Chase Elliott wins at Martinsville to earn spot in NASCAR Cup’s final four,
MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Kevin Harvick’s nearly perfect season came to a spinning and sudden halt Sunday when he was bounced from the playoffs in a stunning upset at Martinsville Speedway.
Chase Elliott won the high-stakes race to earn his first berth in the championship four. It knocked Harvick, a nine-race winner and the regular season champion, from the title round after 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.
An amazing fall to a Stewart-Haas Racing team that seemed to be on cruise control heading into next Sunday’s winner-take-all finale at Phoenix.
Harvick noted NASCAR’s 10-race championship format, now split into three series of three races each, is far different from the season-long points battles won seven times each by Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt. “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 mediocre at Martinsville and fell a lap off the pace after a flat tire. He spent most of the race below the cutline, desperately chasing points at NASCAR’s oldest and smallest speedway. He was racing for the fourth and final slot in the field, trying to catch Denny Hamlin or Brad Keselowski, in a three-race push for one final spot.
Harvick was one point below the cutline when Elliott crossed the finish line. He needed to pass one car ahead of him – Kyle Busch, Hamlin’s teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing – to grab that point and Busch wasn’t going to make it easy.
Harvick tried to knock Busch out of his way in a failed desperate effort as they closed in on the finish line. Both cars spun and Harvick’s season was done.
“It was just a move I had to try knowing that I needed one point,” Harvick said. “It was just a Hail Mary that didn’t work out.”
Elliott, Keselowski and 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.
Hamlin, a seven-time winner this season who went race-for-race with Harvick all year, lamented not getting a shot at his rival in Phoenix.
“I feel bad for Kevin. I think they deserve to be in. They have nine wins. There’s not a person on this planet that would say they aren’t a top-four team,” Hamlin said. “We wanted to create a Game 7 moment, so this is what you get.
“If you have a bad race or two in a three-race series, you’re out. Everything you do for eight innings doesn’t matter if you don’t have a good ninth inning.”
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.
Elliott, meanwhile, scored a must-win victory that put him in the finale after three previous failures to advance. It’s a huge professional on-track accomplishment for NASCAR’s most popular driver and gave the beloved Elliott family its first Martinsville trophy grandfather clock.
Bill Elliott was 0-for-45 at Martinsville in his Hall of Fame career, and Chase Elliott won in his 11th try.
“It’s the biggest win ever for us,” said Elliott, who earned his 10th Cup victory and career-high fourth of the season. “I’ve never been in this position before and it’s exiting.”
NASCAR this season moved Martinsville to the final elimination race in an effort to turn the .0526-mile paperclip into a short track throw-down. It made for 500 white-knuckled laps in which the contenders all showed up to win but also had in-race bobbles.
Elliott had back-to-back bad pit stops, including one late in the race in which Elliott could have drawn a racecrippling penalty when his jackman entered the service stall too early. The crew member smartly ran back to pit wall and touched it to re-establish his position, leading NASCAR to make a no-call on the slip.
Keselowski was flagged for speeding on pit road, Hamlin was hampered by loose lug nuts during a stop, Truex had a loose wheel Harvick’s flat tire deflated his season.