At this point, the question is if Kevin Harvick will ever lose again, not when.
I'm kidding, of course ... sort of.
On Sunday, Harvick collected his third consecutive win of this young NASCAR season. There have been four races so far in 2018. Harvick has won three of them. In the fourth, the Daytona 500, he (along with half the field) wrecked out.
In "normal" races this season, he's 3 for 3. He is easily NASCAR's championship favorite.
It is insanely difficult to make it to NASCAR's Cup Series as a full-time driver. Winning a race there is even more so. To win three in a row is ludicrous, historic, legendary ... basically any other impressive adjectives you can think of.
But it's also only the beginning to what will surely be one of Harvick's finest professional seasons, perhaps even better than his championship-winning campaign in 2014. That season he won five races.
You don't think he can collect two more wins in the next 32 weeks?
To truly appreciate the terrific stretch Harvick has been on, look back at history. Since 1972, only 14 other drivers have won three Cup races in a row. Considering some of them, Richard Petty and Jeff Gordon, did so multiple times, there have now been 24 such instances of that happening in NASCAR history.
Of those 23 other times, the driver went on to win the championship nine times.
But those statistics alone don't do Harvick's accomplishment justice. Consider the epic company he's now joined on that list: Bobby Allison, Dave Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip, Rusty Wallace, Harry Gant, Dale Earnhardt and Bill Elliott. That's in addition to Petty and Gordon.
There are several other current drivers to have accomplished the feat, too. Jimmie Johnson has done it twice, both in 2004 and his championship-winning 2007 season. Kyle Busch did it in 2015 (winning five out of six races over the summer) when he won his only championship. Joey Logano joined Busch in 2015, finishing the season with a career-best six victories.
Maybe the point to be gleaned here is too obvious, but it bears stating regardless: nobody in NASCAR history has ever done what Harvick now has and gone on to have a bad season. By the current rules, it's almost impossible for that to happen.
But Harvick has joined this exclusive fraternity in his first four races of the season. Even if he doesn't win again for the rest of the year, he'll likely still advance to at least the second round of the playoffs (barring an equally historic collapse).
Now the natural next question is: Can Harvick make it four in a row?
Maybe _ he won at Auto Club Speedway, the site of this week's race, in 2011, and also finished second in 2015 and 2016. His career average finish there is 15 though, so he could just as easily slip.
Only six drivers in history _ Yarborough, Earnhardt, Elliott, Martin, Gordon and Johnson _ have won four races in a row. They all are either in the Hall of Fame or destined to be inducted one day (Gordon will surely see his name called this time around).
They are the sport's all-time elite. One more win, and Harvick will join them.
And remember _ the season's just getting started.
