Harvick’s already a winner

If Nextel Cup favorite Jimmie Johnson unexpectedly falters and Kevin Harvick wins the championship at the season’s final race Sunday, Harvick will make NASCAR history.

Harvick already has clinched the title for the second-tier Busch Series after dominating that circuit, and winning the Cup at Homestead-Miami Speedway would make him the only driver to have won both series titles in the same year.

“That’s a pretty good year, regardless of whether we win this championship or not,” Harvick said at a news conference here Thursday.

Indeed, even if Johnson or another driver wins the Cup, Harvick will finish a prodigious season that put years of turbulence behind him and elevated the Bakersfield native into stock car racing’s elite class.

Johnson leads Matt Kenseth by 63 points and needs to finish only 12th or better Sunday to win his first championship. Harvick and rookie Denny Hamlin trail by 90 points and Dale Earnhardt Jr., the only other driver mathematically eligible, is 115 points behind. Qualifying for the race is scheduled for today.

“We’re excited just to be a part of it, to tell you the truth,” Harvick, 30, said after winning Sunday’s race at Phoenix International Raceway, his second victory there this year and his fifth of the season. “We’ve had a great year.”

Harvick cut his teeth racing stock cars in the West, then had fame thrust upon him after NASCAR’s darkest day, Feb. 18, 2001, a change for which he was unprepared.

That’s the day seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt was killed in a last-lap crash at the season-opening Daytona 500. Earnhardt’s longtime team owner, Richard Childress, then put a 25-year-old Harvick into Earnhardt’s Chevrolet and changed Earnhardt’s No. 3 to No. 29.

Harvick started well, winning two races in 2001 and being crowned rookie of the year. But he was ill-prepared for the pressure of succeeding an icon. His temperamental and sometimes sarcastic personality didn’t help, and at times the brash and ultra-competitive driver feuded with teammates and other drivers.

“I would have fired my butt three or four years ago,” Harvick said recently.

In addition, Childress Racing went into a long slump overall. Harvick won only three races from 2002 to 2005 and publicly complained about the team’s struggles.

That led to widespread speculation that Harvick would leave Childress after this year. But Harvick, pleased that the team had hired veteran Jeff Burton and was making other improvements, signed a three-year contract extension in May.

The team then took off, with Harvick and Burton making NASCAR’s 10-driver Chase for the Nextel Cup.

“The organization has taken a 180-degree turn from where it was last year at this time,” Harvick said Thursday.

Harvick joined the Cup series “under the most difficult situation any driver ever could have been put under, getting into a car when we lost Dale,” Childress said this week.

“I knew Kevin was going to be a great race driver,” Childress added. “I think he’s just matured so much over the last three or four years.”

Harvick was red-hot when the Chase opened this year, having won two of the five races -- at Watkins Glen, N.Y., and Richmond, Va. -- that led up to the playoff. Then he won the opening Chase race in New Hampshire and became the early favorite for the championship.

Winning it now appears unlikely, despite his win last week in Phoenix, unless Johnson has a major problem here this weekend. Harvick has four top-10 finishes in his five races at Homestead, and he finished eighth last year.

But longshot or not, Harvick isn’t complaining.

“There’s really not a lot of pressure, to tell you the truth,” he said. “It’s just, go out and go as fast as you can.

“How it falls is how it falls, and that’s just kind of how we’ve looked at it since the season started.”

james.peltz@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The Chase

NASCAR Nextel Cup standings:

*--* Rk. Driver Points Behind 1. Jimmie Johnson 6,332 -- 2. Matt Kenseth 6,269 63 t3. Kevin Harvick 6,242 90 t3. Denny Hamlin 6,242 90 5. Dale Earnhardt Jr. 6,217 115 6. Jeff Gordon 6,165 167 7. Jeff Burton 6,107 225 8. Mark Martin 6,059 273 9. Kasey Kahne 6,013 319 10. Kyle Busch 5,973 359

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* Final race: Sunday, Ford 400, Homestead-Miami Speedway,

11 a.m. PST (Channel 4).