NASCAR announced Friday that qualifying for the Sprint Cup Series’ AAA 400 at Dover worldwide Speedway in Delaware has been canceled due to weather problems in the area. The good news: Busch is only one point behind bubble driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finished 25th on Sunday.
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“We’re 0-2 in a five-game series”, Harvick said Thursday.
Today’s 2:30 pm race is also the final one on the Monster Mile for four-time Sprint Cup champ Jeff Gordon, who is completing his final full season of racing. He enters the race with a little bit of encouragement, as he finished second in the spring race at the “Monster Mile”. His aggressiveness will have him battling for a win, but that same aggressiveness has been known to be his downfall.
“We are disappointed with the outcome of (the) ruling and still feel our interpretation is within the guidelines”, MWR said in a statement.
After a morning of damp track forced Dover officials to rearrange Saturday’s schedule, Kasey Kahne turned the fastest laps in practice.
Against the ropes last November, needing to win at Phoenix to advance to the title race, he led 264 laps and routed the field. He went into the garage for repairs, losing 36 laps in the process. Harvick has never won at Dover, but was second in May.
“Our calculations said we had plenty of gas to finish the race”, Harvick said. “Hopefully, I can maintain my spot of 12th or improve on it. Otherwise, I’ll be like an Earnhardt fan in a spelling bee – I won’t make it out of the first round”.
The 16-driver field is sliced to 12 following Sunday’s race at Dover global Speedway.
“Well, I think as a competitor and when you look at other sports and as a competitor in general, you know what situations like this are”, he said.
“Then I can completely understand the frustration and anger that would be built up in a situation like that”.
KEVIN HARVICK: I actually haven’t spoken specifically to Rodney about what happened. He tried to restart and didn’t get as good of a restart as he wanted. “And I think past year we were able to perform and get the results that we needed”. “It was a racing incident, in my opinion”. His teammate Carl Edwards won at Dover in 2007 and has the second best average finish (10.60) behind Johnson.
From NASCAR’s perspective, the key is that the race leader must make the first move in terms of restarting the race. Busch ranks fourth on the Chase Grid following his ninth-place finish at Chicagoland last weekend.”The guys have been working really hard”, he said. Points will be reset after each round and the championship will be decided by finishing order in the November. 22 finale at Homestead.
Elder Heart and the foundation plan to create a statue in honor of retired U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Michelle Langhorst, one of the 22 lost on March 30. He had to get back onto the racing surface, and when he tried, Harvick’s auto was right there.
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“Bringing awareness to it is very important”, Logano said.
