Kevin Harvick, the dominant driver at ISM Raceway with nine Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victories at the one-mile track, didn’t lead a lap in Sunday’s TicketGuardian 500.
In fact, Harvick never ran higher than third in the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford, and after he was shuffled back on consecutive restarts on Laps 226 and 233, crew chief Rodney Childers opted to pit Harvick for four tires and fuel under yellow on Lap 234.
Harvick restarted 21st on Lap 239 and drove to a ninth-place finish as the race ran green the rest of the way.
“It took us I don’t even know how long to get past cars that were six, seven, eight-tenths slower than us at the end of the race, so just extremely difficult to pass,” Harvick said. “We got shuffled there on the restarts and just decided to come down and get tires and see if we could do something better than being in the middle on two tires, and it took us a long time to get back going.”
With the ninth-place run, Harvick fell one spot to third in the series standings, nine points behind race winner and series leader Kyle Busch and three behind second-place joey Logano, who finished 10th on Sunday.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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