Leader Harvick dismisses 'cheating' talk

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Kevin Harvick is so hot right now that the competition clearly is concerned -- so much so that Harvick believes a rival intentionally spread false allegations of cheating to rattle his team.

After Harvick's win last week in New Hampshire, a Speed TV report claimed that Harvick and teammate Jeff Burton were manipulating their wheels to gain a performance advantage. NASCAR and Richard Childress Racing strongly denied the accusation, but Speed TV stands by its report.

With no one sure what to believe -- and the report has led many teams to believe Harvick indeed is cheating -- the driver is pretty confident he knows what's going on.

"I absolutely think it was a plant from another team," Harvick told MRN Radio. "NASCAR didn't say anything, so it's pretty obvious to me where it came from. It's an attempt to try and distract us from what we're doing, but they're going to have to do a lot better than that."

With two consecutive wins, and three in the last six races, the No. 29 team is clearly on fire. Sunday's win in New Hampshire moved Harvick to the top of the points standings for the first time in his career and put car owner Richard Childress out front for the first time since March 1999.

Now they are the team to beat in the Chase for the championship, which heads into Round 2 this weekend in Dover, Del.

That's left several rival teams unsettled, particularly after the Speed TV report claimed that NASCAR's post-race inspectors discovered the Childress teams were operating in a gray area of the rule book. NASCAR dismissed the report as "sheer fantasy" and criticized anyone who bought into the allegations.

"Any team who believes or says that those two teams did anything wrong is giving an excuse for losing," NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter sneered. "It's sour grapes, that's all. Nobody gets beat anymore, it seems. They all lost because somebody else cheated."

Harvick heads to Dover cautious and calm despite a good run of late.

"I think it is a Catch-22 -- you want to temper yourself to the point to where you are excited, but not overly excited," he said. "We are excited that we have turned our organization around, and we feel like we can race for the championship, but I have also been on the arrogant and cocky side of it in years past.

"You don't want to stick your foot in your mouth. Maybe at the end of the year, you can become a little bit proud of what you have done, but right now we just want to keep doing what we are doing. We don't want to fall on our face."