Too many times already in this year’s Chase for the Nextel Cup, Kevin Harvick’s championship trek has taken untimely detours.

There have been multiple trips down pit road for flat tires. He’s been caught up in other drivers’ accidents – two alone in last weekend’s race at Martinsville, Va.

And he has had uncharacteristic problems with his Richard Childress Racing No. 29 Chevrolet, such as a transmission problem at Kansas and a blown engine at Dover, Del.

All that drama, and what does he have to show for it? Amazingly, it’s the second position in points.

Harvick trails leader Matt Kenseth by 36 points with four races remaining, including Sunday’s Bass Pro Shops 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

“Everybody is pushing everything to the extreme, whether it’s engines, bodies, drivers. No matter what it is, you’re pushing everything as hard as you can,” Harvick, 30, said. “You’re walking that ultra thin line of being good with an advantage of more horsepower or more downforce or whatever the case may be.

“It appears to be sloppy, but it’s just a lot of us have had good fortunes through the year, and now it seems like some of those bad fortunes have caught up to us.”

They certainly have.

Chase contenders started racking up bad finishes at the first race back in September at New Hampshire when Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch and Kasey Kahne were involved in accidents.

Busch and Harvick had engine failures at Dover; Jeff Gordon had a fuel pump failure at Kansas; Johnson, Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. wrecked at Talladega, Ala.; Mark Martin and Denny Hamlin wrecked at Charlotte; and Burton lost an engine at Martinsville.

The only Chase driver without a serious problem so far has been Kenseth. His worst performance has been 23rd at Kansas when his team completely missed the setup.

“I think all 10 teams are really good and have performed well week in and week out, and everybody is pushing as hard as they can right now. I think it’s going to come down to who has the least amount of problems,” Harvick said.

“If you look at the race results and the running order in a lot of the races, through the races, I think that most of the Top 10 teams are going to be in the Top 10 pretty much most of the time. All 10 of those teams are there for a reason and seem to be running good every week.

“It just seems like a lot of crazy little things are happening.”

Not crazy enough to keep Harvick’s focus off the prize at the end of the season, however.

He already has this season’s Busch Series title wrapped up and would like to become the first driver in NASCAR history to win Busch and Nextel Cup championships in the same season.

“Any time you set out to race, I mean, we set goals at the beginning of the year, and our goals at the beginning of the year were to race for both championships and put ourselves in contention to do that towards the end of the year,” Harvick said.

“Obviously the Busch year has been something that we might not ever get the chance to do again, in one complete racing year. To be able to accomplish both of those goals, knowing where we were last year at RCR, is something that I think we’re all just head over heels about.

“To have that opportunity to achieve those goals that you always try to set as high as you can is something that we’re all really proud of.”

Now with Harvick well within striking distance of his championship “double,” if he can simply finish the Cup season with four trouble-free races, his first Cup title could be his for the taking.

He’s won Cup races at two of the final four tracks – earlier this year at Phoenix and in March 2001 at Atlanta, a race few will forget. Harvick had taken over the No. 29 after the death of Dale Earnhardt in the season-opening Daytona 500 and was making his first Cup start.

“Under the circumstances that we did, and performed as a team, we won’t ever forget that moment just because of everything that went on,” Harvick said. “I think when you start thinking about it, it brings those same chills back to you that you got at that particular time.

“For us I think it lights that fire back up because you want that feeling.”