With one Martinsville Speedway victory already in his pocket this season, Kevin Harvick can’t wait to get back to the historic Virginia track in three weeks.
In fact, the TUMS Fast Relief 500 on October 30 could very well be the missing piece he needs to clinch his first NASCAR Sprint Cup championship.
“I think that is going to be one of the hurdles we have to overcome … to win a race,” Harvick said Tuesday during a media event in advance of the TUMS 500. Harvick is currently second in the Chase for the Sprint Cup standings, one point behind Carl Edwards.
“I really don’t think you will be able to win the championship without winning at least one race. I might be wrong, but looking at the past, I think you are going to have to win at least one.”
And that’s why Harvick is happy over his upcoming trip to Martinsville Speedway. He won the Goody’s Fast Relief 500 in April and was third in last fall’s TUMS Fast Relief 500. Even though that third-place finish was his first top five in a Sprint Cup race at Martinsville, he has nine top 10 finishes in his 19 Martinsville starts.
“The first several years there (Martinsville), we didn’t get a lot of the finishes we probably deserved, whether it was a mistake we made on the race track or just dumb luck,” said Harvick, who has also won at Martinsville in both the NASCAR Nationwide and Camping World Truck series. “But the last couple of years we’ve gotten the good finishes and our cars have run fast and to finally get that check mark in the win box in the spring was important for us.”
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