Manufacturer change anything but seamless for Harvick and SHR

Even if that holds true, it was anything but.

Aside from Daniel Suarez, who came into this week’s NASCAR test at Phoenix International Raceway without any previous time in a Cup series car, no one else had more on their testing agenda than Harvick’s No. 4 Ford team.

It’s hard on people, it’s hard on the company and everybody involved. Hopefully, it will be rewarding in the end.

Rodney Childers, Kevin Harvick crew chief

Fans only see the finished product on the track, which in this case is Harvick driving a Ford Fusion rather than a Chevrolet SS.

The behind-the-scenes transition, however, goes much deeper.

“There was just a lot of stuff we needed to accomplish in this test that really didn’t have anything to do with how the car handles,” Rodney Childers, Harvick’s crew chief, told Motorsport.com. “There’s just so many things that have to be right before we can run a 400 or 500-mile race.

“We spent a lot of time (Tuesday) just working on the oil tank and the oil levels, that type of thing. The water levels and the water tank and the water pressure, making sure we weren’t going to blow water out at certain temperatures.”

All of the things Childers describe come simply from SHR running a different type of engine this season – Ford engines from Roush Yates Engines rather than Chevrolet power plants from Hendrick Motorsports.

Forced to wait until conclusion of 2016 season

Those new engines not only have to be incorporated into the construction of the car chassis but their limits and abilities have to be tested before they appear in a race.

Normally, teams would begin work on their new season of engines while a current season is ongoing, but SHR couldn’t begin receiving Ford engines until after the 2016 season was completed in mid-November.

In addition, the data Childers and SHR have accumulated over the last three seasons became of little use, as were the team’s simulation programs because they were all run with data incorporating Chevrolet bodies and engines.

“The sim tools are the biggest part. We’re just used to using the same thing forever,” Childers said. “To be able to come out here and use the new stuff, it seems to work OK. There are a lot of things that don’t have to do with the race car that we needed to get worked out.”

Childers wished he would have had more time at the test working with Harvick on the performance of the car itself, rather than having to develop a lot of new baseline data for future use.

Takeaway from the test

Still, Harvick ended the final session on Wednesday with the second-fastest average lap speed (134.842 mph), trailing only Kyle Larson (134.998 mph).

“It seems like we need a little bit of speed and we haven’t had a lot of time to work on that,” Childers said. “I think the change has been about what I expected but I think, for sure, we could have done a better job preparing for some of it.

“You don’t realize that until this point. It’s hard on people, it’s hard on the company and everybody involved. Hopefully, it will be rewarding in the end. It’s just going to take some time to get through the rough parts and get our feet under us.”