Crash leaves Harvick on the ropes

He’s last in field with two races before cut

JOLIET, ILL. — Nonplused by Joe Gibbs Racing’s red-hot ride into NASCAR’s playoffs, Kevin Harvick confidently predicted they wouldn’t keep him from a second consecutive championship.

“We’re going to pound them into the ground,” Harvick said of JGR’s four-car title push.

Instead, it’s Harvick who is on the ropes after the opening race of the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

Contact with Jimmie Johnson led to a blown tire for Harvick that caused him to crash and finish 42nd Sunday in the myAFib Risk.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, where he had a brief post-race scuffle with Johnson.

Denny Hamlin, meanwhile, won the race for Gibbs and earned an automatic berth into the second round of the playoffs.

Hamlin declined to comment on the irony of Harvick’s situation.

“I’m not going to get into a verbal thing,” he said. “We’re one race in. It didn’t work out well for him today.”

No, it didn’t, and Harvick is last in the 16-driver Chase field with two races before four drivers are eliminated. He minced no words when asked what he needs to do either next week at New Hampshire or Oct. 4 at Dover.

“We’ve just got to go win one of these next two races,” Harvick said.

He has one career victory, in 2006, at New Hampshire and is winless at Dover. But he led 163 laps at the past two New Hampshire races and earned a pair of third-place finishes, and he led 314 laps in the past two Dover races and was second there in June.

“This Chase, the way it is, it can be taken away from you in a week, it doesn’t matter if it’s the first week or last week,” said Harvick’s crew chief, Rodney Childers. “You just have to go race the next two and see how it works out and go from there.”

The contact between Harvick and Johnson on a restart led to a post-race confrontation in the motor-home lot between a pair of drivers who have known each other since their early days racing in California.

It was also expected by Johnson, who knew Harvick was going to be angry with him over the situation. Asked after the race if he planned to speak with the defending champion, Johnson seemed to forecast what was ahead.

“Hopefully he’ll want to talk. There’s no telling what he’ll want to do,” said the six-time champion.

Johnson waited outside Har-

TV: vick’s motor home to talk, but Harvick was looking for a confrontation as soon as he came out the door. He shoved Johnson with a closed fist before someone stepped between the two, and after Johnson pointed his finger at Harvick, he had to be held back from getting at Johnson a second time.

Harvick’s wife, DeLana, left a waiting car to walk over to the bickering drivers and Harvick eventually retreated to the back seat of the car as Johnson walked away.

Harvick’s trouble began when he and Johnson were third and fourth on a restart and contact created a tire rub for Harvick. Two laps later, the tire blew and Harvick was in the wall. He felt the contact could have been avoided.

“I just held my ground and he just slammed into my door like I wasn’t even there,” Harvick said.

Johnson said a push from behind from Joey Logano sent him down to the apron. As he tried to get back onto the track, he made contact with Harvick.

“I assumed he would try to find it as my fault. I just simply needed a lane to get back on the racetrack,” said Johnson. “He was trying to pin medownandI’ve got to get back up or else there would be a hell of a mess in Turn1.”