When told to come back into the pits during his initial test run, Hinchcliffe exclaimed “Never!”
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Harvick burned it all.
With no practice session this top 16 starting positions are held by Chase drivers, and only 43 cars entered the race so no driver will be eliminated from competition for this weekend’s race. Edwards will finished fifth and is third in points.
“I was giving it everything I’ve got, and I thought he (Harvick) was going to beat us, and he had a better auto today, but I guess he was a little short on fuel”. He will need to (and has in the past) buck that historical trend at the Monster Mile.
“This is why everybody watches”, he said. Do you expect any kind of different track activity out of them with your situation?
Harvick is 15 in the standings, 65 points out of first and 23 points out of 12, where he needs to get to advance to the next stage of the Chase.
The idea of points racing would seem to work well for Kurt Busch and Truex, who scored his first career win at Dover in 2007. Logano’s teammate, Brad Keselowski, won at Dover during his championship run in 2012 and was runner-up in both races last season.
Kenseth was able to keep his chances at another Sprint Cup trophy alive because defending champion Kevin Harvick got overconfident for the second straight week.
Six-time Cup Series champion Johnson is the master of Dover, with ten wins in a total of 27 starts, including three of the past four and seven of the last 13. The race has been rescheduled for 9:30am Saturday. It was his fourth win in the past eight races. The No. 3 Chevrolet driver is set on catching Buescher.
Jeff Gordon may have gotten away with one a few weeks ago in Chicago. Running out of gas at New Hampshire is one thing, and it is understandable even if it would have been a better idea to exercise a little prudence. “Obviously, we have been in this position before, so it’s really no different, other than the circumstances with the points and the championship and everything that goes with it. But as far as an approach standpoint, we’ll do everything exactly the same”.
Ed Klima, the senior director of public safety and track operations says they had a similar situation with the remnants of hurricane Isabel in 2003. “So that’s a good thing”.
The final Chase driver, Clint Bowyer, really has no pressure.
In the end it was Kevin Harvick who led the most laps, but ultimately ran out of fuel in the last lap, dropping him to 21st place and allowing Matt Kenseth to claim the top and a spot in The Chase’s Contender 12 round. I know you have confidence in your guys and your cars, but does having done this previous year add sort of an extra level of confidence to that? I practiced that one this morning..You still have to go out with the mentality of trying to win the race, Harvick said.
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So I think as a team, we’ll do everything in our — from a preparation standpoint the same.
