1,000 Greatest Drivers: Kevin Harvick

Apparently, Stewart-Haas Racing couldn't survive without him.

For the remainder of this week through the day of the NASCAR finale at Phoenix on Sunday, I will be reviewing the careers of all the playoff-era NASCAR Cup Series champions (besides Jimmie Johnson, who I already covered). I decided to start with Harvick because his career has already concluded so it’s easier to put it into its proper historical context as opposed to the other six champions who are still active. Having said that, one race at Phoenix is such a small sample size that it won’t likely affect my letter grades for any drivers other than the Championship 4 unless possibly somebody outside of that group wins, but that usually doesn’t happen. I will say right now that Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick are both trending E-. I will likely bump Blaney up to E if he wins the title, but I am less likely to for Reddick. William Byron will probably be a C+ either way and Joey Logano will likely be either a C if he doesn’t win the title or a C+ if he does. Blaney and Logano’s grades for this year are likely in flux but I think the ratings for all the other active Cup drivers I will cover this week are likely set in stone. If Byron or Reddick wins the title, I will likely declare them locks after the season has concluded, but I really don’t think that’s going to happen. Given Penske’s dominant speed the past couple years, I expect that to continue especially since Christopher Bell who won the spring race has been eliminated (we’ll see if he stays eliminated). Right now, I think Blaney will win the title because he was the fastest in 2023 and he seemed to be faster than Logano in 2022 also but he ended up just blocking for him to protect his championship since he had already been eliminated. After updating my model, there are now 317 drivers with 10 or more teammate comparisons, an increase from 313 prior to this year. The four new drivers are Corey Heim, Derek Kraus, and Parker Retzlaff (who I mentioned before) as well as Shane van Gisbergen, who had a rating last year but did not have 10 or more teammate comparisons until this year. Once SVG had to race on ovals, he’s plummeted by the way, dropping from .127 to -.062 this year, but he’s still ahead of the other three.