Kevin Harvick hung up his racing gloves over two years ago, yet even in his second year of retirement, he continues to dominate the statistical leaderboards at Phoenix when driving the Next Gen car. Harvick competed in four races at Phoenix following the introduction of Next Gen cars in the Cup Series back in 2022. During these appearances, he finished two races in the top 5 and the other two in the top 10 with an average finish of 5.8.
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Harvick’s overall average finish at Phoenix stands at 8.5 across 42 starts, with 20 top-5 finishes and 31 top-10 finishes. However, a recent statistic from NASCAR Insights shared on X highlights an even more impressive feat: Harvick’s average running position on the track is 5.27, surpassing all currently active drivers.
Trailing behind is William Byron, whose average running position on the Phoenix track is 5.41, while his average finish position on the track in the Next Gen era is 8.3 of six starts, consisting of one win.
The list further constitutes Ryan Blaney on P3 with 5.61 average running position, Kyle Larson with 8.30, Ross Chastain with 9.53, Tyler Reddick with 9.69, Denny Hamlin with 9.98, Martin Truex Jr. with 11.28, Chase Elliott with 11.43, and Christopher Bell rounding off the top-10 with 12.23 average running position at Phoenix in the Next Gen car.
Average running position at Phoenix with the NextGen car. pic.twitter.com/T3Z53j2PvQ
— NASCAR Insights (@NASCARInsights) March 5, 2025
Phoenix has hosted the season finale for the past five years, and when Harvick retired in 2023, he delivered a memorable performance to the Phoenix crowd, finishing in seventh in his final season finale.
Who is the winningest driver at Phoenix Raceway so far?
While NASCAR’s relationship with Phoenix Raceway isn’t particularly lengthy, it has nonetheless been the backdrop for many memorable moments since its debut in the 1988 season. In 57 Cup Series races held there, Kevin Harvick has been the most victorious, with nine wins on the track. He leads his closest competitors, Jimmie Johnson and Joey Logano, who each have four wins.
Kyle Busch, with three wins, ranks second in victories at Phoenix, yet he remains a considerable distance from Harvick’s record. Still, Busch is determined to reassert his competitiveness. For those like Busch aiming to conquer Phoenix, Harvick himself has previously offered some sage advice on mastering the track. He noted that maintaining a loose setup can be beneficial as conditions evolve.
“A lot of the cars that were super loose to start the race wound up being the really good cars at the end because the track tightens up as the day goes on. I think you just have to run the car as loose as possible,” Harvick observed after the 2023 Phoenix race.
Moreover, he emphasized the importance of acing the restarts: “The hardest part about the restart is not mistiming it… The first thing everybody wants to do is go left. So, from a driver’s standpoint, you just have to be aware of where that start-finish line is in order to not get a penalty.”
Harvick’s final piece of advice was to be bold with braking and versatile with driving lines: “If everybody’s on the bottom of the racetrack, you’re never going to pass them,” stated the 2014 NASCAR Cup Champion. It will certainly be intriguing to see which drivers can absorb Harvick’s wisdom and successfully apply it in the upcoming fourth race of the 2025 NASCAR Cup season.
