Harvick wins crash-filled NASCAR race at Kansas

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Kevin Harvick won a wreckfilled race at Kansas Speedway on Sunday, keeping out of trouble all afternoon and making a big move in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

Harvick pulled away from Kurt Busch and Jeff Gordon on a restart with 19 laps to go for his third win of the year. It came after Harvick sat on the pole for the first time in 254 races.

The last time he qualified first, at New Hampshire in 2006, he also won the race.

“These guys just did a great job all weekend,” Harvick said. “To have a car fast enough for me to qualify on the pole says a lot.”

Harvick was chased across the line by Busch and Gordon. Jimmie Johnson finished sixth despite a slight hiccup with his engine on the final lap that cost him one spot on the track.

Matt Kenseth held on to his lead in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship with an 11th-place finish. Johnson narrowed the gap to three points, and Harvick moved into third place, 25 points out of first with six races left in the season.

Kyle Busch was the big loser after crashing for the third straight time at Kansas Speedway, dropping from third in points to fifth, 35 adrift of the lead.

There were 15 cautions in the race, breaking the record of 14 for a Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway. The first came when the race wasn’t even a lap old and Danica Patrick slammed into the wall, and most of them occurred when cars got loose coming out of Turn 2.

Busch and Kenseth both called the race “treacherous,” pointing to the combination of a repaving last year and Goodyear’s new “multizone” tires that made it seem as if they were skating across a glasslike surface.