BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) – Kevin Harvick wasn’t anxious about his poor qualifying at Bristol Motor Speedway.
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Kevin Harvick’s crew chief Rodney Childers was happy to get a win at the Bristol night race. When it resumed late Sunday afternoon, Harvick charged from 16th to the front of the field in the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet. “I think that would be the first place I would attack and do something different”. “I drove the auto at 101 percent, got loose and it was away from me”. The race was delayed Saturday night due to severe weather.
This is the team’s second win this season, and Harvick’s second career victory at Bristol. For Buescher, Sunday’s run pus him in the top 30 in points and one step closer to the Chase for the Championship.
“I walked to the bathroom during that one caution after that and just thought about what’s the right thing to do”. It also moved him atop the points standings and gave his program a jolt with only three races left until NASCAR’s Chase starts.
Fittingly for a race halted because of Saturday night storms, Harvick sat out one last rain delay near the end.
“I was excited that you were able to use a lot of the racetrack”, he said. “I think we’ve been confident in our cars, just not confident in closing everything out, from myself, to is it ever really going to happen again, and I think that goes away tonight, and you get back into that — we know we have fast cars, knowing that you can win again, and it kind of happened that way for us in 2014 at Charlotte when we won, and it just kind of reinstilled that confidence of everything we know we can do, and it finally all just came together tonight”. He wanted Stewart to share the victory lap, but “Tony and I aren’t very good at sign language from one seat to another”, he said.
Kevin Harvick picked up his second win of the season, holding off a charging Ricky Stenhouse Jr.to win the rescheduled Bristol night race. On Sunday, Busch led a race-high 256 laps, yet got hit by Justin Allgaier after a spin. But he spun on Lap 358 when a part broke and Justin Allgaier, driving in relief of Michael Arnett, hit the No. 18 vehicle flush to end the defending series champ’s race. That’s stupid. So, I don’t know.
“It’s a shame”, Busch said.
Allgaier apologized to Busch. The end was a welcome relief for race teams, track officials and those who came back out after last nights soaking rains.
NASCAR may have looked hard for any free, dry windows of race time given that Bristol will begin transforming the race track into a football field to host Tennessee and Virginia Tech on September 10.
Joey Logano led a race-high 138 laps, including the final 48, to win the MI race held in June.
“Confidence and momentum go a long ways in racing, baseball, football, basketball, whatever it is, and you just want to ride the wave”. “That is the worst possible scenario when the leader spins out and you hit them”, Allgaier said.
Last week at Bristol, all three circuits competed at one track. For the Sunday August 28 running of the pure Michigan 400 at Michigan International Speedway. With nowhere to go, Brad Keselowski, Matt Kenseth and nine other drivers ended up getting involved.
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Average Speed of Race Winner: 77.973 miles per hour.
