Kevin Harvick relied on former champions Stewart, Johnson to win
HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson once shared a couple of couches in a game room, too poor to afford places of their own. This week, they shared the secrets that made them both champions.
Harvick won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup championship on Sunday night, and one of his closest advisers in the hunt for the title was Johnson, winner of six Cups. The two have deep roots together, going back to California by way of fellow driver Ron Hornaday's game room in Charlotte.
Harvick grew up in Bakersfield and Johnson in El Cajon, a couple of California kids in a sport whose center was three time zones east. In the late 1990s, both moved to North Carolina and hooked up with Ron Hornaday, Johnson trying to drive American Speed Association cars, Harvick trying to catch on in NASCAR's truck series.
Hornaday regularly offered drivers a free-rent, free-groceries couch while they tried to figure out exactly how badly they wanted to be drivers. "Camp Hornaday," Johnson called it, and both he and Harvick spent several months there.
"There are a lot of stories Jimmie and I could share," Harvick said of Camp Hornaday back in 2002, "but none that would probably make it in the newspaper." (You can tell it was 2002 by the use of the term "newspaper.")
Within a few years, both would find themselves at NASCAR's epicenter, Harvick as the driver to take over at Richard Childress Racing after Dale Earnhardt died, Johnson as the soon-to-be-six-time champion. Harvick came close to a championship, most notably in 2010 when he had an outside chance to beat Johnson, but until this year, potential never translated to performance.
This year, however, the roles reversed; Harvick was strong the entire year, while Johnson enjoyed only fits and starts of success with long dry spells between. After the season's penultimate race at Phoenix, Johnson turned his attention to Harvick, working to get his old couchmate the championship.
"Jimmie Johnson was a huge help," Harvick said on Sunday night, his firesuit still soaked with Budweiser. "He'd show up in the trailer after every practice and called and texted to Rodney (Childers, Harvick's crew chief) and myself. You pull the data up, and I was making some pretty huge mistakes. So that eased my mind going into the day."
Harvick also had the luxury of relying on another champion: Tony Stewart, his team owner. "Between these two," Harvick said, "between [Johnson] and Tony, it's a lot to lean on, and I'm pretty fortunate."
"When you get down to these (championship) scenarios, you're happy for the guys that are in this position, and you're going to give those guys advice," Stewart said. "They may not be a part of your program, and if you don't have a dog in the fight, you're still going to help somebody out and you're still going to offer your advice and your experience to them."
The results were clear, as was the lineage. Harvick combined the losing-doesn't-happen attitude of Stewart with the precision of Johnson to develop a race team that was the clear favorite heading into Homestead. Everything worked exactly as it was supposed to,
"You get to these seven days," Stewart said, "and having your friends and having that advice and people that you know, your equals, having that advice from them, sometimes that's just the calm voice or word that you need to get through the day."
Hornaday may or may not still have those old couches. If he does, he might even get some calls from some established drivers. Whatever works, right?
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
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