In modern NASCAR, champions aren’t crowned until the last lap of the last race of the season. Four drivers (from three super teams) arrive at the season finale with one last chance at the title — and the highest finisher wins it all. This weekend, Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick, and William Byron will battle to see who comes out a champion. And they’ll go to battle at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Arizona.
Phoenix is arguably the most important track in NASCAR, if only because it’s where the champion’s been crowned since 2020. The 1.0-mile asphalt oval isn’t without its quirks and specific strategies, either. That’s why I called up the winningest Cup Series driver ever at Phoenix, Kevin Harvick, who racked up nine wins across 21 years.
So, how do you win Phoenix and the NASCAR Cup Series championship, in Harvick’s mind?
“Well, that’s a loaded question,” he said.
Harvick may have recently retired from full-time driving to become a commentator on races for FOX Sports (and host a podcast host with the network “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour“), but the retired champion kindly explained, in champion-level detail, exactly what it takes to leave with the trophy.
A quick Kevin Harvick history lesson on Phoenix Raceway
Phoenix Raceway
Photo by: David Rosenblum / NKP / Motorsport Images
NASCAR hosted its season finale at the 1.5-mile Homestead-Miami Speedway oval in Florida before the grand finale moved to Phoenix in 2020. NASCAR has said it likely won’t stay there forever, but hasn’t shared any concrete plans about what’s next.
Phoenix is a “huge part” of Harvick’s career — from the old days to the modern ones, after the Cup Series introduced its new “NextGen” race car and essentially flipped the track layout.
“I grew up on the West Coast, and Phoenix was kind of our Super Bowl for the touring divisions throughout the years,” Harvick said. “But that Phoenix is not the same Phoenix we see today. [The newer track] was very uniquely redesigned to have a stadium feel to it.
“The start-finish line used to be on what is now the back straightaway. The front straightaway was redesigned so fans could see it from the infield. You’re really in position to see great finishes, which we have seen. And what is now the front straightaway was banked so you could elevate and see the cars from other places on the racetrack.”
Harvick categorizes Phoenix in three ways: short, flat, and “known for its restarts.” There’s asphalt from the outside wall to pit-road exit, leading cars to fan out six-wide on restarts. Phoenix also isn’t a standard oval. It has four turns and a front-straightaway dogleg that’s not labeled as an official corner, which is where those restarts occur.
Phoenix hasn’t been universally loved as the season finale — especially with barn-burners at Homestead — because short tracks have been a struggle with the NextGen car. But Phoenix has all the glitz of a season finale on the surface, and all the challenges of one underneath.
Those challenges start, in some ways, at the end.
Harvick’s Phoenix Tip #1: Stay loose
Phoenix is a track where getting the last laps right is maybe more crucial than nailing the start.
“You need to qualify good, but I don’t think that’s the end of the world. If your car’s going to win, you need to be good on the long run. You have to have a car that you can adjust on throughout the day. How it starts isn’t how it’s going to need to finish.”
In NASCAR, races have “long runs” and “short runs.” Cup cars can last 95 laps on one tank of fuel, and the race itself lasts 312. A short run at Phoenix maxes out at about 30 laps in the Cup car owing mostly to tire degradation: the rubber breaks down intensely over the first 30 laps before plateauing and wearing much more slowly over the next 70 laps or so.
“Kevin found speed by being fastest during that plateau area,” explained one race engineer I spoke with. “Since lap times degrade very little during that section of the run, it’s all about consistency.”
But the Phoenix finale is about more than consistency. It’s about anticipation.
William Byron and Kevin Harvick lead the charge in 2023 in Phoenix
Photo by: Matthew T. Thacker / NKP / Motorsport Images
The race starts midday and transitions into dusk, so the car has to be set up for the lower temps of a desert sunset. The track’s surface changes with the heat loss and the rubber buildup from tires, meaning teams have to find the right balance between loose (rotates too much, like it’s on ice skates) and tight (doesn’t turn sharply enough).
