Elliott races into championship; Harvick eliminated from playoff
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Kevin Harvick was on cruise control all season long, the most dominant driver in NASCAR, coasting into the championship round with a comfortable cushion that left plenty of room for error.
That’s how it was supposed to play out, at least, after Harvick won a Cup series-high nine races and the regularseason title.
Then his nearly perfect season came to a spinning and sudden halt Sunday when a mediocre run bounced Harvick from the playoffs in a stunning upset at Martinsville Speedway.
Chase Elliott won the highstakes race to earn his first career berth in the championship four. It stopped Harvick one race short of the title round in a stunning collapse to a season spent as the favorite to win the Cup crown.
“We won nine races and had a great year. Just came up short,” Harvick said.
Eight points short, to be exact, after his spinning 17thplace finish at Martinsville.
Elliott, Brad Keselowski and Denny Hamlin will race Joey Logano, who had already clinched his berth, in next week’s finale at Phoenix. It’s a matchup of a pair of Fords from Team Penske against Hamlin’s Toyota and Elliott, the first Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet driver to make the finale since Jimmie Johnson won his seventh and final title in 2016.
Harvick was eliminated along with Alex Bowman, Kurt Busch and Martin Truex Jr., who battled for the win until a late loose wheel ended his shot.
Harvick noted NASCAR’s 10-race championship format is far different from the season-long points battle
Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt won seven times each. The system now spans three series of three races each, with eliminations in each round, before four drivers line up for a championship shootout.
“They aren’t won the same way that Earnhardt and Petty did. You have to put together a few weeks and we didn’t put together these last few weeks like we needed to,” Harvick said. “That’s the system that we work in and it’s obviously skewed more towards entertainment than the whole year.
“It’s exciting to watch.” Harvick was only mediocre at Martinsville and even fell a lap off the pace after a
flat tire. His Stewart-Haas Racing team was in trouble, trying desperately to tune his Ford so that he could drive his way back onto the lead lap and back above the cutoff line.
But it was an incredibly long 500-lap points-chasing quest at NASCAR’s oldest and smallest speedway. Harvick was racing for the fourth and final slot in the field, separated from Hamlin and Keselowski by one point on one lap, two on the next, back to one after that.
On and on it went, those three drivers locked into a tense fight for single digit points because with Elliott out front, just two spots remained open for three drivers.