WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD
Fired-up Harvick wins 3rd race in row
Kevin Harvick wasn’t going to let the moment pass.
He had barely stepped out of his winning race car Sunday at ISM Raceway after a rough week when he started with the zingers.
“I have been mad as all get out because this team does a great job and this organization does a great job and we have great cars,” he said. “To take that away from those guys just really pissed me off last week.
“Everybody was just determined this week. We were determined to stomp ‘em. We didn’t stomp ‘em, but we won. It put a fire in our belly.”
Harvick was enjoying a take-that
kind of moment, the sort that people who feel like they’ve been wronged enjoy, like a cold drink on a hot summer day. It doesn’t get much better.
Harvick spent part of the week in NASCAR’s jailhouse. Inspection at NASCAR’s Research and Development Center resulted in dramatic penalties after last Sunday’s win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Harvick’s team was fined $50,000 and lost its car chief for two races, penalties issued primarily because a brace failure bowed the rear window in Harvick’s car during the race. He also lost the playoff points he had earned during the race.
To say that Harvick was upset by the penalties would be to understate the situation in a most fantastic style. He barked his way through a 15-minute news conference Friday at ISM, doing everything except daring NASCAR to penalize him again.
After winning Sunday’s race, Harvick climbed out of his car and patted the rear window.
It was so much fun he could barely contain himself.
Now Harvick is on the verge of rare territory in NASCAR. He can reach four consecutive wins next weekend at Auto Club Speedway in Harvick’s home state of California.
At this moment, there’s little reason to doubt he can cross that mark. No one has won four in a row since Jimmie Johnson in 2007.
Kyle Busch, second to Harvick again Sunday, said no one had anything for the Ford driver. This after Busch spent most of the afternoon pretending to be Harvick.
Busch led 128 of Sunday’s 312 laps, flipping that part of the script on Harvick, who dominated laps led in the previous races at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Las Vegas. Harvick led 38 laps Sunday.
But when it came time to decide the issue, Harvick was Superman again. He took the lead with 22 laps to go and basically coasted home to his third consecutive Cup victory, leaving Busch and the other pretenders to ponder what might have been – and if Harvick might win every race for the rest of the year.