Kevin Harvick a worthy champion

— -- HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- In the end, the right man won. And he did it in the best possible way.

Kevin Harvick was the fastest driver in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series all season long, and he was fastest again Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway when it mattered most.

Harvick drove his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet to victory in the Ford EcoBoost 400, seizing the lead with eight laps remaining to win not only the final race of the 2014 Sprint Cup season but the Sprint Cup championship itself.

After 10 months of speculation, analysis and criticism, the revised, elimination-style Chase for the Sprint Cup format actually produced the thrilling, winner-takes-all finale that NASCAR hoped for.

And a deserving winner they got. Harvick, 38, won his first Sprint Cup title in his 14th season of competition.

He did it by leaving his comfortable longtime home at Richard Childress Racing, accepting an offer to drive for his friend (and kindred spirit) Tony Stewart at Stewart-Haas Racing.

Teamed with another new recruit to the team, crew chief Rodney Childers (formerly of Michael Waltrip Racing), Harvick was fast from the start of the season. He won the second race of the 36-event campaign at Phoenix, added another win in April at Darlington, but then went through a frustrating, winless summer in which many outside observers questioned the No. 4 team's ability to close out a race.

Harvick dominated the Cup series' "laps led" category, but for a variety of reasons, he wasn't able to find his way back to Victory Lane until the October race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. After that, the Budweiser team packed the kick of a Clydesdale, scoring another crucial win at Phoenix to qualify for the Championship Round at Homestead.

The No. 4 team retained their frontrunner status throughout the final weekend. Harvick qualified best among the four championship finalists, then led 54 laps on the way to his fifth and most important race win of the 2014 season.

His challengers gave him a worthy battle. Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin led five times for 50 laps, running in front as late as Lap 259 of 267, and Ryan Newman turned in a tenacious performance for RCR, belying his underdog status by pushing Harvick all the way to the checkered flag.

If it seemed like Harvick was the man to beat all season, he certainly backed it up Sunday at Homestead.

"This is the reason we made a change and came to Stewart-Haas Racing," Harvick remarked from Victory Lane. "We're still not a year into this and it says a lot about Rodney Childers and this team.

"I'm just really excited," he added. "It's really special for everybody. I just have to thank Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson for helping me through this week. Jimmie was in my trailer as much as many of my teammates, and calling me and on the phone -- doing all the things that it takes to tell me what I needed to do today.

"This new format has been stressful, but the racing has been phenomenal."

After all the scrutiny that went into the new elimination-style Chase, everything worked out perfectly in the end for NASCAR.

Even though Hamlin and the winless Newman did not put together full seasons that statistically rivaled those of Logano and Harvick, both men proved Sunday that they were worthy championship contenders.

By halfway through the race, all four Chase-eligible drivers were running in the top five. Logano's race fell apart with a pair of poor pit stops, dropping the Connecticut native to 16th place at the flag.

But Hamlin and Newman were stout down the stretch, when a series of cautions created the opportunity for strategy calls that could win or lose the race.

The key moment came under caution on Lap 249, when leader Hamlin chose to stay out, while Harvick and Newman pitted for four and two tires, respectively.

Harvick was 12th for the restart, but on four fresh tires, he rapidly moved up to sixth place before the yellow flag flew again on Lap 254.

"I was worried when we lined up back there that I had made the wrong call, that I had cost us the season," Childers admitted. "But then I remembered what that guy behind the wheel is capable of."

Another cracking restart put Harvick up to second, and he duly made the race- and championship-winning pass on Lap 260.

"It didn't look like it was going to turn out that well, but I didn't really know as many guys had two tires as there were," Harvick related. "That ended up being the call that won us the race, because we were able to go so hard on those restarts.

"Rodney Childers isn't scared to make a call and he usually does what's right. Right or wrong, we were gonna believe in what we did."

Harvick said he was fortunate to be in the outside lane for both of the key late restarts.

"I knew I had to get a bunch of them and the seas kind of parted there as I came off of Turn 2 so we were able to get four or five of them," he said. "I just knew that it was time to go for broke at that particular point."

A common theme shared among all of the 16 drivers who qualified for the Chase was the increased pressure that this year's revised format created.

With three cutoff rounds and a winner-takes-all finale, the pressure increased throughout the 10-week Chase process, culminating in Championship week at Homestead.

"This week ate me up," Harvick admitted. "But today was fine. I was a little bit anxious both days in practice, overdriving the car and not doing things that I needed to be doing.

"Jimmie was in there in all of our debriefs, and Tony said to treat it like another race," he continued. "Today it was, and it all worked out. I'm just really proud of everybody."

For most of his career, Harvick was known as the guy who replaced Dale Earnhardt at RCR after Earnhardt was killed on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Harvick's storybook victory in his third race in the Childress car at Atlanta Motor Speedway probably created unrealistic expectations, and while he was a regular winner in Cup series competition over the next decade, he was never able to put together a consistent, championship-winning effort.

It was viewed as a gamble when Harvick made the break for Stewart-Haas, but it was a gamble that paid off big time.

From the first laps in testing at Charlotte last winter, Harvick and the No. 4 team set the pace for the rest of the field. They had their share of trouble closing the deal throughout the midseason, but lifted their game down the stretch to emerge as worthy champions.

"They had speed every week, every where we've been," said team co-owner Stewart. "That's incredibly difficult, and that stat of leading over 1,000 laps in the Chase is no easy feat.

"Kevin and the No. 4 team definitely demonstrated that they are deserving of this title. I'm really proud to have a guy who's not just a teammate, but one of my best friends, out there taking pictures and celebrating winning a championship."

Harvick credited Stewart, who won a Cup championship as an owner-driver for SHR in 2011, for keeping him calm in the run up to the championship finale.

"The last thing Tony Stewart told me today before I got in my car was: 'You're gonna go through a lot of things today. You're going to be ahead of the other guys, you're going to be behind them, but don't ever quit until the checkered flag falls, because it's going to change multiple times,'" Harvick said. "In the end, that was very true, and it turned into one hell of a race for everybody to watch. You had all the championship contenders up there, strategy and everything put together at the end.

"All the character-building moments led to this moment here -- to close that deal out at the end to get a championship."