Harvick gets his first Pocono win
In a weekend of firsts at Pocono Raceway, Kevin Harvick registered the biggest first of them all.
The veteran driver, winless in 38 previous starts at the Tricky Triangle, held off Denny Hamlin to win the Pocono Organics 325, the first of back-to-back NASCAR Cup Series races this weekend in Monroe County.
The 44-year-old Harvick won the raindelayed race that was held without fans, the first time in 85 races dating back to 1974 that no one was in the grandstand for a NASCAR race.
Harvick will go for a weekend sweep when NASCAR’s historic Cup series doubleheader continues at 4 p.m. Sunday.
“It’s great to finally check Pocono off the list,” the Bakersfield, California, native said after collecting his 52nd win in stock car racing’s premier series. “Stewart-Haas Racing has done such a great job with all of our cars every time we’ve come here over the last seven years. I’m just really proud of everybody.”
Because of unique rules set for the unprecedented back-to-back races, which will invert the order of finish for the top 20 drivers, Harvick will start Sunday’s race in the 20th position. He won’t mind.
“We were back to 20th today, so I think it’s going to come down to strategy and what you need to do,” he said. “I wish I could explain how hard everybody in the shop is working with this schedule. I just wish the fans were here. It’s not near as exciting without them. I feel like I am like my 7-year-old with all of this pent up energy. I’m going to share it with somebody.”
It was his third win of the season and 11th top-10 finish of the season. It was his 19th top-10 top finish at Pocono, where he had finished second four previous times.
Denny Hamlin was second, giving him his 19th top-10 in 29 races at Pocono. It was also his ninth top-10 in 14 races this season.
Aric Almirola, who won the second stage, finished third. It was his third top-10 in 16 races at Pocono and third straight top-5 finish this season.
Almirola, whose crew chief is Lehighton native and Penn State University product Mike Bugarewicz, started the race on the pole and led a race-high 61 laps.
But the day belonged to Almirola’s StewartHaas teammate, Harvick.
“The best part is you don’t have to answer the question anymore about not winning at Pocono,” he said. “We’ve had some fast cars here and I’ve always enjoyed coming here and enjoy the challenge. But it’s great to finally get to Victory Lane.”
Harvick said it was not only a significant win for him, but a big victory for the team, which had several positive COVID-19 cases, and the sport as a whole.
“We are a very unified family,” he said of NASCAR. “We’ve gone through a lot, but I’m very proud of our sport and how we’ve been able to navigate these tough times and get back on the track.”
Crew chief Rodney Childers agreed.
“It has been hard and we’ve tried to do everything we can to keep people as safe as possible,” Childers said. “No one can be replaced, but you definitely can’t replace a Kevin Harvick. There’s not another one of him to pull out of the closet, though I wish there were.”
While he needed to preserve his car for another 350 miles of racing on Sunday, Harvick said he wouldn’t do a victory burnout without the fans there to enjoy it.
“I’m not doing that until we have people to celebrate with,” he said.
Saturday’s postponement of the Pocono Organics 150 truck series race sets up a historic Sunday.
With the truck race slated for 9:30 a.m., followed three hours later by the Xfinity Series race and at 4 p.m. by the second Cup race, NASCAR said it’s the first time three national series races will race on the same day at the same track.
It will be the fifth time three NASCAR national series races will be held on the same day, but in the previous four times, races were held at different tracks.
Ty Gibbs, the 17-year-old grandson of former Washington Redskins football coach and prominent Cup series team owner Joe Gibbs, won Friday night’s ARCA Menards Series race at Pocono.
It was Gibbs’ sixth win in the ARCA Menards, East and West series in just 21 starts.
He also became the 28th consecutive different ARCA Menards winner at Pocono, a streak that dates back to 2006 and includes current Cup drivers Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Joey Logano, Ty Dillon, Chase Elliott and Cole Custer.
Chandler Smith and Sam Mayer finished second and third respectively. Smith, 18, and Mayer, 17, both celebrated birthdays on Friday.
Keith Groller can be reached at 610-820-6740 or at kgroller@mcall.com.