Harvick Heads To Homestead In Hunt For First Championship: Entering the penultimate race at Phoenix in last place among Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup contenders, #4-Kevin Harvick could only guarantee himself a spot in The Championship 4 by winning at the Arizona track. Shrugging off the pressure, Harvick turned in a dominant performance leading 264 of 312 laps on his way to Victory Lane. Now, Harvick heads into Sunday's Ford EcoBoost 400 Championship Round Race at Homestead-Miami Speedway needing just one more clutch performance to earn his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title in his 14 years competing on the circuit. Following last Sunday's showdown at Phoenix, Harvick and the three other drivers who advanced to The Championship 4 - Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin and Ryan Newman - had their points reset to 5,000. At Homestead, the format is simple. Drivers cannot earn bonus points for leading laps. Whoever crosses the line first among the quartet will win the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. None of the drivers have ever won a NSCS title, guaranteeing that the series will crown its 30th champion in its 66-year history.
Harvick, whose 109.9 driver rating and 2,083 laps led lead the series, has to like his odds of taking home his first title. He has finished higher than Logano, Hamlin and Newman in 11 races this season - the most of the Championship 4. Comparatively, Logano was the highest finisher of the four in 10 races; Hamlin in eight and Newman in six. Although he has never won at Homestead, he has been highly successful at the 1.5-mile track with five top fives, 11 tops 10s and an average finish of 8.1 in 13 starts. The #4 Budweiser/Jimmy John's Chevy driver has two victories in the past five weeks and four total this season. If Harvick wins the championship, he would join Bobby Labonte and Brad Keselowski as only the third driver to boast both a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and NASCAR Nationwide Series championship. Competing in his first season with Stewart-Haas Racing, he would earn the organization its second premier series title.(NASCAR)(11-13-2014)
Master of Survival: Newman Can Capture Cup Title At Homestead: On the final lap of last Sunday's penultimate race at Phoenix, Ryan Newman found himself on the verge of elimination, needing to gain one more position from his 12th-place spot on the track. In a final move of desperation, Newman was able to force Kyle Larson into the Turn 4 wall and pass him for 11th-place - a performance that put him one point ahead of Jeff Gordon for the final berth in the Championship 4. Newman's Arizona effort was not the first time he rose to the occasion under pressure in this season's Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Clinging onto the final position on the Chase Grid entering the Challenger Round cutoff race at Dover, the #31 Caterpillar, Inc./Quicken Loans driver produced an eighth-place finish to advance to the Contender Round. He also avoided "The Big One" at Talladega and registered a third-place showing in the process to solidify his spot in the Eliminator Round. The NASCAR world will see if Newman has one more clutch effort left in the tank for Sunday's Championship race at Homestead. A 13-year full-time veteran of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Newman can capture his first title in any NASCAR national series by finishing ahead of Kevin Harvick, Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin.
In 12 Homestead starts, Newman owns one top five and four top 10s. His highest finish at the Miami-area track was a third-place showing in 2012. One potential note of interest: Newman is the only one of the Championship 4 who did not test at Homestead at the end of October. Competing in his first season with Richard Childress Racing, Newman can earn the organization its first premier series title since 1994 when Dale Earnhardt captured RCR its sixth championship. Newman would be the only driver other than Earnhardt (six titles) to clinch a premier series crown with RCR.
Newman has proven to be the true underdog story in the Chase. Despite not winning a race during the regular season, the consistent 36-year-old racked up 10 top-10 finishes and placed lower than 30th only two times to clinch the 16th and final spot in NASCAR's playoffs. No matter how Newman fares at Homestead, he will achieve a career-best finish in the final standings. His previous high finish was sixth - a feat he has achieved three times (2002, '03, '06).(NASCAR)(11-13-2014)