DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Kevin Harvick never really understood the lore of the Daytona 500 — until he won the race.

His win last season in the “Great American Race” is now the highlight of his 11 career Cup victories, and Harvick couldn’t wait to begin his title defense. He was the first driver on the track Monday morning when the second week of testing began at Daytona International Speedway.

“I don’t think I realized the magnitude of the race,” he said. “We’ve been fortunate to win a few of the big races, and I always thought I wanted to win the Brickyard, but I was wrong. Just experiencing everything from the 500 and being able to be a part of the weeks after it.

“Everywhere you go, all anybody wants to talk about is winning the Daytona 500.”

Yes, Harvick won at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and has a victory in the prestigious All-Star Race. But none compares to the door-to-door battle he had with Mark Martin to the finish line in last year’s race. Harvick nipped Martin by just .020 seconds, and NASCAR needed several minutes to watch replays of the finish before validating the electronic results.

“It’s definitely something that you never forget,” Harvick said. “I walked into my wife’s office the other day and she was on YouTube watching the race, and I thought that was pretty cool because it still gives you chills every time you watch it.”

Replicating that magic won’t be easy, as Harvick learned last year. His 500 victory was his only points win of the year, as Harvick and the No. 29 failed to parlay it into a fast start to the season.

Although his Richard Childress Racing team was entrenched in the top 12 of the points most of the year, he found himself clinging to his position in the Chase for the championship field as the “regular season” came to a close. And when the field was reset and the Chase contenders had equal shots at the championship, Harvick failed to mount a challenge.

Instead it was teammate Clint Bowyer who challenged for the title, giving the Hendrick Motorsports duo of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon a strong push before the two pulled away for a 1-2 finish.

Bowyer finished third in the final standings, while Harvick was a distant 10th.

Harvick can point to the entire season going awry a week after his Daytona win, when he finished 17th at California Speedway.

“I think our cars were strong, but I think California kind of set the tone for our whole season,” he said. “Five laps to go we get a flat tire and have a chance to probably win the race, and it just seemed like everything kind of went that way all year. Every time we had a good day, something went wrong, and every time we had a bad day it got worse.

“In the end I think it shows the maturity of the team. We had a chance to win seven or eight races, and just every time something — whether it was our fault or just circumstances — it went wrong. The year before everything went right, and last year, we couldn’t make everything go our way when we needed a break here and there.”

While Harvick struggled at times on the track, he was celebrating off of it. He won his first championship as a car owner when Ron Hornaday drove a Kevin Harvick Inc. truck to the title, cementing Harvick’s little organization as a legitimate player in the lower leagues of NASCAR.

But that success has not spurred him or wife DeLana to grow their team much larger. He fields two trucks and a full-time Nationwide Series car, and has plans to run a part-time schedule in a second Nationwide car.

Beyond that, he has no grand illusions of being a mogul.

“The plan is to just keep it like it is,” he said. “It’s to have fun and basically be competitive and win races. That’s what we built it for. I don’t have any long-range plans to go Cup racing. I like to be at the shop and around the race cars.

“To me it’s almost like playing a game of — any kind of game, I guess — to try to put all the people in the right places, and to try to put the right chemistry of people together is challenging for me.”