DARLINGTON, S.C.– Following the Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Sunday evening, there were both overjoyed and disappointed drivers.
For race-winner Martin Truex Jr., he was the happiest of them all.
On the other side of the spectrum, there was runner-up finisher Kevin Harvick, and rightfully so.
For Harvick, he was by far the best car in the field, leading 217 of the 367 laps in the event.
Twice, however, in a series of pit-stops his Stewart-Haas Racing pit crew let him down — failing to send the driver of the No. 4 Busch’s Beer Chevrolet back out in the lead and leaving Harvick with the task of driving back up through the field to contend for the win.
“Yeah, I really don’t know (what to make of it),” a disgusted Harvick spat. “We have championship cars and we’re just mediocre on pit road. It’s kind of been that way for a few years, and they’ve moved some things around, but it just seems like it’s just week after week after week. You have a couple good weeks here and there and every once in a while you just put together a day, but they just can’t put together a whole day on pit road right now.”
Harvick, tired of the questions, got up and left his post-race press conference midway through, showing his pure disgust for the continued issues on pit road.
This really isn’t that new a conundrum, as Harvick has had to suffer through pit road blunders for years, going all the way back to his days at Richard Childress Racing. These last couple, however, have reminded everyone of how overlooked and “easy” these stops can be.
On a stop at lap 251 the team had problems with the right rear tire, adding on precious seconds and dropping Harvick to fifth for the next restart. He was able to overcome the blunder and worked his way back up into second by lap 268, but the gain was was short lived, as on lap 281 a rear air gun malfunctioned and added another sting to the night Harvick had already had.
That air gun issue dropped Harvick to 12th, a deficit he was never quite able to overcome after that.
“I’m pretty sure we just lost this race; there’s not enough time (to get back to the lead),” said Harvick to his team, furious at the outlook he was looking at.
Though he powered his way back up though the field, Harvick was right, as he finished second to Truex in a final late-race shootout.
Harvick has shown pace all season long, leading 1,211 laps in 2016 competition, but something always seems to bite him late in the running. More times than not, it seems to be his pit crew making blunder after blunder. At some point the bleeding needs to stop, and changes have to be made if they want to win a title.
Some like to be cheerleaders like Jimmie Johnson or even Brad Keselowski, trying to give the team a shot in the arm instead of verbally destroying the team on the radio.
Harvick on the other hand?
“I’m over being a cheerleader,” Harvick said. “Those guys get paid a lot of money to perform on pit road, and cheerleading hasn’t really been working. You’ve got to get after it on pit road and do your job.”
In a sport where every second counts, there is no time to be nice and ask to go on an ice cream date after the race, it’s do and survive or die and fall into a non-competitive black hole.
If SHR wants reclaim the magic of their 2014 championship run, changes need to be made quickly. In a playoff format where it rewards consistency and punishes those who fall apart, Harvick cannot afford to lose a precious second on pit road due to someone being slow on a stop.
Championships demand perfection and nothing less.
In 2010, Chad Knaus fired his entire pit crew mid-race at Texas for their continuous pit road mistakes, swapping them with Jeff Gordon’s pit crew. Some called it a hasty call, but it was a call that won Jimmie Johnson another championship when their backs were against the wall.
If that is what it takes to win a title, don’t put it past Rodney Childers to make a move similar in order to make the No. 4 a championship-caliber team once again.
Hopefully for the sake of Harvick, this is the last time his team falls apart like this because if this continues, Harvick will be a fast man — but a man that won’t have a chance to bring home the hardware at season’s end.
To finish second is to be the first loser and for Harvick, he is done being the loser.
Hopefully his team feels the same.
The opinions expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Race Chaser Online, the Performance Motorsports Network, their sponsors or other contributors.
About the Writer
Rence Brown is Race Chaser Online’s West Coast-based correspondent, who currently resides in California and carries a deep passion for NASCAR, but is a follower of multiple forms of auto racing across multiple disciplines.
Brown, 23, is going back to school to pursue a journalism degree at Pierce College.
Email Rence at: rcorencebrown@gmail.com
Follow on Twitter: @RenceTheFence
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