This is the time of year when we start looking back on the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup season and looking at the new 2015 lineup for the potential champion. Always a lot of driver movement, sponsor movement, crew chief changes and even car manufacture changes.
#4 Kevin Harvick was no fluke on winning it all in 2014. If you intelligently look at his track record since being thrust into the most popular seat in NASCAR when Dale Earnhardt Sr. died in the Daytona 500 in 2001 and then filled that seat like a seasoned veteran and said all the right things for his new team and sponsors. The classic battle with Jeff Gordon just a few races into the season for a photo finish win took all the pressure off his back to start his NASCAR top level career on the right foundation.
Harvick won his share of races and attracted some real big sponsors for RCR and his racing feuds and actions always put him on the first few pages of the racing media reports. Some say he spread himself to thin with the Nationwide Series and being a owner in the Camping World Truck Series during this next segment of his career. Did it take away the total commitment that is needed to be a Sprint Cup Champion ?
He changed his business plan and downsized his workload in the two lower series and also put him self into the conversation of leaving RCR Racing for a better deal or being a owner/driver. He always insisted he would be loyal to Chevrolet and his new sponsor Budweiser.
It got to a point he was quoted that it was a job coming to work and that attitude would not warrant a championship season with the competition level around him in NASCAR.
Stewart/Haas saw a opening to sign Harvick who brought Budweiser with him to add to Tony's championship organization for the 2014 season. This kept Harvick in a Chevrolet with his friend and some Hendrick power.
Harvick excelled and it was just what the veteran needed to motivate him and his hidden drive to win his first Sprint Cup Championship. Led the most laps in 2014 and peaked at the right time with the new format of winner take all. 4 car race team with two former champions did not hurt his chances.
That being said, this scribe observes the same pattern with Carl Edwards leaving Roush/Fenway in a Ford to join Gibbs Racing as the 4th member in a Toyota for the first time.
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The new team will run the #19.
Carl Edwards was born Aug. 15,1979 and at 36 is in his prime to finally win the championship.
Edwards started late by today's standards at 24 in 2004 and competed in 13 of the 36 race schedule and racked up a top 5 and 5 top tens. He than proceeded to run the next 360 races to become Ford and Roush/Fenway top shoe after Kenseth left for ($) greener pastures at JGR Racing in 2013
2005 ranked third, 2008 ranked #2 with 11 million for the year and the heartbreak of the 2011 Sprint Cup season of ending up in a tie with Tony Stewart and losing the championship at Homestead while garnering another 11 million in his run. 3 legitimate chances and coming up just a little short.
The racing rumor mill always said that Edwards stayed at Roush/Fenway and Ford with his old school loyalty and turned downed more lucrative contracts in his career along the way. Matt Kenseth leaving and a aging Jack Roush with now new partners calling some of the direction may have figured into his decision to move on for one last payday and a legitimate opportunity to win a championship. I personally think he did the right thing in moving in 2015 to a new team, manufacture, crew chief and should have the same jolt of adrenaline and the excitement of the new challenge that Harvick achieved in 2014.
11 years, 373 starts, 23 wins, 108 top 5's, 187 top 10's, 13 poles and led 4,862 laps.
No matter what the final standings say in 2015, do not worry about Edwards joining a soup kitchen after his racing career. He has proved to be a shrewd negotiator and is signed through 2017 and has amazed $74 million in his career earnings. Edwards is also in the fraternity of having won in all the top three NASCAR divisions, 23 Sprint, 38 Xfinity and 6 Camping World Truck series wins in his stellar racing career.
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