Harvick Scores Bristol Win

Kevin Harvick was in twenty-fourth when the green flag dropped on Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shops/NRA 500.

“It kind of motivates me”, Harvick said Sunday.

That line appeared to be in play periodically in Sunday’s race, but overall the racing appeared to be more in line with what Bristol has produced in recent years – some side-by-side competition with a preferred line near the top of the race track.

When action got back under way Sunday night, the field lined up in the order it had been running Saturday night when the rain came.

Photo by Jeff Curry/NASCAR via Getty Images.

The rain persisted and NASCAR was forced to move the rest of the race to Sunday afternoon. Larson also was involved for the second straight issue in a handful of laps.

“We passsed some good cars throughout the race”, he said. Something broke in the right rear of the auto.

While Keselowski’s tactic to many diehards was just a traditional Bristol bump-and-run, it’s sure to stir up a Busch-Keselowski tussle that frequently goes from zero-to-60 in seconds. “I dont know. Frustrating day. It’s something we have to address and fix. “(I was) holding on for my dear life there at the end”. She beat defending season champion Antron Brown with a 4.169-second pass at 180.21 miles per hour.

“I was actually just enjoying what was going on (up front) trying to get there”, Dillon said about the chaos. This thing was good from the start of the weekend. That inside with the rosin and the VHT, if you don’t hit it exactly right you lose a lot of time. We had Bryan Clauson’s tribute helmet here and I dug deep and the guys dug deep and made a lot of changes that made our Ford run a lot better.

Harvick, who had been consistently working his way through the field, then inherited the lead. “Our balance was off a little bit and we got beat by a better auto”.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you”, Harvick said over the radio as he crossed the line. This is a hard to place to win because there are so many things that can go wrong.

“Martinsville needs to call Bristol and say, ‘What do we need to do to make a second lane come in?’ because they did a great job here”, he said. “I’m really exhausted of losing races here with parts falling apart”, he said. “The way that our auto was restarting it felt comfortable, it felt good”. “I think its exciting.

The win was Harvick’s second at Bristol and the second of his season. With only a few weeks left until the playoffs kick-off in Chicago, Harvick and his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing team seem to be gaining momentum after a somewhat lackluster season. It’s been a decade since I’ve been to victory lane here, and I know this is the race that he had circled on the calendar every year.

“We’ve had the performance that we’ve needed in the cars nearly every week and it’s been one of those deals where things didn’t go exactly right”. “We made mistakes, or whatever the case may be, but to get back into victory lane here at Bristol feels really good”.

But included in that list of 40, there are just seven full-time Cup drivers who have championships -Tony Stewart, Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Jimmie Johnson, Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch.

As his victory celebration, Harvick did a synchronized burnout with his teammate, boss and friend Stewart on the front straightaway.

“I told myself the last 10 laps we weren’t racing anybody, there wasn’t anybody around us”.

“That was cool”, Stewart said. I think it just has always meant a lot to me. “That’s what I did”.

Stewart, meanwhile, in his last race at Bristol, finished 30th.

Harvick sprinted away on the final restart and finished almost two seconds ahead of second-place Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. and third-place Denny Hamlin.