CHARLOTTE -- If practice indeed makes perfect, Kevin Harvick could very well be unbeatable in 2003.

After a dismal sophomore season last year in which he finished a disappointing 21st, last of the three Richard Childress Racing entries (teammates Jeff Green finished 17th and Robby Gordon ended up 20th), Harvick intends to return to the same modus operandi he lived by during his outstanding rookie season in 2001.

In other words, the upcoming season will be a case of the more, the merrier for Harvick: the more races he runs, the merrier his finishes will be.

Harvick will be driving practically any time, anywhere and any place he can in 2003. Not only will he return for his third full season in Winston Cup competition, he intends on cutting a heavy swath across several other series, participating regularly in the Busch, Craftsman Truck and IROC series.

In all, we could see Harvick behind the wheel 70 or more times next year. And if all goes well, he could be on target to produce the same kind of results he enjoyed in 2001, when he not only won the Winston Cup Rookie of the Year honors and finished ninth in the standings, but also won the Busch championship and had a start in the Truck circuit.

He logged over 20,000 miles across NASCAR's three highest series in 2001, a historic milestone. And it seemed the more Harvick raced, the better he became. The end results proved that convincingly.

That's why he's going back to that game plan. After focusing almost exclusively on Winston Cup last season -- with just a smattering of starts in the Busch and Truck series -- Harvick is again donning his Ironman cape and preparing to win -- and win often.

"I'm going back to racing Busch cars and trucks and IROC and all the things that I like to do," Harvick said. "Last year they talked me out of it, and we struggled, we got in trouble. I'm going to go back and do what I like to do and race the car and enjoy myself and enjoy everything around it. If we make expectations, people eat us up if we don't live up to it.

	Kevin Harvick managed to win the Tropicana 400 last July despite spinning out.

"That's why we are going to plan on racing 70 some times this year, just go out and race. That's what I like to do; that's what I've done to this point. Everybody says, what if I get hurt? You can get hurt walking across the road. I enjoy being in a race car, that's what my fans like, that's what I like and that's what Richard (Childress) likes, I think. So we are going to go out and do that."

Talking about his ambitious schedule, Harvick exudes a confidence we didn't see much last season. While he won one race in 2002, his season was mediocre at best, certainly not up to his standards or those set forth by Childress, one of the most demanding and successful owners in NASCAR.

Neither Childress nor Harvick were happy with the performance of the No. 29 Chevrolet last season. The numbers don't lie: Harvick not only finished 21st in the standings, he finished 20th or lower in two-thirds of his starts.

And then there was the criticism that Harvick endured throughout the season, with the media making him one of their favorite targets because of his struggles.

He was blamed by some for starting the chain-reaction crash in the season-opening Daytona 500 that collected 18 cars in its wake.

He also suffered through the ignominious embarrassment of being suspended by NASCAR for the April race at Martinsville, Va., following several on-track skirmishes with Coy Gibbs in a Truck race a day earlier that caused him to be cited for overaggressive driving.

Childress even switched crew chiefs to try and improve Harvick's lot, sending Kevin Hamlin to Gordon's team in June in return for Gil Martin. While that combination clicked for several races around midseason, by season's end, it was more of the same struggling for Harvick.

Very few drivers will ever go from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows that Harvick experienced in his first two seasons.

In 2001, whether he was ready for it or not, Harvick was abruptly cast into the spotlight as the heir apparent to the late Dale Earnhardt, gallantly trying to fill the Intimidator's shoes after Earnhardt's fatal crash at Daytona.

Being placed in such a role, to try and emulate -- let alone attempt to replace -- NASCAR's greatest driver wasn't fair to Harvick. Yet, to his credit, the young man from Bakersfield, Calif., handled the scrutiny and spotlight with aplomb. In essence, he set the tone for other young drivers to follow.

A lot was said this past season about how polished and media-friendly Jimmie Johnson was in his rookie year, but it was Harvick who set the example for Johnson to follow the year before.

	“	I'm going to go back and do what I like to do and race the car and enjoy myself and enjoy everything around it. If we make expectations, people eat us up if we don't live up to it. ”
		— Harvick

And then came the absolutely horrendous 2002 season. Not only did Harvick fall victim to NASCAR's dreaded "sophomore jinx," it seemed that after smiling constantly on him a year earlier, Lady Luck coldly turned her back on Harvick.

As a result, the harder Harvick tried to right his ship's path, the worst his luck got, the more his frustration grew and the deeper his ship sank in the standings. For a guy used to winning, 2002 was like a cold shower of the cruel realities that can sometimes be found in Racing. One minute you're up, the next minute you're being written off.

"Don't get me wrong, I put myself in that position," Harvick said. "It's tough to race with one arm behind your back when everybody is racing as hard as they can. Those are the things that you have to deal with when you put yourself in a situation.

"If we get beat this year, we have tried and everybody has stepped up to the plate and made things better and really worked on a lot of different things to try to make ourselves better. Heck, we still might go out and get our butts kicked because everybody else is trying to do the same thing. We'll just go out and do the things that we need to do and hopefully things come together.

"It can't be any worse. Well, it could always get worse, but shouldn't be as bad as it was last year."

Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR for ESPN.com.