup Series champion.

“And then we went on a tear,” he continued. “So can it happen? Absolutely. We’ve proven that in the past, and if there is ever a driver who I would sit there and put all of my chips on who can do that and pull that off, it would definitely be Kevin Harvick.

“We saw what kind of tear he was on last year, winning nine races, and he’s one of those guys who, if you get him close, he’ll get you the rest of the way. So if we can find a chunk that gets us better, I think he’s the guy who can carry it the rest of the way and get us home.”