Kevin Harvick is well on his way to earning his a potential fourth straight Championship 4 performance and seventh in the eight year era. Yes, we have plenty of racing left ahead of us as we’ve just now moved into the second half of the regular season, but find me someone more deserving right now than Harvick.

Harvick, tied Denny Hamlin for most wins (3) of the season thus far on Saturday afternoon at the Pocono Raceway with a victory in the Pocono Organics 325.

The win was Harvick’s 11th top 10 finish of the season as well and seventh top five too. But, all three of his wins have come since the post COVID-19 break. The California native said their experience together is the biggest factor in that.

“I think the experience of our team definitely plays a huge role, Harvick said. “I think the experience of our organization plays a bigger role. We have a boss who has been through a lot of different situations that the company has had to navigate in order to move things around, change things, do a lot of things when Tony had his accidents.

“There were those types of situations where we had to put different drivers in the car. It was definitely not easy.

“I think when you look at a company that is able to navigate those types of times, this is a very similar situation with the same group of people. You listen to the things that are happening, the way the shop has to be organized and work, it’s difficult.

“To be able to take this quality of cars to the racetrack is definitely a huge credit to everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing.”

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His crew chief Rodney Childers agreed.

“Well, I would say that we have the best group,” Childers said. “We haven’t had a lot of people that have come and gone. Overall we do have the best group, best shop guys, best pit crew, best road crew we’ve ever had. That’s what’s important. I think everybody knows the people side of it is the most important part.

“To say we’re in championship form? I don’t know what championship form is. Is championship form unloading off the truck, no practice and qualifying? Is championship form going back to the old schedule and doing the things that we’ve always done?”

Childers, said the experience of the group in this era of change, especially without practice is actually an advantage.

“I will say I feel like for the 4 team it is an advantage to unload and not have practice and those things,” Childers continued. “Our history of our team has been unloading good and doing a great job at the racetrack of details, all that stuff.

“I think some of this, since we went back to racing, has been in our hands and our wheelhouse a little bit. Obviously with being able to win three of them, coming close to even more, that part shows.”

Childers, also noted that they’re doing all of this while having to distance. It’s been tough, but still working.

“It’s really been hard on the shop guys. Keeping the shop guys and road guys separated, it’s a lot harder than what it sounds. It takes everybody to get these things ready to race, get them ready to load on the truck. Last week before Talladega I didn’t go to the shop a single day. This week I was only there for probably three hours one day.

“We’ve tried to do everything that we can do to keep people as safe as possible. My engineer Dax has completely stayed away from the shop. He hasn’t been to the shop in a month. You have to look at that. You have to look at people like Kevin and myself and Dax, all those people.

“Anybody on the race team can’t be replaced, but if it’s a mechanic in the shop, at least there’s another mechanic in the shop that can help out. We don’t have an extra Kevin Harvick sitting in the closet. Sometimes I wish we had two of him, but we don’t. We don’t have another one of me, we don’t have another Dax.

“It’s been tough. Everybody has been doing a great job with it, just trying to do our best.”

Now, it’s not just Harvick thriving. So is his teammate Aric Almirola. The driver of the No. 10 Ford has three straight top 10 finishes on the season now including a third place run on Saturday.

“I know Aric has run really well the last few weeks,” Harvick said of his teammate. “That’s what we need. We need all four cars to perform well. When that happens, it pushes everybody to be better quicker. You have things that you can really detail out.

“I think as we get to the middle of the season here, I hope that all four cars make the same progression that Aric’s car has made. I know Clint has run well. We got to get Cole running a little bit better.

“When all four cars are running well, it’s just better for everybody. Things just keep getting better when you can have the whole company performing well.”

Almirola, is just happy to be up there with Harvick and ready to keep it going.

“Him (Harvick) and Rodney (Childers) and that whole team do an incredible job of consistently running at that level,” Almirola said of Harvick. “We were able to do it today, so that was good. I’ll mark that up as a success.

“It was nice to be able to compete with him there, to lead with him behind me, and he got close because he was on a little bit better tires, I was able to hold him off and actually start to drive off from him a little bit. That certainly felt good. Any time you can keep Kevin Harvick behind you and actually start to drive away a little bit, it feels pretty good.

“But we’ve got to continue to build off of this. We’ve got to do it consistently.”