FanHouse 2009 Cup Rewind: Kevin Harvick, 19th

THE SEASON: For a NASCAR Sprint Cup driver, when the rumor mill begins to swirl about your pending departure from a race team it means one of two things: either you're looking to move up the ladder because of good results or you're mired in terrifically underwhelming season.

For Kevin Harvick, the 2009 Sprint Cup season might be best described by the latter.

2008 was certainly no sign of the troubles to come for the No. 29 team in 2009. Harvick last season was one of three RCR cars in the 2008 Chase for the Sprint Cup and wound up ahead of them all with his fourth-place end-of-season standing. He averaged a 12th-place finish during the 36-race campaign.

But in 2009, it all changed after an interesting offseason at RCR saw teammate Clint Bowyer switch to a completely different team within the organization and Casey Mears join the RCR fray. Harvick picked up a fortunate 2nd-place to start the season at Daytona, but quickly fell into a noticeable slump. By the time 10 races had passed, Harvick had finished 27th or worse in six of them.

In July, reports surfaced that Harvick had asked for a release from RCR at the end of the 2009 season, one year before his contract was up. The reports weren't categorically denied, but later Harvick and Childress filed a joint statement saying that he would fulfill the length of his contract. Regardless, signs of a split were there.

Fortunately for Harvick -- a driver who's Twitter account took on a role as a fan favorite -- the tide slowly began to change towards the end of the year. He led 66 laps at Atlanta Motor Speedway in September and garnered a 2nd-place finish before taking 15th or better in six of the final 11 races. A third-place finish at Homestead completed the season.

THE STATISTICS:
Best Finish - 2nd, Daytona & Atlanta
Worst Finish - 38th, 3 races
Top-5s - 5
Top-10s - 9
Total Laps Led - 159
Percent of Laps Completed - 97.6

THE FUTURE: For the sake of Kevin Harvick fans, the tremendous and necessary effort put in by the folks at the RCR shop as the season progressed started to show some serious dividends for the team as a whole. The team built an entire new fleet of race cars with updated technology that definitely showed flashes as stiff competition for the Sprint Cup's front runners.

Harvick's 56 led laps and third-place finish at Homestead confirm that the work began to pay off.

It doesn't seem, though, that Harvick will be making it into 2011 with a new contract from Richard Childress Racing. Teammate Jeff Burton said as much during an interview at Lowe's Motor Speedway and Harvick hasn't been quick to deny any of that speculation that he'll drive somewhere else in 2011 -- perhaps even with a self-owned team.

Still, Harvick has the 36-race 2010 docket with RCR left on his hands and a losing streak of races that now stretches some 71 races to February of 2007's Daytona 500. You can bet that such a stat is a monkey that Harvick would like to get off his back early in 2010.