Time's up: Kevin Harvick runs out of laps in his pursuit of Logano
Kevin Harvick's quest for back-to-back NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championships began in solid fashion in Sunday's Daytona 500, a race in which he was a contender throughout but came on particularly strong at the end before finishing second to Joey Logano.
Lined up three rows back in sixth for a green-white-checkered restart, Harvick quickly knifed his way to the runner-up position, but ran out of time trying to catch Logano when a last-lap wreck brought out the caution and froze the field before the leaders reached Turn 4.
"It's definitely disappointing," said Harvick's 2014 championship-winning crew chief, Rodney Childers. "It's probably the most disappointed I've ever been with finishing second, but overall I'm happy for my team, and everybody has done an awesome job over the winter."
If the race had remained green, did Harvick believe his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevy could pass Logano's stout No. 22 Team Penske Ford? The reigning Sprint Cup Series champion was getting a solid tow from a line led by fellow Chevy driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Toyota's Denny Hamlin when the yellow flag ended the race prematurely.
"Coming to the white, you never know what's going to happen," said Harvick, who notched his first and only Daytona 500 win in 2007, while competing for Richard Childress Racing. "Obviously everything is shuffled out to where these two guys were nose to tail behind me. Maybe I should have backed up a little bit harder. But I didn't want to back up so much that they drove right by me. I wanted to try to time it so I could have them to my bumper, have a good run coming off of (Turn) 4 and have a shot.
"That didn't pan out. Didn't even have a chance to try to time it out."
Childers lamented his driver not having a shot at Logano coming to the checkered flag.
"We had one of the fastest cars down here the whole time, as far as 500 cars, and we tried to just be patient and wait till the end and then show what we had, but it's definitely disappointing with the caution coming out," Childers said. "I thought we were in the catbird seat and were going to be able to make something happen off of (Turn) 4. You don't get too many opportunities to try to win the Daytona 500, and to be that close ... But overall it was good for our team and great to get a good start to the season, and it just shows that this team is ready to come back and do the same thing we did last year."
Harvick won five races last season -- including the winner-take-all finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway -- en route to his first Sprint Cup Series title in his first season with Stewart-Haas Racing.
His performance at Daytona, though just one race, was a commendable start to his pursuit of Championship No. 2.
"Definitely, for us it was a good, solid day to start the season," Harvick said. "Obviously you want to try to win the race. But sometimes you're just happy to keep rolling and going out of here and head to Atlanta with a solid day.
"Really proud of my team and how they handled the week, adjusted on the car, did everything they needed to do and came out of here with a solid day."
Harvick admitted being glad to put Daytona Speedweeks -- which formally kicked off Feb. 12 with NASCAR Media Day -- in the rearview mirror.
"I'm ready to go to Atlanta," he said. "It seems like we've been here for a month. I'm glad today is over. I'm relieved for my team that we had a good, solid finish, a good start to the season.
"I'm excited about, you know, (about) everything that we do on our mile-and-a-half (track) stuff. I'm looking forward to going to Atlanta. That's really what it's all about, is trying to win a race to get yourself positioned in the Chase and being able to try to win more races if you can do that early enough."
VIDEO: Kevin Harvick talks about finishing second in the Daytona 500
