NASCAR: The ‘internal struggle’ plaguing Stewart-Haas Racing
By Asher Fair
Kevin Harvick spoke about the internal struggle at Stewart-Haas Racing that is plaguing the team in what has been a down 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season.
Suffice it to say that Stewart-Haas Racing’s performance in the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season has been nothing like what we saw just one year ago.
It was Kevin Harvick who stole the show in 2020, winning nine races, the most by any driver in a single season since 2008, and claiming the regular season championship and the top seed in the playoffs, but the team as a whole performed well throughout the year. All four drivers qualified for the playoffs, and the team led the series with 10 victories.
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But now they have just one win in the last 12 months, and that win wasn’t even earned by Harvick.
Aric Almirola, who finished the regular season well outside of the top 20 in the point standings, scored an upset win at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to lock himself into the playoffs.
Harvick is the team’s only other playoff driver this year, and he was the second to last driver to make it into the 16-driver postseason field. He was also Stewart-Haas Racing’s lone representative in the top 20 in the regular season standings.
The drop in performance for a team of this caliber is simply unprecedented from one year to the next. Fortunately, the team have “100% identified” the issues, according to Harvick. The most frustrating part? They simply can’t be fixed.
“In my opinion, the issues are 100% identified,” Harvick told Beyond the Flag. “We just can’t fix them. That’s the internal struggle currently. It’s not just a simple answer; it’s not that it’s not identified, it’s just not getting fixed.”
With that being said, he made clear that he doesn’t feel as though the cars are the issue right now, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Bristol Motor Speedway, the track where he last saw victory lane last September, played host to another victory for himself and the #4 team this evening.
“If we went out and won this weekend, it would not surprise me,” he admitted. “I feel like the cars have been a lot better. The cars are not the issue at this particular point. It wouldn’t surprise me to go out and hit it at a place like Bristol because there are a lot of things that are different from some of the other tracks that we go to in the things that you put into the setups and things like that, and the process that goes along with that. So that wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
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WynnBET lists Harvick’s odds at +900 to win this evening’s Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race. This race is set to be broadcast live on NBC Sports Network beginning at 7:30 p.m. ET, so if you have not begun your free trial of FuboTV, now would be a great time to do so!