Harvick on SHR's Ford transition: "A lot of things are changing"

“We’d be crazy to think there’s not going to be some bumps in the road just because there’s a lot of things that are changing,” Harvick said this week at a Kevin Harvick Foundation charity event in the Charlotte area. “But, I think with the amount of people that we have to go through the transition to do the things that we need to do, I couldn’t ask for a better group of people.

“I think it’ll be a long winter, but with a group of racers that we have, we should fire off where we have been.”

Earlier this week, Harvick’s crew chief, Rodney Childers, replied to a fan on Twitter and said the organization was working “very hard” on preparing for next season.

Three of four SHR drivers in 2016 – Harvick, team co-owner Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch – won races this past season and qualified for the Chase. None advanced to the Championship 4 at Homestead to compete for the series title, however.

Stewart has since retired from NASCAR competition and will be replaced in the No. 14 Chevrolet next season with Clint Bowyer. Harvick, Busch and Danica Patrick return in 2017 as the SHR organization moves from the Chevrolet to Ford camp.

“I think everyone has a great frame of mind a Stewart-Haas Racing because, for us, it’s a huge opportunity to kind of step out of that box,” Harvick said. “It’s not like we had been building our own engines, but we had been building some of our own chassis and things through the last year and have stood on our own for the last 14 months.

“From the performance side, we have a great group of people. And I think adding on to all those groups of people like we had planned will be great.”

The addition of Clint Bowyer

Harvick said one of things is most looking forward to in the new season is having Bowyer as a teammate.

“I’ve known Clint since the first time he sat in a car at RCR (Richard Childress Racing). I was there with him. Clint and I are really good friends. He is cut from that same Stewart-Haas Racing mold that everybody there is,” he said.

“I think Clint coming on board will be positive, especially with me knowing him. With Mike (Bugarewicz) being the crew chief on that car, we’ve had a great working relationship since he was an engineer working on my car.

“There are a lot of things to build on and a lot of positives to look forward to.”