So it was fitting to see Smoke mete out his own justice on Sunday, and to hear Kevin Harvick succicitly blast his crew after yet another race was lost in the pits.
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LeeRoy Yarbrough (1969), David Pearson (1976) and Jeff Gordon (1997) are the only other drivers to win the three biggest races.
BOWMANVILLE, Ontario – John Nemechek raced Cole Custer door-to-door through the grass as their trucks barreled to the finish line at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. During one 16.6-second stop, Harvick fell from first to 12th and while he got back to second, correctly said on the radio after that stop, “It’s pretty much over at this point”.
Larson enters this weekend riding high on momentum as he scored his first career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory. “I always loved this race track”, Truex said. He led the most laps and could easily pull away from the field once he got to the front. They won us the race. Scott bore the brunt of the “mistake, ‘ however, and finished 39th. Sep”. We hit a lot of short runs at the end, and that would kill us.
The worst stop for his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing team came during a caution with just under 90 laps remaining. “You’ve got to get after it on pit road and do your job”. Gordon will replace Junior for three more races this season with Alex Bowman driving the No. 88 for eight as Earnhardt continues to recover from a concussion.
“Yeah, we had a great vehicle”, Harvick said. “We can’t just continuously shoot ourselves in the foot every few pit stops”. We had a shot at it last year and didn’t really have the performance at the end of the season that we needed in our race cars, and I feel like this year with the speed we’ve had in our Toyotas that we can go to Homestead and really have a shot at this thing. As for possibly making a pit-crew member switch with the team that belongs to Harvick’s other teammate, Danica Patrick, who has not qualified for the Chase?
“I’m over being a cheerleader”, he said. Just got to thank everybody in the shop and in the garage for putting the race cars under us.
Larson finished third, with Hamlin fourth and Joey Logano fifth.
The rest of the top ten starts with Matt Kenseth (No.20) finishing sixth, Kasey Kahne (No.5) seventh, Ryan Newman (No.31) eighth, Brad Keselowski (No.2) ninth and Chase Elliott (No.24) finishes tenth.
NASCAR docked Ryan Newman 15 points because his auto failed post-race inspection at Darlington Raceway. Any resulting penalties will be announced mid-week.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series returns to its roots today for one of the oldest and most prestigious events of the season. The race comes at a time when the NASCAR Chase for the Cup standings are starting to heat up, even as some drivers have stepped away for the season.
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It’s the second time Furniture Row won at Darlington. FRR won the Southern 500 with Regan Smith in 2011 – Smith’s only triumph in a Sprint Cup auto.
