Kevin Harvick's Chase hangs in the balance at Dover

— -- NEW YORK -- Kevin Harvick still hasn't had his Thursday morning coffee and he's about to go on air to start a string of media interviews.

Hey, Kevin, how you doing?

"Better than the last time you saw me," he says.

The last time I had seen Harvick, all I saw was the back of his head while I was chasing a driver who was in no mood to talk after running out of gas with less than three laps remaining at New Hampshire. Beyond the lack of response to questions about his stumbling for the second time in two weeks, there wasn't much to see.

Four days later, Harvick appears calm and philosophical about the task ahead: He most likely must win Sunday at Dover International Speedway to advance to the second round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

He is feeling better than the last time reporters had seen him, he insists.

"The guy at the race track, the competitive nature of who we are at the race track is much different than who you are once you take perspective of the situation during the week," Harvick says. "When you're just out of the car and you're frustrated after leading 200-and-some laps of a 300-lap race, that's not really that much fun.

"As you look back on it, things could have ended better. But we really did everything but three laps worth of what we needed to do. And I feel like we can do the same thing this weekend at Dover."

Harvick insists he can treat this weekend as normally as possible. He entered Phoenix last year six points behind Jeff Gordon for the final spot on points heading into an elimination race .

But this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. He is 23 points behind 12th-place Dale Earnhardt Jr., meaning even a second-place finish may not be enough. And dominating all season and failing to advance from the first round is different from needing points to advance from the semifinal round to the championship race.

The Stewart-Haas Racing driver won his last two races and three of the last four at Phoenix. He has never won at Dover, although he led 91 laps in May and 223 a year ago. It's an incredible turnaround from his performance at the track while driving for Richard Childress Racing.

"I feel like we should have won two out of the last three races at [Dover]," Harvick says. "Performance-wise, it's been a track that we should have won at.

"At RCR, that was just one of the racetracks that we just dreaded going to and it was just one of our worst tracks. Go back to the Earnhardt days, same deal, it was one of their worst racetracks. ... Last year was a fresh approach. New team, new situation."

It seems a bit ridiculous that Harvick needs a win at Dover after such a great season. How in the world did the defending Sprint Cup champion get to this point after a season in which he led 1,676 laps, garnering two wins and 10 runner-up finishes?

He got there in what he believes was just racing misfortune. Some would view it as costly mistakes.

In the Chase opener at Chicagoland, Harvick tangled with Jimmie Johnson. Harvick immediately realized he had a tire rub, but the smoke dissipated after a couple of laps. His spotter, former driver Tim Fedewa, told him he would be fine.

Less than a lap later, Harvick spun and hit the wall.

"I don't know that we really made a mistake in Chicago. ... It's really hard to tell," Harvick says. "There's so much happening so fast."

From the outside looking in, it looks like a no-brainer. In the opening round of the Chase, when NASCAR cuts the field from 16 to 12, a finish in the top 20 is a lot better than 42nd. He should have pitted.

"Last year, I wrecked at Martinsville and two seconds [in the other two races] wouldn't have gotten through to the next round," Harvick says about last season's win-and-you're-in situation at Phoenix. "There's just so many coulda, woulda, shouldas. All the coulda, woulda, shouldas went right last year."

Then last week at New Hampshire, Harvick led 216 laps but ran out of gas with less than three laps remaining.

With four caution laps after the lap 215 restart, all Harvick needed to save under green was one lap worth of gas. He figured he had already saved the team about three laps worth of gas, so they should have been fine.

What happened? Harvick doesn't know. And he doesn't feel the need to find out from crew chief Rodney Childers. It's part of the deal he made with Childers before they started working together: Harvick would work as the driver, giving Chidlers all the information he could, and Childers would prepare the cars.

"I try to stay out of the ins and outs of problems and things because it just makes it harder to have me asking questions of something that I don't do on a daily basis," Harvick says. "Once I feel like I've given all the information I can give, I stay out of it."

That is much different from the way he worked at RCR, second-guessing crew chiefs. He left RCR after the 2013 season for SHR, an indication that third-place finishes in the standings just weren't good enough.

Now he will try to approach this weekend at Dover just as he did last weekend at New Hampshire and just as he will next week at Charlotte, whether he advances in the Chase or not: Do things a driver can control. Can't control engines. Can't control a piece that might break even with best quality control.

"As you take it all in, It's either going to happen or it's not going to happen," Harvick explains. "That's the same way we approached Phoenix last year. ... I kind of enjoy these situations, to tell you the truth."

He knows the reality: He can have his best weekend and not win.

"It's kind of the way the whole season has gone, to be quite honest with you as far as winning," Harvick said two races into the Chase. "But the cars are performing well. You've just got to keep grinding away. It's not the end of the world, regardless of what happens this weekend."

Regardless of whether he wins his way into the Chase, Harvick will still go racing the next weekend at Charlotte.

"They're going to be just like the first however many weeks," Harvick says of the remaining schedule. "It's so regimented in how we approach things and it's still going to be the same approach. ... At the end of the year, you'll look at it and say, 'What could we do better?'

"You try to make yourself better from whatever situations you went through. And that's really when you'll look back at a Loudon or Chicago and say, 'I could have done this' or 'I could have done that.'"