With Harvick, only thing obvious is his frustration (cont'd)

The roller-coaster fortunes of RCR have obviously taken a toll on Harvick, who said his organization needs consistency more than anything else. The team struggled in the aftermath of Dale Earnhardt's death in 2001, rebuilt and struggled again in 2005, rebuilt and is struggling again this season. "These up-and-down spurts," he said, "aren't what's going to win championships." Harvick's situation only adds to what teammate Jeff Burton calls "a little bit of chaos" going on at RCR right now.

"We haven't had the results that we need to have. Whenever you're not having results, the pressure gets turned up. That's the way it is right now," Burton said. "There's a huge effort to go and do things differently and change things, and through that there creates a great deal of problems. People are working more hours than they've ever worked. We're asking a whole lot more out of everybody. It's not going to turn around overnight, so you've get a deal where everybody is working harder but the results aren't changing quickly. It's hard. When you get behind, everything gets harder."

Coming off an off week, Burton said he wasn't up to speed on the news reports involving Harvick. But: "I know this about Kevin -- Kevin wants to be part of an organization that's competitive," he said. "Richard wants to have an organization that's competitive. Harvick is wanting to go win championships and races, and so is Richard. Ultimately, they've both been really good for each other. There have been a lot of race wins there with that combination, and I think neither one of them thinks it's good enough, and they're both pushing hard. I hate we're in this situation where we even have to talk about it, but at the end of the day we're all working hard."

Will that be enough to keep Harvick? There were no such indications Saturday. Harvick said he's not going to "drag this thing through the mud," meaning he's not going to debate it in the media. The only definite, he said, is that he has no interest in starting a Sprint Cup program for himself at Kevin Harvick Inc., the team he owns that fields entries on the Nationwide and Camping World Truck series.

"There's really nothing being looked at," he said. "Everybody's kind of stale right now, and everything is just not fast enough, and everything just isn't running well enough to be where everybody wants to be. So I don't really have anything to look at, or look forward to, or have anything cooking, or anything different, or anything like that. Right now, I'm the driver of the Shell-Pennzoil RCR Chevrolet, and that's what I intend to continue to focus on."