Cup win guarantees Harvick playoff berth
Kevin Harvick is no longer best of the rest when it comes to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoff grid. He’s now locked in.
Harvick broke through for his first win of the season Sunday afternoon in Loudon, New Hampshire. He makes it nine drivers locked into the postseason as the playoffs draw closer.
With Harvick in on wins, StewartHaas Racing teammate Aric Almirola is now leading the way for drivers on points. William Byron, meanwhile, continues to add to his advantage over the cutline with strong performances and stage results.
Behind them, there is bubble trouble: New Hampshire third-place finisher Erik Jones jumped further up the grid and now has breathing room, but his move came at the expense of Clint Bowyer, now last on the grid after a rough day where he finished 20th.
Ryan Newman picked up another top-10 finish and is also now on the playoff gird as Jimmie Johnson fell out after finishing 30th. Johnson has made the playoffs every year since they started, so fighting for the postseason is new to the No. 48 team.
Late-race call pays off
The call was made to keep Harvick on track for the run to the finish in the Foxwoods Resort Casino 301, and the former Cup Series champion prevailed in what came down to a last-lap fight with Denny Hamlin.
Harvick held on, making it back-toback wins at New Hampshire Motor Speedway as he claimed his first Cup Series win of 2019. After getting a shove into Turn 1 on the last lap, Harvick and Hamlin drag-raced down the backstretch before Harvick cut up in front of Hamlin in Turns 3 and 4 to beat him to the finish line.
“I didn’t think we had a chance to win staying out, but Rodney (Childers, crew chief) and those guys made a great call with our Busch Beer/National Forest Foundation car,” Harvick said. “We had a good car all day; we just never could get track position. Stayed out there, ran a lot of good laps, I didn’t want to see that traffic there at the end – it really made my car tight – and he (Hamlin) got to me. He tried to move me out of the way down there,” Harvick continued, “and I knew that was coming as close as he was, so I just stood on the brakes, and I’m like half throttle down the back straightaway. I’m like, you’re not getting under me again, and he drove to the outside of me and I just waited until he got near me and I just put a wheel on him.”
Childers kept his driver on track for the final restart with 29 laps to go, the idea being that either Harvick would hold off the field and finally win or slide back to around seventh, which is where his Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang had run for most of the day.
Hamlin restarted third and set his sights on Harvick after getting around Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Jones. But Hamlin didn’t get to Harvick’s bumper until the final lap, closing the gap into Turn 1 and making slight contact with his back bumper. Harvick then went low, and Hamlin stayed higher in the groove in the final two corners.
“I kind of shoved him up a little higher and tried to get him out of the groove,” said Hamlin, who started at the back in a backup car and led 113 laps. “I wanted to just tap him there, but I didn’t want to completely screw him. I at least wanted to give him a fair shot there, and then down the backstretch kind of let off and I’m like, all right, well I’ll just pass him on the outside and try to do this thing the right way.
“As I got that big run he just turned right – but I would do the same thing. It was a fun race. Congratulations to him and his team, they made a great call there at the end. It was fun.”
Hamlin said he “for sure” could have been dirtier battling Harvick but that isn’t how he wanted to do things. “When we were side by side through the center of (Turns) 1 and 2, I should have just drove straight, knocked him kind of up the groove, and he would have been in the (dirty) stuff, and it would have been over with,” Hamlin said. “But that’s not the way I want to do it. We’re two veteran guys; we know how to race these things clean and let’s just figure it out at the end. And he got the best of us.”