Harvick learns to keep his cool

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Kevin Harvick is still one of NASCAR's great unknowns, even after seven seasons on the tour and plenty of big wins, including Indianapolis' Brickyard 400 and the Daytona 500.He used to carry his emotions on his sleeve and wasn't afraid to let his feelings be known.But Harvick has cooled down, if not mellowed. And in the clutch, he's as tough as Jimmie Johnson.Harvick will come to Daytona a year after winning the 500 for car owner Richard Childress. And crew chief Todd Berrier is almost smug about what he and Harvick didn't show during the Daytona testing two weeks ago.But last week they were at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and California Speedway, for NASCAR's two major tests of its new car.No one wants to show what he has learned, of course.Last spring, Harvick came within just a few miles of opening the season with back-to-back wins in Florida and California. But a cut tire in California while leading easily in the closing laps prevented that."If you go back and look at it now, it kind of set the tone for the whole year," Harvick said. "I think we had like nine or 10 flat tires in races last year."This time the problem could be the new car and how to make it work at Daytona and then in California."I think everybody in the garage is pleasantly surprised with how well the cars drive on the bigger tracks," Harvick said. "As we are able to focus on one particular car, the handling will get better."One key at the Daytona 500 will be tires."As the tire run goes on, the cars seem to fall off a lot (in speed)," Harvick said. "That's going to require you to move around the track, so I think you're going to see a variety of grooves."I think the racing is going to be better on these types of tracks because the speeds are a little bit slower and the falloff is still going to be there. At Las Vegas, I think everybody was surprised just how well the cars unloaded. The most difficult thing we've experienced the last few days is just the different mind-sets coming into the different tracks."Las Vegas is very wide-open, with lots of grip (the asphalt is only a year old). At Fontana you slide around, and there's a lot of falloff on the tires. Just trying to understand the difference in setups was a good experience for us."Teammate Clint Bowyer got in some laps at Texas Motor Speedway with the new car a few weeks ago, in a Goodyear test with Juan Pablo Montoya. And Harvick got feedback from his teammate.Harvick said that the new cars, a few inches larger, particularly around the driver's part of the compartment, are a little roomier."When you get in and out of these cars, you understand the biggest reason we did all this car-swap stuff was for safety," he said. "You can get in and out of the cars no problem with your helmet on. You've got plenty of room. Your head's not resting against the window net."Still, they're a handful to drive."Obviously it's a different beast, but I don't think anybody is worried about what we did in the past, we're all looking to go forward," Harvick said.Despite NASCAR's hopes that the new cars will allow teams to run basically the same car at Martinsville as at Daytona, teams are still looking at inventories of 10 to 12 cars, and the Daytona versions are different from the Las Vegas and California versions, Harvick said."In setup, they're substantially different from Daytona to California," he said. "You're doing all you can for speed at Daytona, with a little bit of handling, where at California and Vegas it's all about handling, making max downforce."You still have different cars that you race. But all the cars in the shop aren't going to be different -- although you're still going to have your road-race cars, you're still going to have your speedway cars."This is the first of Daytona's SpeedWeeks, beginning with Media Day, then practice for 500 poles runs and for Saturday night's Bud Shootout, the first real test of the new cars this season."Last year I was part of a three-car pack that was the breakaway pack for three fuel runs," Harvick said, referring to the final 500 with the sleek aerodynamic models. "This time I think if you're looking for a big pack racing at Daytona, it's probably not going to be there -- unless you have a caution."The cars are very easy to drive side-by-side. The roughness of the track is the only thing that makes them move around. At Talladega these things were like driving a Cadillac."Can his teams catch up to the Hendrick guys?"Right now they're definitely the team we're all trying to catch up to," Harvick said. "They've definitely set the bar. But I feel we've made strides to close that gap. I feel pretty confident we've done that."And that's what makes the first week of the Daytona 500 so great -- everybody has a chance at the championship, everybody is rejuvenated and refreshed."(Contact Mike Mulhern at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)