Kevin Harvick shoves Jimmie Johnson in first fight of the 2015 Chase

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He roared away on the restart and hit the jackpot with an improbable win in the first race of NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup, the MyAFibRisk.com 400, on Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet. After battling Gordon for second on the restart, Hamlin took the lead from Busch. “We are just going go out there for the next two weeks and just have some fun”.

“It takes the pressure off us for sure”, Hamlin said. But within three laps the left rear tire blew sending Harvick spinning into the Turn 3 wall. 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.

“We led the most laps there in the last two races at Loudon [New Hampshire] and led the most laps, I think, the last three races at Dover, but we had knocked valve stems off in two of them”, Childers said. As a result, Harvick suffered a tire rub and slammed into the wall, bringing out the fourth yellow flag on lap 137. Sixth through twelfth are as follows: Joey Logano, Kyle Larson, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, Aric Almirola, Jimmie Johnson, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Johnson waited outside of Harvick’s motorhome to talk, but Harvick was looking for a confrontation as soon as he came out the door. “I just saw the 48 go three-wide bottom, and I was just trying to protect my position and figure out what lane I wanted to go in from there”.

“I was fine with lifting, but I had to work my way back onto the race track”. “Once we got that clean air, those were the fastest laps I ran all day”.

Harvick crew chief Rodney Childers initially said on the team radio he felt Johnson deliberately hit Harvick.

Now there’s focus on the relationship Stewart-Haas Racing has with Hendrick Motorsports. When you’re in Kevin’s situation, you want to give the inside vehicle a bad angle so they’ve got to lift.

Race-winner Denny Hamlin revealed he wasn’t surprised by the hot tempers on display after the race. Hamlin was forced to start in 29th after qualifying was canceled due to weather.

Now last and a lap down, it seemed he had no shot at the win. Just a year after winning a Championship in the Xfinity Series, Elliott was faced with the challenge of racing in the Xfinity Series while preparing to go full-time in the Sprint Cup Series for the next season. Hamilton’s championship lead over Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, who finished fourth, was cut from 53 to 41 points, with Vettel eight points further back.

Kurt Busch, who was headed for the win until the final caution was called with 10 laps remaining, was third.

“It was the difference maker today”, Kurt Busch said. I couldn’t quite process it all fast enough.

Gibbs had a huge first Chase race overall, with Hamlin in first, Edwards second, Matt Kenseth fifth and Kyle Busch ninth.

Kurt Busch, Jeff Gordon, and Denny Hamlin decided not to pit with the majority of the field. But he told me he had never admitted that anybody was better at anything than him in his whole life and that he would admit that I’m a better driver than him if I won this week’s race.