NASCAR New Hampshire preview: Kevin Harvick is down, but not out

Preferring to look ahead rather than back at the sequence of events that have him on the brink of playoff elimination, Kevin Harvick has thus far refused to divulge whether he stills holds a grudge against Jimmie Johnson.

Except while Harvick wants to focus solely on the present and not the past, what happened a week ago in the Chase for the Sprint Cup opener very much relates to how Sunday’s race at New Hampshire will play out.

After contact with Johnson on a restart, Harvick, who was leading, crashed and finished 42nd last week at Chicagoland Speedway. That low finish places the defending Sprint Cup champion in a precarious position with two races remaining in Round 1 of NASCAR’s playoffs.

Harvick is 22 points behind 12th-ranked Jeff Gordon, and though it’s conceivable he could still climb high enough in the standings to avoid being one of four drivers eliminated following the Oct. 4 race at Dover International Speedway, the surest way to advance is by winning a race.

“I think obviously the situation that we’re in with our team is that a win would make it a lot easier and less nerve-wracking,” Harvick said Friday after qualifying second.

The situation in which Harvick finds himself isn’t unique to the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 team. Needing a win to qualify for the championship finale last season, Harvick produced a victory in the Round 3 elimination race at Phoenix International Raceway, and then came through with another win seven days later to secure his first Sprint Cup title.

That same resolve will again need to manifest itself either Sunday or next week at Dover.

“I think you still have to go out with the mentality of trying to win a race,” Harvick said. “Everybody around us knows that, I think they are very aware of the aggressive nature that we need to go after that win.”

And whereas Harvick is incentivized to pursue victory aggressively due to what transpired last week, others drivers hold a different advantage. Chicagoland winner Denny Hamlin, and others who rank high in the standings, can approach New Hampshire and Dover with the opposite mindset.

At a minimum, nine of the 12 Round 2 spots available will go to drivers who didn’t win a first-round race. That places a premium on accumulating points and not doing anything that puts oneself in an insuperable deficit.

“Some guys have different agendas than others,” said Brad Keselowski, who finished eighth at Chicagoland. “For us, we just need to have a good, solid day. If we can win, that would be great. That’s what we want to do. That’s what we’re here to do. But a solid day would almost guarantee us advancing to the next round.

“The most important thing is to win (the championship race) -- we want to be there when it counts.”

Of course, Keselowski’s path to the championship would be far easier without having to contend with Harvick, the most consistent driver throughout the 26-race regular season, who amassed the most points, top-fives, top-10s and laps led.

“I wouldn’t consider them out at this point by no means,” Joey Logano said. “They’re still a very strong team and they’ll be up there racing hard and trying to get to the next round.”

When the Chase began, Harvick was justifiably regarded as a favorite to repeat, even though Joe Gibbs Racing had won eight of 11 races entering the postseason.

And one bad race doesn’t change that perception -- Chicagoland only made the road to a second championship far more arduous.

“We just do the same thing every week,” Harvick said. “We just stay in there and grind away and don’t let circumstances really bother us. These are all situations that we’ve been through before.”