Harvick conquers Dover’s Monster Mile
DOVER, DEL. » Clint Bowyer’s rain dance didn’t work.
After Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski dominated the first 240 laps of the Monster Energy Cup Series “AAA 400 Drive For Autism” at Dover International Speedway, Bowyer was in the lead when the red flag came out during the third stage due to rain, but when the race was restarted, it was all Harvick; the driver of the No. 4 Jimmy John’s Ford took his fourth checkered flag of the season on Sunday afternoon.
It was also the culmination of arguably being the best car all weekend long, which actually put some pressure on the 2014 Cup Series Champion.
“It’s actually a lot harder, because you don’t want to screw it up,” said Harvick of emerging as the favorite early in the race weekend.
“I felt like we had a really good car from the time we unloaded, and I think you could tell that from where we qualified (second). That’s usually not our strong point, qualifying up here… we had three great practices and everything just kind of fell into place. When they dropped the green flag, it was definitely still good…it was just one of those weekends where the car was spot-on.”
Bowyer, Harvick’s teammate at Stewart-Haas Racing, finished second, while Joe Gibbs Racing’s Daniel Suarez tied a career-best with a third-place finish. Martin Truex, Jr. and Kurt Busch rounded out the top five, while Keselowski, who led 108 laps, came home in sixth.
The win is Harvick’s fourth of the season, and kept him in third place in the points standings after the first 11 races of 2018; Kyle Busch and Joey Logano remain in first and second, respectively.
Harvick has historically always been in contention at the Monster Mile — he’s now led 1,156 laps at Dover in 35 career races — but this marks only his second win at the mile-long, concrete oval.
“When I was driving, this one of the hardest places, I felt like, to win at,” said team owner Tony Stewart.
“Especially for a concrete track, you don’t think the temperature really means a lot, but it’s really big here for some reason and not so much at Bristol…especially when you get a rain delay like that and the rubber gets cleaned off, this track is really hard to maintain a balance on.
Through the first two stages, it seemed to be a three-car race; Harvick won both stages, but he and Keselowski each led 107 laps out of the first 240, while Kyle Busch in the top-three in each of the first two 120lap segments. However, Busch finished with a disappointing 35th-place finish after breaking a driveshaft while in third place early in the third stage.
It seemed as though Bowyer would have a chance to perhaps steal the victory after some anticipated rain hit the track with 80 laps remaining, but officials were able to dry the surface during a 41 minute and one second long red flag and the race was restarted.
“You knew he was going to be one that you were going to have to beat for the win,” Bowyer said. “The guys did a great job of putting the pressure on, and they got us back out in the lead again. They gave me an opportunity, and that’s all you can ask for as a team… speed-wise, he was a beat better than us all weekend long, but we ran second. This is a huge confidence and momentum-builder for our 14 team and our organization.”
Harvick eventually drove past his teammate with 62 laps to go, and ended up winning by an official margin of 7.450 seconds over Bowyer after the remainder of the race went green.
It’s his second “Miles The Monster” trophy, but first that remains intact; the one from his win in the 2015 fall race is missing an arm thanks to some rough play time with his young son, Keelan.
“Miles is pretty popular, as you can imagine, with the kids,” Harvick said of the trophy, which is a large cartoon character made to resemble concrete holding a replica car.
“We took the first one that we won and we put it in his play room, and we said, ‘You can keep it in your play room.’ The first day I came home, he had the arm broke in half off of the thing. We talked after (this) race, and he said, ‘Dad, are you bringing that trophy home?’ I said, ‘I’m bringing it home, but do not break the arm off of this one.’”