Harvick needs a strong finish

. Kevin Harvick seriously dislikes Charlotte Motor Speedway, and in case he needed a reminder, the track staff put together a video with some of his most memorable sound bites:

• "When I pull in the gate, I just have a bad attitude here."

• "It would be nice if they filled this place with water, nothing ever goes right and I hate coming here."

• "For me, it's just been that one racetrack that just frustrates the hell out of me that I can't figure out."

And what did he say five months ago after winning the prestigious Coca-Cola 600?

"Even though we won, I'm still miserable. In about 30 minutes I will be happy when we drive out of that tunnel."

So, it's safe to assume Harvick is dreading this week's return to the suburban Charlotte track. It's probably not the best approach, though, particularly at this stage of the season.

Harvick goes into Saturday night's race second in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship standings, trailing Carl Edwards by just one point. Neither driver is particularly strong at Charlotte, but the two swept the May events. Edwards won the $1 million All-Star Race and Harvick won the 600, the longest race on the NASCAR schedule, a week later.

But Harvick's win was a bit of an anomaly. He struggled through a large part of the race, only to recover and put himself near the front in what ultimately turned into a fuel-mileage race. Dale Earnhardt Jr. seemed to have the victory in hand, but ran out of gas on the last lap and Harvick sailed by for the surprise win.

"I can't be grumpy because we did win the last race here," Harvick admitted. "It was a fuel-mileage race, but still we were running fifth on the last restart. That would have been like a victory in itself if we had finished fifth. Things have been going a lot better."

The 600 win, combined with his victory in the 2007 All-Star race, make up the bulk of the $5.2 million in winnings Harvick has earned at Charlotte over his career. That alone led him to promise track president Marcus Smith he'll "come with a good attitude" this week.

But that might not be the easiest thing for Harvick considering his record at Charlotte. In 21 career starts, he has just five top-10 finishes. Two came in his first two visits to the track, and two were in his last two visits.

Everything in between has been all over the map.

"We've definitely run better at Charlotte over the last couple of years. For us that's a huge step," Harvick said. "In the past, it's been a place where you just want to come and survive and try to get a top-10. From a driver's standpoint, it's just never been a racetrack where I've had a great feel. There's nothing wrong with the surface, nothing wrong with the shape of the racetrack or anything like that. It's just from a performance standpoint, we just don't have the stats that we need."

That's not been too much of a problem for Harvick over the first month of the Chase.

He opened the playoff with a second-place finish at Chicago to take over sole possession of the points lead, then a 12th-place at New Hampshire dropped him one spot after Round 2.

He was back to the top of the leaderboard with a 10th-place run at Dover, and looked like he might leave Kansas with his ranking intact as Edwards struggled through the early part of the race. Then Edwards rebounded, making a very late pass of Harvick to finish fifth to Harvick's sixth. It broke a tie between the two in the standings, and gave Edwards the lead.

But Harvick took a big-picture approach to Kansas, where he figured he'd struggle compared to Edwards and race winner Jimmie Johnson, and plans to do the same with Charlotte.

"We knew (Edwards) and (Johnson) were going to be really good and we've been OK at best," Harvick said.