Kevin Harvick Back in Fast Lane With New Sponsor, New Lease on Racing Life

It's been a big week for Kevin Harvick; actually, a big year.

Months removed from what looked like a certain parting with a struggling 2009 Richard Childress Racing (RCR) organization, "Happy" Harvick has both himself and RCR comfortably atop the Sprint Cup championship standings.

On Sunday he won his third race of the season and became the first driver to lock into NASCAR's Chase for the Championship playoffs. On Tuesday, he and RCR welcomed a prized, major sponsor for 2011, Budweiser.

So what changed in the last 10 months?

"It would be easier to tell you what didn't change, to be honest with you,'' Harvick said Tuesday.

"I think everything (changed) from top to bottom. All the things we had here, we're just using them correctly and more often.

"It's still the same people; just working in a different direction.''

And it's been a heckuva ride.

Floundering much of last season, Harvick was openly critical of the team that hired him to replace the late Dale Earnhardt in the days after the seven-time champ's death in the 2001 Daytona 500. RCR and Harvick had won the 2003 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis and the 2007 Daytona 500 together. He had three consecutive top-10 finishes in the championship from 2006-08.

But on course for what turned out to be a career worst 19th-place finish in the 2009 standings, Harvick threw up the yellow flag. Something had to give.

Apparently everything did.

"We all started working on it really hard about May or June,'' said Childress, who won six Cup championships with Earnhardt. "We knew we weren't going down the right path with a lot of things.''

So he shuffled personnel, upgraded and prioritized the engineering department and took the high road in all things Harvick. It's translated into a championship run and landed a high-profile sponsorship during rough economic times.

"I've been a fighter all my life and I've been in positions where I've had to make really tough decisions and do things,'' Childress said. "With all the things that's went on throughout my life, I still want it today as bad as I did in 1981 when I got out of the car.''

The result is a resounding 293-point advantage in the championship over second place Jeff Gordon. And even when the points are reset according to victories for the 10-race Chase to the Sprint Cup beginning Sept. 19 in New Hampshire, Harvick's three wins in the No. 29 Shell-Pennzoil Chevrolet would, at this point, place him third in the standings behind five-time winners Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson.

It hasn't been just an improvement or respectable turnaround. It's been a dramatic statement.

"Obviously it's nice to go into this week's race (at Bristol, Tenn.) and not have to worry about a Chase spot -- better than anything going into Richmond without having to worry about a Chase spot,'' said Harvick, who's won at three of the 10 Chase tracks.

"The next three weeks are going to be a lot of fun.

"I think winning is a great motivator.''