Harvick captures 4th win of year

SHR driver wins Cup series race at Dover

DOVER, Del. – They used to run 500mile races at Dover International Speedway.

Around a super-fast, high-banked,

1-mile track where every lap is an invitation to chaos, this was punishment not meant for mere mortals.

It perhaps explains why immortals, men such as Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Sr., won most of those races.

The longest stock car race in the track’s nearly 50-year history was a

500-miler Sept. 19, 1993. Rusty Wallace won that one in a brisk 4 hours, 59 minutes. If Ol’ Rusty had been a bit slower, Dover would have had a five-hour race. Not exactly a bragging point. Track officials and/or NASCAR came to their senses in 1997, trimming the race length to 400 miles and making the event much more of a competition and much less of a tongue-dragging marathon.

Modern Dover races are relative sprints. Last year’s two Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races here were completed in 3 hours, 52 minutes and

3 hours, 5 minutes.

None of this means that the drivers who win at Dover now would not have won when the races were longer, but it’s clear that the racing is decidedly different and that precision, aggression and performance mean much more than endurance and outlasting the other guy.

It’s not as easy to dominate Dover races as it used to be, for it often has been the case here that distance (in that other time) and huge crashes (in every time) have taken out contenders.

But on Sunday, Kevin Harvick made it look easy. He turned in the sort of overpowering performance that beat not only his rapidly running teammate, Clint Bowyer, but also every other pre- tender, including 11-time track winner Jimmie Johnson. Johnson had one of the better days of what has been a tough season for him, but he still wasn’t able to lead a lap and could only watch as Harvick accomplished the things Johnson once did at one of stock car racing’s toughest tracks.

It wasn’t always this way for Harvick at Dover. He raced at the track for the first time in the Cup series in 2001, barely a few months after replacing the late Dale Earnhardt Sr. in Richard Childress Racing’s top car.

Surprisingly, Harvick needed 30 races to score his first — and until Sunday, only — win here. That occurred in the second season after Harvick left Richard Childress Racing for StewartHaas.

There was little doubt Harvick would win Sunday if his car held up. He led big chunks of laps — 21, 14, 31, 43, 29 and 63 at the end, 201 of 400 overall.

Bowyer also was quick. He led throughout the 41-minute rain delay that threatened to end the race early but had nothing for Harvick once the weather cleared and green conditions ruled the day again. He finished second by 7.11 seconds as Stewart-Haas put three cars (Kurt Busch was fifth) in the top five, a remarkable accomplishment at a track that eats race cars.

“I want to thank everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing, everybody at Ford for just continuing to put the effort they put into these cars,” Harvick said. “Three cars in the top five says a lot about where we are as a company, but it’s fun racing your teammate. That says a lot about our company and one of your good friends as well.”

Bowyer led 40 laps but said he wasn’t in the front long enough to try to make his car better and into Harvick’s class.

“We needed a chance to adjust our car in clear air like he did,” Bowyer said. “He had that luxury all day long. I knew when he took off and the car rotated as good as it did that I was way too loose. When you’re loose in the corner here, you’re in trouble.”

Everybody who wasn’t named Kevin Harvick was in trouble Sunday. And maybe beyond Sunday.