Could Kevin Harvick take off the rest of the 2006 NASCAR Busch Series season and still win the championship?

Almost.

Harvick has a near insurmountable 729-point margin over Carl Edwards with five remaining events. If he can leave the next race in two weeks at Charlotte with a 760-point margin, he'd clinch the title and wouldn't have to race in the four remaining events.

While I could get on a pretty good rant here about Cup drivers like Harvick stinking up the Busch Series show each week, it's better to throw the bouquets as Harvick here.

Just take a look at the numbers.

Harvick has competed in all 30 NASCAR Busch Series events this season. Saturday's victory at Kansas Speedway was his seventh of the season giving him a 24 percent winning percentage.

Meanwhile, Harvick has a staggering 20 Top-5 finishes in those 30 events (66 percent) and has finished in the Top-10 an even more amazing 27 times (90 percent). Harvick's worst finish of the season is 19th at Milwaukee. He has finished no worse than third in the last five NBS events winning two of them.

Perhaps most impressively is that Harvick has completed all 5,701 laps contested in the 30 NASCAR Busch Series events run this season.

Think about that for a moment.

Skill, luck, and a huge amount of behind the scenes preparation have made Harvick bulletproof this season. Win or lose a race, you don't finish every lap unless the team behind the driver is doing something very special. To do it for an entire season is mind-boggling.

Unless he truly does sit out some events at the end of the season, Harvick's championship-winning points total is sure to eclipse the previous greatest margin of victory set by Jeff Green in 2000 (666 points).

While the numbers will validate the season as one of the best in the history of the division, the untold time and effort put in by the crew to achieve such a distinction is the real achievement here.

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