Harvick: ‘I don’t see any reason’ to not be with SHR in 2017
Kevin Harvick said Friday that it’d be extremely tough to leave Stewart-Haas Racing after the 2016 season when the team switches over to Chevrolet.
Harvick and the No. 4 team have been one of the best in the Sprint Cup Series since he came over from Richard Childress Racing after the 2013 season. Through 75 races with SHR, he’s got a staggering eight wins, 38 top-five finishes and 51 top 10s, won the 2014 Sprint Cup title and finished second to Kyle Busch in 2015.
“I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t happen,” Harvick said Friday when he was asked if he’d be with Stewart-Haas in 2017. “For me I’m in the best position that I’ve been in with my team. I feel like I have the best crew chief in the garage [Rodney Childers]. It would be pretty tough to turn around and walk out on everybody who has been a part of building everything that we have built so far.”
Harvick’s original contract with Stewart-Haas was a three-year deal, which means it’d expire after the 2016 season. He said at Atlanta immediately following the news that Stewart-Haas was switching manufacturers that it would be “foolish” to not be committed to SHR and said that while he hadn’t looked at his contract, he assumed that it was taken care of.
We said it when Harvick made his comments two weeks ago and we’ll say it again; a move to stay with Chevrolet in 2017 would have to involve a lot of moving pieces. Harvick isn’t going to downgrade equipment, and the only Chevrolet team that is at the level of Stewart-Haas is Hendrick Motorsports (the team that SHR has been technically aligned with since SHR’s inception in 2009). Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. aren’t going anywhere, Chase Elliott is three races into his Cup tenure succeeding Jeff Gordon and Kasey Kahne has signed a contract extension with the team through the 2018 season.
Harvick is the heavy favorite to win on Sunday at Phoenix given his performance at the 1-mile track. He has seven career wins at PIR and has won four of the last five races (one with RCR and three with SHR). His only non-win came in the fall of 2015 when he finished second thanks to a scoring quirk that got Dale Earnhardt Jr. in front of Harvick before rain halted the race.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
