In all, Harvick lost 17 positions on pit road Sunday night.
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The 2014 Sprint Cup champion led a race-high 214 laps Sunday at Darlington Raceway but suffered from a series of pit road mistakes that were unable to overcome in a second-place finish.
It was Truex’s second win of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, and the fourth of his Cup career. More important, they are the household names for NASCAR, the ones who move the needle and make people pay attention.
It was the second win of the season for Truex, the first time he has scored multiple Cup victories in a season and also the first time that the single-car Furniture Row Racing team has scored more than one win a season.
During his post-race news conference, Harvick was asked if the team could explore swapping crews with another Stewart-Haas team.
“We’re hungry. We’re working hard”, Truex said. We’ve had super-fast race cars. Just got to thank everybody in the shop and in the garage for putting the race cars under us.
This team certainly had no problem celebrating a win even if it didn’t have the best vehicle. Just couldn’t be more excited to win at Darlington. We just didn’t do a good job on pit road. Three consecutive slow stops cost him dearly in the last third of the race.
At one point Harvick gave up the lead and came out 12th when an air gun malfunctioned but there were other slow stops that sent his deeper into the field.
“Did we just lose this race?” But Harvick didn’t mention that afterwards. Harvick did all he could throughout the final couple laps, but in the end didn’t have enough to regain the lead. That included keeping Harvick at bay on a restart on Lap 355 and winning by several auto lengths. Truex and Harvick entered the pits in the top two spots and came out of the pits in the same order.
Then there was Harvick, who had the fastest auto for most of the night, but was left with a frustrating second-place finish.
Truex and his team won’t let themselves think they have had a great season.
Kyle Larson finished third while Denny Hamlin and Joey Lagano rounded out the top 5. Tony Stewart, who had a borderline top-10 vehicle, was racing with Brian Scott, who was a lap down.
On Lap 203, Brian Scott was four laps down when Stewart attempted to pass him. – Fastest in every practice and fastest in qualifying, Scott Dixon won the IndyCar Grand Prix at Watkins Glen International with a dominant drive, leading 50 of the 60 laps around the 11-turn, 3.37-mile layout. We’ve had a awful streak of bad luck.
“I’m through with being a cheerleader”, he said of his crew. Stewart later claimed innocence, but NASCAR summoned him and crew chief Michael Bugarewicz for a postrace meeting.
“I haven’t put a lot of thought into the future until I get well”, Earnhardt said.
Darlington had always been one of Truex’s better tracks, but you wouldn’t necessarily have said that Sunday night.
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We’re not advocating for penalties for either Stewart or Nemechek, though Stewart was called to the NASCAR hauler after the race. It is uncertain for now if Stewart and his team will be penalized anything because of the incident. Pagenaud said afterward that Power, who missed the first race of the season because of concussion symptoms, was OK. I’ve led a lot of laps here and I feel like something always happens. Those three tracks all host Chase events, as does Homestead-Miami Speedway where the championship will be decided between four drivers on November 20. “Just looking forward to that opportunity to work with this team and trying to go after our first championship”. “The history, the tradition here, to see the Hall of Famers before the race, and talked to Cale Yarborough and all those guys, it’s just awesome”.
