NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Kevin Harvick celebrates after winning the Good Sam 500 at Phoenix International Raceway. Although the two banged doors down the front stretch, Harvick held on by 0.010-second at the finish line over Edwards. “And, by the time he’d realized that he was going to be behind, we had carried the momentum by win and we were at the start-finish line”. Joey Logano gets his third top 10 start in four races qualifying ninth and Ricky Stenhouse Jr his second top 10 start in 10th. Really after the race that’s exactly what was said future.
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“We just hadn’t been able to get everything out of them just for one reason or another over the lastt wo weeks”. Kyle Busch, who will be on the pole, noticed Harvicks Chevrolet was a little off on Friday when he qualified 18th. “But sometimes our brains don’t work exactly like they should inside the race vehicle and you don’t really realize where you are or what you’re doing”.
Harvick said he knew he would have to protect his lead on the final lap of the Good Sam 500. “I thought I moved him enough to get by, but it’s just racing”.
Johnson went to his backup auto for practice Saturday, while the buzz around the track centered on how such a mistake could happen.
Carl Edwards and Kevin Harvick were beating and banging, but they weren’t wrecking each other. “Then he got up to (my) door and I was trying to time it (and thought) ‘I think he’s going to beat me” so I tried to side swipe him, but I needed to be in front of his front tire”.
“For me personally, this is a fun place to come just for the fact that I started racing here in the mid-’90s”, Harvick said.
“When I saw the blue (wall), the angle I was at and the speed I was at, I knew it was going to be a big impact”, Johnson said. “I knew (Harvick) had kind of been riding and saving his stuff and thought we’d be OK”. A native of Bakersfield, Calif., Harvick started racing at Phoenix in NASCAR’s Southwest Series when he was 20.
Jones finished second, 2.3 seconds back. That changed when Kasey Kahne blew a tire and hit the wall with five laps left. Denny Hamlin won the season-opening Daytona 500, and Jimmie Johnson took the Atlanta race….
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Juan Pablo Montoya won on the streets of St. Petersburg, Fla., for the second consecutive year to continue the Team Penske dominance at this event. “Obviously this is a very pivotal race track when it comes to getting to Homestead so we want to run good here and this is a good step”. Caution came out, Dave (crew chief Rogers) rolled the dice, and we got a shot at it. We made him work for it. That’s more than we’ve been able to do here the last few times. Honestly, it makes it where I can’t wait to get to the next race – Auto Club Speedway in Fontana – our fifth completely different track for the low-downforce package.
