Harvick finishes sweep with victory at Michigan
The finish of Sunday’s NASCAR race at Michigan mirrored the season so far: A battle in the final laps of the Consumers Energy 400 between Cup Series leaders Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin.
Harvick took the checkered flag, holding off Hamlin by less than a tenth of a second, to sweep the doubleheader weekend. He won Saturday’s race at the track as well, and now has the most race wins this season with six, one more than Hamlin. Martin Truex Jr. finished in third.
Sunday’s victory also makes Harvick the first driver to win back-to-back NASCAR races on the same weekend since Richard
Petty in 1971, but Harvick said he and his No. 4 Ford Mustang team are already looking to dominate at upcoming tracks.
“I think for us, it’s worked out pretty well,” Harvick said of the doubleheader races on the NBCSN broadcast. “We’re hoping it goes the same way at Dover.”
After winning all three stages of Saturday’s race at Michigan to clinch his 54th race win in his Cup Series career, Harvick won the second stage of Sunday’s race, then ran steadily in the topthree following multiple cautions before making a final pass of Stewart-haas racing teammate Aric Almirola with 40 laps left.
Harvick led the remainder of the 156-lap race in a year that has so far appeared effortless
for the No. 4 team. Before Sunday’s race, winning crew chief Rodney Childers said he didn’t know what there was to fix on the car. They didn’t make any changes. And that worked out well for the 4 team.
Hamlin, whose been the driver most contending with Harvick, put a run on the race-winner in the final laps, but was unable to get the pass before the checkered flag. Hamlin credited Harvick’s team, and described his respect for the driver on NBCSN
after the race, but wasn’t quite content with the finish.
“Just really hate giving up wins to the 4,” Hamlin said. He finished in sixth place on Saturday.
If Keselowski’s Saturday ended in promise, his Sunday ended in defeat. Or at least a “My fault.”
In the final stage of the race, Team Penske’s No. 12 driver Ryan Blaney was leading Keselowski, Harvick and Denny Hamlin hot on his heels. The No. 2 of Keselowski, making a move for the top spot, raced inside Blaney but caught his teammate’s
tail. Blaney and Keselowski dropped back and both hit the outside wall.
The damage forced the Penske teams, both of which showed promise to win, to exit the race.
“He didn’t deserve that,” Keselowski said on the NBCSN broadcast after the race. “I just came off of turn 4 and the 4 car was behind me and he gave me a push and I swear I went into the corner like 20 miles per hour faster than I had been all day and got past the 11 and went to get underneath the 12 and just slipped.”
Neither Blaney nor
Michigan-native Keselowski has won at the track, but Keselowski finished in second place on Saturday and had said earlier that he was hunting for his first win at the track. Blaney has only one race win this season despite being a consistent mid-race leader. He has fallen into a pattern of late-race rotten luck.
“Just unfortunate for the whole Penske organization,” Blaney said on NBCSN after exiting the race. “We had two fast cars battling for the lead. Just stinks that happened. We had the run, and just,
I think (Keselowski) didn’t think he had as big of a run as he had and just got loose and unfortunately got us both.”
Despite a DNF for two Penske cars, the Ford Manufacturer still left Michigan with the Heritage Trophy, which has been awarded to the racewinning manufacturer since 2013.
Harvick was the lone Stewart-haas car in the top-five despite a late run from his teammate Almirola. Then the finishing order was three Gibbs cars: Hamlin, Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch in
fourth. Team Penske’s Joey Logano finished in fifth place.
Hamlin was off to a slow start in Sunday’s race, missing the top-10 in the first stage, while Busch was a solid presence in the top five through Stage 1, as was No. 20 driver Erik Jones. The Gibbs drivers then rallied in the final stage following multiple late-lap cautions to post a solid finish.
Jones, however, dropped behind after a promising start. He finished in 27th after reporting a “tight” car to his team for most of the race.