Kevin Harvick reacts to Penske dominance at New Hampshire, stresses importance of tire tests

Team Penske dominated at New Hampshire, and Kevin Harvick believes he’s figured out the reason why. The secret to the organization’s success this past weekend? The way they’ve handled their tire testing.

During the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, the former NASCAR champion explained his reasoning: “Let’s think back to last year. The Penske cars were awful to start the season,” Harvick prefaced. “Then Joey Logano goes to North Wilkesboro for the test. Veteran pro, leader, goes to the test—they figure something out, and off they go.

“Logano goes to Loudon. All you heard when he came back was how fast the No. 22 car was. They show back up, and suddenly all the Penske cars are fast. On the pole, on the front row—Josh Berry, Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano—leading laps. And that’s why you’ve got to take your guy to the test. Because you don’t get many of those opportunities.

“As much as you want to send the other guys, not everybody is capable of taking your car and making it better. A guy like Joey Logano is. There aren’t very many drivers who can do that kind of development, to dig you out of a hole. But he’s dug them out of a hole, and now they’re back.”

“They got to Victory Lane, Logano had a great weekend and scored a lot of points, and Blaney’s right there too. When you look at how that went for them—that’s exactly what they needed. It’s a little later in the year than it has been the past couple of seasons, but they’re back on track.”

Harvick makes some good points when it comes to Penske’s success. From the moment the cars rolled off the hauler to Ryan Blaney’s win, it was Penske’s weekend, and tire testing is what Harvick is tracing it back to.

“It was lights out this weekend. From the time those cars rolled off pit road, the No. 12 was fast. You look at practice, you look at the speed that car had—the commentators are talking about it, the lap times show it—that thing was a bullet,” Harvick added. “And then you look at Logano. He outqualified him by a tenth and a half for the pole. I just can’t emphasize enough how important those tests are—and how important it is to take the right guy.

“… I think when you look at it from a manufacturer standpoint—when a Ford sends a subpar team, and I’d say anybody but Penske—if it were me picking who got to go to the tests, even when I was still driving, and they’d say, well, it’s not our turn to go test—I’d push back.

“You don’t get many of those tests. You’ve got to take your guy. Sometimes your guy doesn’t want to go. Sometimes it’s not fair to the other teams. But if you really want to keep getting ahead, you’ve got to have the guy at those tests. What’s fair doesn’t matter. Do you want to be fast, or do you want to be fair?”

Moving forward, other teams in the Cup Series might want to take these tire tests more serious. It worked out in an awesome way for Team Penske, and now everyone will be hoping to get in on the action in the future, if Harvick is right.