Kevin Harvick Wasn't Sure About Fast Start

Raise your hand if you thought Kevin Harvick would be the points leader after three races.

Despite being unable to see through the computer screen to determine if your hand is up or not, let’s just say for argument’s sake that very few people – if any – thought Harvick would rebound from his ugly 2009 (19th in points, only nine top-10s) to lead the Sprint Cup points heading into Atlanta.

You may want to include Harvick among those with his hands down. Harvick has three top-10s in three races and has had a shot to win all of them.

“I know how we finished last year and we expected to start well – I don’t think we expected to have a chance to win every race so far,” Harvick said Friday. “But we expected to start well and do well on the race track.”

But even if he’d been a preseason favorite or felt he had fast cars, Harvick noted “you never really know what you’re going to get caught up in.”

“You just never know,” he said. “Last year, we couldn’t do anything right. If it was going to happen, we were in the wrecks, we had mechanical failures. Those things go in cycles, and you can’t get too overwhelmed by those things happening, because you can only control the things you can control.”

Harvick isn’t the only one at Richard Childress Racing having a rebound year – the whole team is. Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton have also shown to be impressive so far, and there’s talk from the drivers that they think they might be able to hang with Jimmie Johnson.

“Our job is to keep it going that way, and that’s the hard part about this sport,” Harvick said. “You’ve got to stay ahead of that curve, because everybody in this garage who’s behind is working to catch up, just like we were – and they all will.”