Kevin Harvick 2022 season in review
Editor‘s note: This continues the series of season reviews for select 2022 NASCAR Cup Series drivers.
See more: Bubba Wallace, Erik Jones, Martin Truex Jr., Alex Bowman, Tyler Reddick, Kyle Busch, Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Daniel Suárez, Chris Buescher, Chase Briscoe
Driver: Kevin Harvick
Car: No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang
Crew chief: Rodney Childers
Final 2022 ranking: 15th
Key stats: 2 wins, 9 top fives, 17 top 10s, 119 laps led
How 2022 ended: Harvick was one of four drivers — a group that also included two-time champ Kyle Busch — to be dropped from title contention after the Round of 16 elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway, a race Harvick had won just two years prior. It was a somewhat abrupt end to the 2014 champion’s shot at a second Cup title after coming alive just a few weeks prior with back-to-back wins at Michigan and Richmond as the regular season wound down. Issues at Darlington (exhaust, P33) and Kansas (crash, P36) put him in must-win mode at Bristol, and his 10th-place run was not enough to advance. His best remaining finish after being eliminated came at the Charlotte road course, with a runner-up showing.
Best race: This is a bit of a cop-out, but Harvick’s two wins at Michigan and Richmond in back-to-back weeks — the only driver to do this in 2022 — really feel inextricably connected given the tense build-up to Michigan’s victory and the questions that followed the win in Virginia. Many had written Harvick off as a legit title contender by midseason and rumblings that he might be cooked in general were louder than the No. 4 driver would’ve preferred. After all, the win in the Irish Hills snapped a 65-race winless streak dating back to 2020 and he’d looked way off in 2022 to that point. Neither win was particularly dominant (38/200 laps led at Michigan, 55/400 at Richmond) but many were touting the awakening of a “sleeping giant” at such a time that could disrupt the playoffs majorly. Had it not been for the issues at Darlington and Kansas, it’s fair to wonder just how far a dialed-in No. 4 team would’ve fared the rest of the way had it remained in contention.
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Other season highlights: There weren’t a ton of them in relation to how Harvick typically performs (he did win a whopping nine races in 2020, after all), but he did manage to muster seven top-five finishes from the Coca-Cola 600 (third) through the end of the season, in a noticeable uptick from where he and the No. 4 started the year (just two top fives in first 12 races). He nailed down a win and runner-up in the two Richmond races in 2022, as well as running in the top five at some of his other mainstays (Darlington, Sonoma, Loudon and Phoenix).
Stat to know: While Harvick did turn in a pair of victories, it was an overall significantly down year by his standards. Plenty of numbers stand out — a career-worst 119 laps led perhaps chief among them — but Harvick also failed to record an average starting spot in the top 10 for just the second time since 2013. A rough 17.5 average starting position definitely hindered the No. 4 car’s results in 2022, but it’s worth wondering if Childers and Harvick failed to grasp the Next Gen changes out of the gate and were battling against a speed deficit all season. Qualifying improvements will certainly be on their radar for 2023.
Quotable: “I think as you look back at (being one spot below Dale Earnhardt in career wins after Richmond), I don’t think as you start your career, you don’t say, well, I want to — it’s easy to say, I guess, I want to win 70-some races and be close or win 60, and then you start doing this on a week-to-week basis, and I think that’s the hardest thing, especially I see it a lot in today’s world. You come out of the Xfinity Series and you see these guys winning a lot of races and you come — I tell (son) Keelan, you’re a go-kart racer. When you want to go big-boy racing, you go Cup racing.
“It’s just a lot harder because everyone in this garage is just a killer, from the crew chief to the drivers to the guys changing the tires. It’s the best of the best, and it’s not easy to keep your team and everybody within your organization competitive, keep yourself competitive. It’s hard.”
RELATED: Harvick to decide future before Daytona 500
Looking ahead: Any driver who wins two races in a season — let alone in back-to-back weeks — will typically feel pretty good about the next campaign on tap, but there are some legitimate concerns for Harvick and SHR as the longtime pairing has now looked like a shell of its former self the past two seasons with two different car generations. Harvick, however, is one of the all-time greats, and the same can be said about his cerebral crew chief in Childers. An offseason of continued tinkering on Next Gen setups and overall preparation ahead of what might be the Californian’s final season in Cup should have them back in winning contention more consistently in 2023, but it’s far from a guarantee.