“We saw it last year,” said Harvick. “We saw the racetrack really change. 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, and sometimes a little looser than you like it, in order to keep the turn in the car throughout the whole day.”
Harvick’s Phoenix Tip #2: Master the restarts
A patented Phoenix restart in 2019
Photo by: Russell LaBounty / NKP / Motorsport Images
Phoenix restarts are one-of-a-kind. NASCAR’s rolling-start restarts bring cars two-wide toward the green flag. But in Phoenix, cars immediately dive left to drive the shortest distance possible through the dogleg, fanning out five- and six-wide.
There’s just one problem: the yellow line marking the “bottom” of the track, where it transitions from banked corner to flat apron, means not everyone gets to where they want to go.
“The hardest part about the restart is not mistiming it, because you can’t go below the yellow line until you get to the start-finish line,” Harvick said. “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.
“But you can’t be conservative. You have to go as low as you can go, because if you don’t, somebody’s going to go lower. We don’t see a ton of wrecks, but the ones that do happen are usually from somebody being slow to react or not going all the way to the bottom. Somebody shoves their nose inside of them, and next thing you know, somebody hits the inside wall.”
A driver’s position in the field can also make or break their restart in Phoenix. NASCAR restarts typically have about 40 cars in two lines of 20, and the lead car accelerates in a “restart zone” before the green flag. But with the Phoenix reconfiguration, a lot of the field is still in the final corner when the leader accelerates.
“Being able to accelerate in the corner is not easy,” Harvick said.
Then, there’s the physical toll those left-hooks take. Drivers slam onto the flatter apron from the banked racing surface, and they don’t have cushy suspension to protect them.
“When I drove the NextGen car, the last thing I wanted to do was go on the apron,” Harvick said. “It’s the most uncomfortable ride you could possibly imagine, because the car bottoms out. It’s a jarring blow every time.”
Harvick’s Phoenix Tip #3: Brake hard, drive harder
Restart or not, drivers have to settle into a rhythm around Phoenix. That means carrying as much speed into and out of the corners as possible.
“The first thing that I always try to tell people is: You have to get the braking,” said Harvick. “I think being able to still get a nice shape into the corner, but drive the car into the corner as hard as you can, is where we always made up a lot of time.”
Harvick also said drivers “can’t be locked into one line.”
“If everybody’s on the bottom of the racetrack, you’re never going to pass them,” Harvick said. “That was one thing that always made us good with this style of racetrack: the fact that you had to go searching around for what you needed to be doing.”
Harvick was also good at Phoenix because “you trail off the brake and go right back to the throttle, and there was not a lot of out-of-the-throttle roll time.” It suited his driving style, and if he nailed the transition from brake to throttle, he knew it was a good lap.
“The first cue, for me, was when I would let off the brake: what the front tires would do, and how long it took for those front tires to grab and go the other direction,” Harvick said. “The second cue was: How hard could I put the throttle down on the exit of the corner?”
Because Phoenix is a different shape on each end of the track, the technique is different in Turns 1 and 2 than it is in Turns 3 and 4. (And often, Harvick said, if you do well in Turns 1 and 2, you’ll overdrive 3 and 4. It’s hard to get a perfect lap in.)
“I always found that Phoenix was a place where, in Turn 1, you could turn the steering wheel a lot harder than most places,” Harvick said. “That second tug on the wheel was something I felt like was an advantage for us, being able to still have your car turn through the middle of one and two — and as soon as it did turn, being able to go back to the throttle and drive up off the corner.”
In Turns 3 and 4, Harvick had his eyes on one thing: the yellow line.
“For me, Turn 3 was a corner that I wanted to be able to drive the car in straight,” Harvick said. “I wanted to have my eyes towards the inside wall to pick up that yellow line, because I felt like it was kind of like a trough. The left-front tire loves that little line in the trough.
“If you could hit it right with your left-front, then you could lift off the brake and start to apply some partial throttle. Then [you could] have your eyes up and drive straight [toward] the start-finish line. I think you’re going to win the race on the bottom in 3 and 4.”
