Kevin Harvick, driver of the #4 Busch Beer Chevrolet, poses with the winner’s decal in Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway on August 21, 2016 in Bristol, Tennessee.
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Kevin Harvick passed Denny Hamlin for the lead with 70 laps to go and held to win at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sunday, ending a two-day, water-logged ordeal.
So Harvick, who led the final 71 laps, didn’t necessarily win in typical Bristol fashion.
Fittingly for a race halted because of Saturday night storms, Harvick had to sit out one last rain delay before pulling away on the restart and cruising to victory.
“I’ve got to thank Busch Beer, Jimmy John’s, Chevrolet, and Mobil 1 and everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing on this Chevrolet”, said Harvick. Harvick celebrated by doing a victory burnout on the frontstretch after the race sharing the moment with team owner Tony Stewart, who made his final Bristol start this weekend before heading into retirement.
Ricky Stenhouse, Jr has his best career cup series run, to finish second, Denny Hamlin, Austin Dillon and Chris Buecher rounded out the top five.
For much of the afternoon defending Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch was dominant, leading 254 of the first 350 laps. On Sunday, Busch led a race-high 256 laps, yet got hit by Justin Allgaier after a spin. I’m really exhausted of losing races here with parts falling apart, so they’ll hear about it on Tuesday. He also blasted Allgaier and his spotter, saying they should’ve moved clear instead of hitting him. “I don’t know. Frustrating day”.
CHANCES GO SOUTH: Kyle Busch had a dominant day and led the most laps, but he broke something in the rear end of his vehicle with roughly 150 laps to go.
Allgaier apologized to Busch. We just had to really fight hard early in the race, we about went a lap down and they made good adjustments to put us back in the race. The race was delayed Saturday night due to severe weather. Keselowski detailed their rocky relationship on and off track in a blog past year.
Mother Nature, though, had different plans.
Nine cautions slowed the race for 106 laps. The result was a boost to Dillon’s Chase chances, too, who came in as one of the drivers qualifying on points and left with that intact. “We didn’t have the auto where we needed to be at the start, but we got some timely cautions to get some laps back and got the vehicle faster”. “We should have won a lot of races this year and we just had things not go our way”. Larson again was caught the wreck, but this time with more damage to his number No. 42. He didn’t get into it the right way, causing him to crash in front of the field and taking some strong drivers – Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney and Matt Kenseth – with him. Any type of short track race, it doesn’t matter if it’s here or Martinsville, my vehicle chief said that going to victory lane, he said, we’ve got one more left, that’s Martinsville. We kept working our way up towards the end and got to the top five and nearly got one there at the end, but I love Bristol.
BAD LUCK BUSCH: Kyle Busch was in position to win both the Sprint Cup and Xfinity races, yet left the track wrecked both times.
The daughter of Funny Car great John Force, Force beat defending season champion Antron Brown with a 4.169-second pass at 180.21 miles per hour. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
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