OXFORD – Kevin Harvick enjoys experiencing different racetracks when he gets a rare weekend off from the NASCAR Sprint Cup series.

That’s what led him to Oxford Plains Speedway for the 35th annual TD Banknorth Oxford 250 Sunday.

“It’s been great [so far],” said Harvick, who is ninth in the Sprint Cup points. “This is kinda’ like going back to your roots as far as the Saturday night. We have a couple of tracks [near his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif.] that aren’t similar [to OPS] but similar-styles in how you drive them.”

Harvick qualified for the Oxford 250 by finishing second in the fifth heat race Sunday night, but the race was postponed to today because of rain.

Harvick said his season, including 14 NASCAR Nationwide series races to go with his full Sprint Cup schedule, has been “up and down.

“On the bad days, we’ve made decent runs out of them and made some mistakes along the way. But, hopefully, we’ve got everything going in the right direction. We had a good week last week [finishing third at Chicagoland Speedway]. We just need to continue that.”.

Harvick said his Cup team needs to find a way to generate “a little [more] speed. I felt like we found that in our cars last week. We built all new cars for Chicago last week and we ran top five all day.

“We need to not make mistakes and a little bit a racing luck would go a long way,” added the 32-year-old Harvick, who has 11 Sprint Cup wins and two consecutive top 10 points finishes (10th last year, fourth two years ago).

Harvick, who drives a Chevy for Richard Childress Racing, said he won’t be back at Oxford next year because he likes variety.

“We’ll go someplace else. We’ll go to different places I haven’t raced just to experience a few things,” said Harvick, who has 32 wins on the Nationwide series, second only to Mark Martin’s 47.

Harvick comes from a racing family.

“My dad [Mike] was a fireman and we just raced on the weekends. My dad worked on drag cars and late models and stuff at the local track. He was involved in it,” said Harvick, who began racing go-karts.

Kevin Harvick eventually worked his way up to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck series, making his debut for his father’s team at his home track [Mesa Marin] in 1995. He was 19 at the time.

He made his first Nationwide start in 1999 and was the Raybestos Rookie of the Year the following year when he finished third in points.

He made his Sprint Cup debut in 2001, finishing ninth in points and earning Rookie of the Year honors.

The 2007 Daytona 500 winner, who owns a Nationwide and a Truck Series team with wife DeLana, said he loves racing.

“I enjoy what I do. It’s what you work for your whole life to get there and once you get there, it is your job,” said Harvick.

If he could change anything about the Sprint Cup series, what would it be?

“That’s way too much thinking for me. I just drive. I don’t worry about trying to change the series or reinventing the wheel,” said Harvick. “That’s not what I signed up for. I signed up to drive.”

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