While the damage wasn’t debilitating, it certainly didn’t help his efforts to run down Truex.
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Kevin Harvick dominated the Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway by leading 214 of 367 laps.
Truex took the lead over Newman on Lap 339 stayed out front for 28 of the final 29 laps.
It was Johnson’s ninth finish outside the top 10 in his past 12 races – not the form his team hoped to have in chasing a seventh Sprint Cup title.
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.
“We started 12th and eighth and sixth and we had a great race auto all night just got to thank everybody in the shop and in the garage for putting the race cars under us”, said Harvick, who led a race-high 214 laps.
If viewers tuned in without knowing it was throwback weekend it would have left them scratching their heads because few cars had recognizable paint jobs, with maybe the exception of the No. 43 Ford with the familiar Richard Petty STP colors. 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”.
Truex’s most recent win came Memorial Day, May 29, in Charlotte at the Coca Cola 600.
“I have a lot of respect for Tony and he has always raced me really clean”, Scott said. One week earlier at MI, his pit crew likely cost him a shot at victory – but on Sunday, they were money. The No.4 machine was running strong on track, but his pit crew kept faltering on pit road. It is the final race of the regular season before the cutoff for the chase.
“From that side of things, it was a good points night”, said Buescher. The guys in the shop and the guys in the garage are doing a great job, and the guys on pit road are doing a bad job. 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 was trying to let those guys go that had newer, fresher tires”, said Scott in the garage. “They get paid a lot of money to do their jobs”. And that No. 78 team gave him 11s on pit road all night long.
Kyle Larson, last week’s MI victor, came home third.
One of those competitors was Martin Truex Jr., who ran inside the Top-10 for a majority of the event. Doing so may result in civil and/or criminal penalties.
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Truex, who made last year’s championship Chase and is locked in this year, is no surprise – and may have stamped himself a significant contender for the Sprint Cup crown.
