Misdiagnosis of flat costs Harvick at LMS, in Chase

If you've ever had a tire going flat while driving down the highway, you have a good idea what Kevin Harvick was feeling Saturday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

But the difference between pulling onto the shoulder at 60 mph in order to look at it and trying to diagnose the problem at 180 are as different as night and day. In Harvick's case, he had to determine which tire he thought was going flat and communicate that to crew chief Todd Barrier and his pit crew.

Sometimes you guess correctly. Other times you don't. And when you're forced to make an unscheduled pit stop under green, guessing incorrectly can make a huge difference.

On Saturday, Harvick's instincts told him it was a problem on the right side of the No. 29 Chevrolet. So on Lap 32, Harvick ducked onto pit road for two new right-side tires.

Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem, and he was forced to pit a second time 11 laps later for four tires, which left him three laps behind.

From there on out, Harvick ran with the leaders but was unable to get any of his laps back. He wound up finishing 33rd and dropped to eighth in the standings, 328 points behind leader Jeff Gordon.

For Harvick, it seems like it's been one thing after another since the Chase started.

"We have been snake-bit not only in the Chase, but it has been that way all year," Harvick said before the weekend. "Three out of the first four weeks in the Chase have just kind of gone that way. We just have to keep the performance level up.

"All four weeks, our cars have run really good. That is all we can do. The rest of it, you just kind of have to laugh at and hope that it turns around."

Tires have been an issue. At New Hampshire, Harvick suffered two flat tires but battled back to finish 17th. A week later at Dover, a loose wheel put Harvick down two laps -- and another flat tire doomed him to a 20th-place finish.

"I think in the first two weeks we got three flat tires," Harvick said. "Our approach hasn't changed. We go and try to be as aggressive as we can every week and make our car run as fast as we can to put ourselves in a position to win. If you can't do that, then you have to make the best day possible out of the days that you're having."

Still, Harvick said the No. 29 team hasn't given up.

"The way this thing has gone, there is no telling what is going to happen," he said. "So we will race like we are in contention until the last week or until somebody tells us we have to quit."